By Susan Holdaway
Some of us may never speak Japanese or Korean or travel to China, but as technical communicators we will potentially influence East Asian audiences, particularly if we collaborate on documents that support products or services marketed for East Asia.
While our documents may never be translated or localized, many technical communicators will write or edit documents that will be made available to this vast audience in large part because of the growth of English language education (ELE) in East Asia. We have the opportunity to prepare English documents to include potential readers in East Asia, particularly China, Japan, and Korea, who are becoming increasingly proficient in English.
The Chinese, Japanese, and Korean governments have chosen English as the international lingua franca for their countries. This emerging English language phenomenon in East Asia has broad implications for technical communicators. Current ELE policies in these technology-progressive countries portend a burgeoning audience for English technical documents. John R. Kohl, author of The Global English Style Guide, reminds us that “a huge volume of technical information is available only in English and must therefore be read in English by speakers of other languages” (267), and that product documentation is not always translated. Additionally, we know that many Internet sites with technical documentation are in English only.
In order for technical communicators to best take advantage of the market opportunities in East Asia, I will share insights from my professional experience with ELE in Korea and provide information about current ELE policies in East Asia. These insights and information will help us better understand why we should include East Asians in our potential audience and what we can do to effectively prepare the English documents we write or edit to include East Asian audiences.
My Experience with English Language Education in Korea
Since 2002, I have worked as a remote editor and writer for Pagoda Foreign Language Institute located in Seoul, Korea. I acknowledge that while working for a private institute, I have interacted mainly with the privileged English-language students who often enjoy the benefits of traveling and studying abroad in English-speaking countries. Even with those advantages, as I have taught English through written examples and editorial comments, I have noticed significant improvement in English proficiency during the past eight years.
When I first began editing, I worked with high-school and university students whose knowledge of English was rudimentary at best. I spent a lot of time instructing students in the basic structures of the English language and correcting grammar errors. However, in the past several years, my English-language instruction has shifted from correcting basic language errors to focusing on organization and style. In short, even in my narrow professional sphere, I have noticed a marked improvement in English-language proficiency among Korean students.
A new generation of young professionals in Korea and East Asia have been immersed in English education all of their lives, and they are proficient enough in English to benefit from the technical documents we write or edit. The more East Asians who can access technical information in English, the better their English proficiency will become, individually and collectively. Additionally, as their English proficiency improves, the more English will become an integral part of their careers and influence how they access technical information. An outcome of greater English proficiency among young East Asians will be that ELE will become even more accessible to the next generation, and the struggle to attain general English proficiency in technical areas will diminish.
Current English-Language Education Policies in East Asia
Although there are a variety of motivating factors that define current government policies regarding ELE in East Asia, a main motivator for Japan, Korea, and China is achieving success in the world, particularly economic success. Satoshi Hashimoto writes that Japan’s goals for the twenty-first century emphasize the importance of “all Japanese acquir[ing] a working knowledge of English—not as simply a foreign language but as the international lingua franca” (6). At the core of Korea’s ELE policy is the need for “a more English proficient labor force to engage in the international global village and world economy” according to Neville Swartz. Guangwei Hu observes that the Chinese government has repeatedly emphasized that ELE has a “vital role to play in national modernization and development” (5). For these East Asian nations, global success is inextricably linked to English proficiency.
While East Asian governments have defined ELE policies, East Asians must work through the practice and problems of educating large populations in English. Currently, both Japan and Korea require 10 years of mandatory ELE, beginning in primary schools. China likewise requires compulsory ELE in primary and secondary schools, but many rural students struggle to achieve basic literacy in Chinese. Such policies require large time and monetary investments, and some observers criticize that general English proficiency in these countries is unacceptable.
So what do the policies, motivations, practices, and problems associated with English proficiency in East Asia portend for technical communicators? Regardless of the complexities of ELE, China, Japan, and Korea appear determined to achieve English-language proficiency among their general populaces. As a consequence, now and in the future, technical communicators will be serving a much larger English-language audience than in the past.
Consider the following numbers. In 2004, Guangwei Hu wrote that there were an estimated 80 million learners of English in Chinese general secondary schools and an additional 40 million students of English in specialized or vocational schools: a total of 120 million English-proficient Chinese employees entering the workforce in the next several years. ELE specialists have commented that China “is gaining English-language competence much faster than any other country in the region” (Hu, 17). This would be a vast English-proficient audience for technical documents, and the numbers don’t include Japan and Korea, which have longer histories of ELE. In short, English proficiency in East Asia is increasing and will continue to increase as ELE problems are dealt with and overcome, thereby creating opportunities for technical communicators who want to include this expanding English audience.
Technical Communicators Can Prepare Now to Include East Asians in Potential Audiences
First, technical communicators can be more aware that East Asians may be part of their potential audience. We should assume that East Asians read our English documents. Second, we can improve our English documents to more effectively include East Asians readers. Doing a Google search for the phrase “writing in English for international audiences” gives over 6,450,000 results to consider. Among the results are style guides, websites, and other published documents that can help technical communicators write or edit for East Asian audiences.
