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On Sep 11, 11:22am, Kimberly Ferri Cakebread wrote:
> Subject: Re: Native English Speaking Requirement
> 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.
Point taken. Just as it applies to "Five years experience required". I couldn't
agree with you more.
> 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.
Okay, so you are sometimes looking for people that can check that the
translations are "culturally correct/non-offensive/accurate". But the operative
part of the Japanese post you are referring to read:
"Now we are looking for competent technical writers (native English speakers
only) who can proofread/rewrite translated text. Proofreading/rewriting means
finding grammatical errors and altering sentences and constructions so that
they read better as well as correcting technical misunderstandings of our
translators."
I do not believe see anything a person that was born, grew up, went to
engineering school, watched American movies [I know that one is touchy, but
applies in this case], read everything form Shakespeare to Joan Collins and
works in Hokkaido, or Faisalabad in Pakistan, or Hyderabad in India, or Sokoto
in Nigeria couldn't do. [I have purposely avoided the biggest/most hi-tech two
or three cities in each country.]
And to catch the "peculiarities in the translations", I would put a person that
is familiar with Japanese peculiarities of language; native Japanese of native
American.
And for good measure, here is most of the Sony Brussels post:
"SOCOM is a Sony Research & Development centre in Brussels, involved
in the field of operating systems and interactive audio-visual
services. These roles offer an exciting opportunity to become involved
in the core R&D of a leading consumer electronics company within a
multicultural environment, where English is the working language.
Currently, SOCOM is looking for two full-time technical
communicators that will be located in Brussels.
You are a native English speaker with excellent technical writing
skills coupled with a strong desire to quickly acquire knowledge of
the fields mentioned above. Experience in a fast-paced software
development environment is an asset. Of course, you must have the
ability to work as a member of a team.
The primary authoring platform is UNIX and the primary authoring tool
is Framemaker. Knowledge of C, C++, objected-oriented concepts and scripting
languages such as Perl would be helpful."
If I could to relocate to Europe at this time, boy, would I want that job!
Sabahat.
--
Sabahat_Ashraf -at- MentorG -dot- com
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