Dropping the you? The Asian response to imperative voice.

[Combs, Richard]

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


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