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Rowena Hart wrote:
>
> For the past 8 months I've been learning to
> speak Mandarin in my spare time. One of the
> side benefits is that I have built stronger
> working relationships with SMEs from Asia,
> who have been more than happy to help me
> practice and learn the language.
>
. . .
I had occasion to work on a document that was an English translation
of a German document, prepared by Germans. My (then) company had
licensed the software and was making some UI changes to it, so I was
tasked with bringing the translated doc into our style and format.
Because I have a decent ability in German, I occasionally referred to
the original German when the English doc was awkward. In quite a few
cases, I was able to read the German and rewrite the English. In one
case, I did have to consult a native speaker of (technical) German
to untangle the long, convoluted sentence into idiomatic English.
--Guy K. Haas
Senior Technical Writer
Selectica, Inc.
E-Mail: ghaas -at- selectica -dot- com
