RE: Dropping the you? The Asian response to imperative voice.

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Mike Starr wrote: 
 
> I would suggest that a good translation house would be aware 
> of and accomodate those cultural sensitivities in their 
> translation. 

My thought exactly. When you're writing _in_English_, shouldn't your
style -- sentence structure, tone, voice, etc. -- be appropriate for
_English_? Shouldn't people reading a document written _in_English_
expect it to sound like it was written by an _English-speaking_ person
_for_ an _English-speaking_ person? Why is cultural sensitivity a
one-way street? 

When your doc is translated to Japanese, Swahili, Urdu, or whatever --
that's when it's appropriate to make it sound like it was written by a
speaker of that language _for_ a speaker of that language. 

Seems to me that's one of the reasons why localization is more than just
translation -- and costs so much. :-)

Richard


------
Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------




^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Word features support for every major Help
format plus PDF, HTML and more. Flexible, precise, and efficient content
delivery. Try it today!. http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l

Doc-To-Help includes a one-click RoboHelp project converter. It's that easy.  Watch the demo at http://www.DocToHelp.com/TechwrlList

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- infoinfocus -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40infoinfocus.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to lisa -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.