Re: Qualifications for an off shore writer?

[Peter Neilson <neilson -at- windstream -dot- net>]

Culture can be a great difficulty when it is not anticipated. It's hard 
to know what to anticipate, too. A TW candidate in India may have very 
high grades in English, but be unable to warp code-focused comments from 
a software team into good user-focused documentation, because all his 
training has been in academic-style writing.

You can find that you are spending all your time pushing on a string, 
when your stellar writing candidate comes on board and starts turning 
out stuff like this:

"The user is requested to make an entry in the form provided for data 
entry with respect to the amount of product it is desired to purchase."

In certain Asian cultures it is impolite to say anything negative, and 
if you ask the writer directly, "Will you have this finished by Friday?" 
you might need to distinguish between this answer:

"Certainly. I can assure you that it will be done by Friday," which 
means yes, and this one:

"Yes, I am thinking that by Friday it will be done," which means no.

You might ask the candidate if he finds American culture too abrupt. I'd 
be wary of any overly polite answer. I'd rather hear, "Certainly not! 
I'm abrupt, too."

Julie Stickler wrote:
> Good point.  I'll make sure to add some interview questions to delve
> into how the candidate deals with criticism.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Leonard C. Porrello
> <Leonard -dot- Porrello -at- soleratec -dot- com> wrote:
>> One thing you may want to keep in mind when working with non-American
>> writers is that how people confront one another varies widely from
>> culture to culture.


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