Shanghai Tech Writer

Many technical writers in the U.S. and other countries majored in some form of English, journalism, or technical communication. Here at National Instruments Shanghai, most of the technical writers are also English majors. The only difference is that English is our second or third language.

NI is an American company so English fluency is high on the job requirements list. Everyone here at the Shanghai office speaks English very well. The technical communications department, including technical writers and the localization team, probably has the highest level of English fluency, not just here at the Shanghai office, but in the entire country! And yet, the level of fluency can’t compare to that of a native English speaker.

At NI, we write all our documentation in English. The technical writers in Shanghai have to work extra hard to match the quality of documentation written by our Austin technical writers. Even though English is the “official language” here in the Shanghai office, most people still speak Chinese throughout the day. The developers we work with usually communicate in Chinese with a few English words here and there. These developers are quite capable of explaining things in English but in the end, everyone just speaks Chinese. We have to learn everything in Chinese first, then write documentation in English. After that, the localization team translates the English documentation into Chinese and other languages.

This back and forth translation can be quite challenging. English is my third language, but because I was mainly educated in the U.S., my English is much better than my Chinese. However, I didn’t learn phonics and grammar like native speakers, so I struggle with both languages. There are some things I understand only in English and other things (like countable and non-countable nouns) that I can never figure out. When working with developers, I have difficulty understanding concepts in Chinese because I’m not used to hearing certain technical terms in a different language. I ask stupid questions like “what’s a hard drive” or “what’s an analog signal.” Other times, I understand perfectly what the developers tell me in Chinese, but I don’t know how to translate into written English.

Sometimes, the developers help me write conceptual information in English, but I have to do some major editing. I don’t always understand what they are trying to say because word-for-word translation from Chinese to English doesn’t always make sense. Developers don’t always use the most appropriate words to explain something, which leads to incorrect information. Also, logic and sequence are very important in technical writing, but they might get confused or rearranged during translation due to subtle language differences. I have to ask many questions to make sure I fully understand the content before editing and rewriting the conceptual topics.

As you can see, language is probably one of the biggest challenges of being a technical writer in China. I can’t speak for all technical writers at NI or in China, but we have to recognize that as non-native English speakers, no matter how many years of English we study, how grammatically correct we try to be, English is not and will never be our mother tongue. We just have to work harder and go through more reviews to ensure the highest quality of documentation.

The same could be said about technical writers in India and other countries that are doing a lot of the outsourcing work. The current trend is that technical documentation is gradually moving to onsite R&D centers in countries like India and China. More on this topic in future posts.

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