Let me mention two examples of available online resources. In 2003, INTECOM: The International Council for Technical Communicators published Guidelines for Writing English Language Technical Documentation for International Audiences. Although not comprehensive, this short reference documents common English words and recommends English word choice for international audiences (www.tekom.de/upload/alg/INTECOM_Guidelines.pdf). This guide gives different English variants of words and reasons why certain variants are better understood in an international setting. IBM is an example of a corporation that addresses writing for international audiences on its corporate website (www.ibm.com/software/globalization/ topics/writing/index.jsp).
A new generation of young professionals in Korea and East Asia have been immersed in English education all of their lives, and they are proficient enough in English to benefit from the technical documents we write or edit.
While there are many online and print resources available to help us anticipate East Asian audiences during our document preparation, I will focus my subsequent comments on The Global English Style Guide (GESG) because I am familiar with it. GESG is a valuable, general resource for technical writers and editors of English documents to become familiar with because it enables us to more effectively include East Asia in our potential audiences.
There are several benefits of Global English for promoting verbal consistency in writing and editing for East Asian audiences. Foremost to consider is the cardinal rule of Global English: “Don’t make any change that will sound unnatural to native speakers of English” (Kohl, 4). This rule establishes the premise that Global English will provide flexibility when implementing Global English guidelines in technical writing and editing. Remembering that readers of technical documents are reading foremost for information and understanding, technical communicators should consider that East Asians are simultaneously improving their English language skills as they read, so they should be able to assume that English documents are correct as well as accurate.
The guidelines of Global English are prioritized in GESG to allow users to focus on the aspects of Global English that will most benefit the outcome of their specific projects. For example, included under the headings for each guideline are priority references for human translation, nonnative speakers, and machine translation. While GESG does discuss preparing documents for translation in detail, the general guidelines can be applied comprehensively or selectively to any English technical document.
Let us briefly consider two examples of how I have used topics addressed in GESG as I work with Koreans in ELE. First, I use syntactic cues more carefully now when I write or edit. Kohl defines syntactic cues as that “aspect of language that helps readers identify part of speech and analyze sentence structure” (112). For example, articles, prepositions, punctuation marks, prefixes, suffixes, and word order are common syntactic cues in English. My Korean students struggle with using articles correctly. In the past, my editorial preference and advice to students focused on deleting unnecessary articles, including some that contributed to parallel structure in sentences. After reading GESG, I realized that articles, when used correctly in parallel structures, provide vital syntactic cues to create “clear communication” for nonnative English speakers and that it is better for me to include an extra article to complete a parallel structure than to omit it if I want my East Asian students to clearly understand my written communication.
Second, I have found that consciously eliminating certain terms and phrases in my writing makes my writing clearer and easier to understand without undermining my distinctive writing style. For example, consider the vagueness of idioms when an audience is not familiar with their contexts. For several years, I wrote articles for Korean students in which I included example sentences using English idioms from a list my supervisor gave me. The purpose of these articles was to help students learn how to better understand idioms and how to “correctly” use them in writing and conversation. I now realize it was impossible for me to define each idiom with complete accuracy because there are so many variables to consider when defining and using idioms. While writing, I encountered idioms I had never heard before, idioms that I knew were anachronisms, and idioms I had heard but that I didn’t contextually understand because they were not part of my personal experience with English. I now avoid using idioms when communicating with the Korean students. Eliminating or rewriting confusing and other nonessential terms and phrases as we prepare technical documents is one of the many ways we as technical communicators can alter our documents to make them more accessible to East Asians.
Conclusion
As each year passes, East Asians will become a more significant part of our potential audience for English documents. We can include this expanding audience if we more effectively plan and prepare English documents by adapting our technical writing and editing skills to include it. By using available resources, technical communicators can develop English documents to facilitate comprehension for all readers, including the millions of East Asians who already use English professionally or who are working to become English proficient.
Beginning in 2002, Susan Holdaway (s.holdaway@aggiemail.usu.edu) worked over seven years as a remote editor and writer for Pagoda Foreign Language Institute in Seoul, South Korea. While working for Pagoda, she specialized in English language education written instruction. Currently, she is a master’s student in English specializing in technical writing at Utah State University.
REFERENCES
Hashimoto, Satoshi. Foreign Language Education in Japan: A Japanese Perspective. Paper presented at Policy Forum: Global Approaches to Plurilingual Education, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, France (28–29 June 2004), www.coe.int/T/DG4/linguistic/Source/HASHIMOTO_Forum04.doc.
Hu, Guangwei. English Language Education in China: Policies, Progress, and Problems. Language Policy 4 (2005): 5–24.
Kohl, John R. The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc., 2008.
Swartz, Neville. Where Is the English in English Education? The Korea Times (14 October 2009), www.koreatimes.co.kr/.
