Re: What to do??

["Lisa A. Roth" <roth -dot- lisa -at- jimmy -dot- harvard -dot- edu>]

I already sent this to Wade personally, but I figured I would also send it 
to the group for the benefit of all:


Hi there,

As a person who worked in tech editing overseas in a primarily immigrant 
nation (Israel) where the authors had a very wide variety of native 
tongues, I can offer a few nuggets of advice:

1) Don't hesitate to ask questions. After a little while, you'll begin 
seeing the method behind the madness. For example, several of my authors 
were Russian speakers who since learned Hebrew and then English. I got to 
the point where I recognized that they were writing Russian-style sentences 
using Hebrew syntax, but written using English words. Countless other 
authors were in the same position, but their native languages differed.

Once I identified the idiosyncrasies associated with the various native 
tongues, I was able to decipher and, in effect, translate what they were 
writing. When asking questions, you may find it useful to ask one or two of 
them with whom you have a good rapport to explain how they might say this 
(using rough translation into English) in their native tongue. That will 
probably put you on the road to seeing some of the written structures that 
you're likely to see again.

2) Ask your boss to clarify his statement regarding "not paying mind" to 
grammar or spelling. Indicate to him/her that while you're able to worry 
about proper sentence structure, etc., it is vital that the incoming 
information contain some basic degree of logic and "flow."
This may be tricky, but it sounds like it needs to be done. Everyone needs 
to understand that there is a big difference between not sweating the finer 
points of English and doing an indecipherable brain dump via a keyboard.

3) Be sure to offer your help with no holds barred at the beginning. In my 
current company, I again work with several non-native English speakers. I 
have found that if you establish yourself as not only an authority on 
English but ALSO as someone who is willing to do what is necessary to help 
the others help themselves, they will value this and use it. In the 
short-term this strategy may result in a line forming outside your 
cubicle/office, the masses will eventually subside and you'll most likely 
receive better incoming information.

4) I don't know what type of work you're doing, but you also might want to 
think over the possibility of establishing boilerplates that the authors 
can fill in. This very well may help guide them in the direction that you'd 
like them to go. Naturally the feasibility of this depends on your specific 
doc set, but imagine this: If your doc set consistently contains certain 
items (e.g., scope statement, list of roles and responsibilities), you 
could write the introductory sentence(s), leaving them only with blank 
bullet points to fill in wherever possible.

Hope some or all of this was of use! Smile -- although the going may be 
very very tough at times, I think that you'll find you gain a lot from the 
experience in the long run.

-- Lisa

At 12:59 PM 10/27/2003, you wrote:

I just started a job at a new company in Sept.  Some of the engineers
are Russian and they have problems with their English. Ok, no worries,
but my boss has given them instructions to not worry about grammar,
spelling, or anything else because I will fix it.  Editing these
documents puts me on the edge of insanity and I have to take a break
nearly every half a page.  How can I tactfully handle telling my boss
how I feel?


Regards,

Wade



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