Re: Native English Speaking Requirement

[Kimberly Ferri Cakebread <kim -at- ASPECTDV -dot- COM>]

I would take the requirement with a grain of salt.  When I recruit people,
I try to do my best to weed out those candidates who might be a fit for
some writing situations, but not for others.  For example, I always include
a college degree as a requirement, but I have hired people without college
degrees because they obviously have the experience, talent, and temperament
I want to add  to the team.

There are some tech writers with excellent writing skills who might not fit
because they are not native speakers.  For example, a heavy accent might
create communication problems.  In the case of the Japanese translation
opportunity, the documents have already been translated by people who know
English pretty well.  But "native speakers" can often detect that a
document has been translated by a "non-native speaker."  I think this
employer wants to make sure the candidate meets the requirement, that being
someone who can spot peculiarities in the translations.

Kimberly Ferri Cakebread





At 01:54 PM 9/11/97 EDT, you wrote:
>On Sep 11,  1:18pm, Kenny Cherry wrote:
>> Subject: Re: Native English Speaking Requirement
>> Seems to me that your examples are of Native English speakers/users.  =
>> Maybe not Native Americans or Native Britains, but native speakers =
>> nonetheless.
>
>Why thank you! But no, thank you. I maintain that I fall into the chapter of
>"Encyclopedia of World People" [or whatever it is called] that is titled
"Urdu
>Speaking Peoples of North India and Pakistan". My ethnic group must be one of
>very, very few in the world that uses *only* a language to identify it. For
>clarification, English people are English, not English-speaking. Japanese
>people are Japanese [from Japan] not Japanese-speaking [in fact, a lot of
>people from Hokkaido might be Japanese legally, but hate you for calling them
>Japanese linguistically.
>
>And the South Indian folks I was talking about are definitely "Native
Speakers"
>of Tamil, Malayalam, Telegu and the like.
>
>And at about that point the discussion is in danger of becoming political, as
>our Canadian friends will tell you, so let's get back to the topic:
>
>This is I agree with you that I myself *can* be considered a native
speaker of
>English. But take a look at my CV/Resume/Biodate [Born in Nigeria, High
School
>and Engineering School in Pakistan] and tell me honestly: would *any*one
>consider me a Native English speaker if I applied for one of the jobs posted
>here?
>
>Sabahat.
>
>PS It might interest you to know that I used to quote my GRE score on my
resume
>till I had some North American experience on it.
>
>--
>Sabahat_Ashraf -at- MentorG -dot- com
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