May 06
2008Being a Technical Writer in Shanghai / China
Filed Under: Shanghai & China, Technical Communication/Writing
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In recent months, various technical writers from around the world have posted articles sharing about their typical day as a technical writer. I’ve read about the typical day of a technical writer from the U.S., Australia, the U.K., and . . . China (me)! Despite the fact that we live in different parts of the world, our jobs as technical writers are strikingly similar in many ways!
However, I’ve been wanting to write about being a technical writer in Shanghai/China. The only thing is that I haven’t worked as a technical writer anywhere else so I can’t really make a good comparison other than from what I’ve read or heard about. There are a few differences that are unique though, perhaps not just limited to being here in Shanghai, but in other countries where English is not the native language.
I will write a few posts in the coming weeks about being a technical writer in Shanghai. I will also include a few guest posts by other technical writers in Shanghai. Perhaps I can get a discussion going in the technical writing blogosphere about being technical writers in other countries.
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It would be fun to get a discussion going among technical writers across the world. I’ve worked as a tech writer in South Africa and Australia, and also as a systems developer in South Africa, England and the Netherlands. I think that probably the field of technical writing itself is not dramatically affected by the country you’re in, aside from the language implications which you’ve expressed so well in your previous post.
There are two reasons why technical writing itself is probably not so greatly affected:
* Firstly, there’s quite a wide variety in the field itself, regardless of which country you’re in. Different industries (medical, information technology, defence, etc) plus different roles (writer, documentation manager, documentation system designer, etc).
* Secondly, I’ve found that the differences from country to country are more wide-spread that just in technical writing i.e. they affect all spheres of employment. Here I’m thinking of attitudes to women in the workplace (I’ve seen quite big differences in South Africa, Britain, Australia and the Netherlands); attitude to different religions and different sexual orientations; and so on.
Yes, you’re right, we can get a great discussion going here
Several people have told me that there are very few technical writers in Japan. Is this true in China? They told me that because Japanese students are trained to be better writers that the belief is that the role of tech writers is “not needed” or that the role performs a different function than a U.S. based tech writer. In addition the role of information architech is even more rare. Is that true in China as well?
Mark Lewis
Interesting what Sarah said about attitudes towards women, religion, and sexual orientations. Here in the US I’ve never seen any bias for those reasons. I was somewhat surprised to here they exist in the places Sarah mentioned.