Global Talk

In April 2005, the TecDoc Net Report estimated the number of potential jobs in the technical communications field in Europe at 227,000. The complete report is available from:
http://www.tceurope.org/tecdocnet/tecdocnet_index.htm
(http://www.tceurope.org/pdf/tecdoc.pdf).

The professional organization for technical communicators in Germany, tekom, recently published a book on the status of technical communication in many countries. The title is Technical communication–international.

ITC SIG manager Kit Brown reviewed the book, and you can read the review on the tekom website. Visit http://www.tekom.de and in the search box, enter “Kit Brown” without the quotes. You can order a copy of the book; the URL for the order form is http://www.tekom.de/upload/alg/Orderingform.pdf

TCeurope has published “Professional education and training of Technical Communicators in Europe.”

The publication includes sections on the state of the field and competencies of technical writers. The publication is available for download.

Technical writers in Israel have a thriving online community at http://www.elephant.org.il.

There is a weekly column called “Life as a Tech Writer” at that provides a humorous, but sadly true, look at technical writing. There is a column on “The Why of Style” and a proposed Code of Ethics for Tech Writers, along with articles on living in working in Israel in the face of recent hostilities.

In August and September, 2006, the UbuntuNet Alliance is sponsoring an Online Discussion Forum on “The Role of the Internet in Higher Education, Research, Science, and Technology Development in Subsaharan Africa.” (more…)

Jeanette Thomas, treasurer of the Instructional Design and Learning SIG, reported on her experience at the STC Annual Conference in the July 2006 IDeaL newsletter.

Jeanette says: “Limiting myself to only four conference sessions a day was difficult, but the easiest one to select was “Cultural and International Perspectives on Adult Learning Activities” by Carolyn Luttrell and others.

“Every year, as our training audiences become more international, it becomes more important to ensure our materials are usable by diverse workforces. I’m passionate about finding new ways to work across cultures, but with so many variations across countries it is difficult to learn about and address every possibility.

“In this session, I expanded my cultural training perspectives to include training dynamics in China, the Middle East, and India. The presenters have been living and training in these regions and brought great insights and examples about how the various learning strategies, such as the Socratic method, would work –- or fail –- in these cultures. They emphasized the role of class and hierarchy in these cultures and the importance of saving face for many learners abroad. An open dialog broadened the discussion to handling conference calls and working with subject matter experts in these regions as well.”

Karen Mardahl provided the information in this article assembled by Global Talk. The information is from the 19 June 2006 issue of IST Results (news from the EU Information Society Technologies program) in an article titled “A common approach to accessibility for all.”

The article discusses efforts to harmonize the methodologies for achieving the goal of accessible websites. These efforts include: (more…)

by Dhanya Menon, Technical Writer in Hyderabad, India with additions by Global Talk

The query (on the ITC SIG list) about omission of definite article ‘the’ interested me as I had been reading about the same a couple of days ago. According to High School English Composition and Grammar by Wren and Martin (which is considered an authority in India), in the following situations one must avoid usage of articles: (more…)

Global Talk is publishing this information from an ITC SIG list post in June, 2006.

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online is a British dictionary that specifics US and British spelling for words where the spelling varies.

13-17 November, 2006. LISA Forum Europe. Warsaw.

The LISA Annual European Forum will concentrate on central European markets for offshore globalization services. The program will feature product localization and internationalization quality assurance; implementing open standards to maximize business processes for language services operations; accreditation for localization services companies; the ROI of enterprise globalization; website localization; and much more. Industry segments include legal, finance, life sciences, IT/telcos, government and multimedia.