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Subject:Working as a Technical Writer in Madrid? From:Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>, T K <tvk_tw -at- yahoo -dot- ie> Date:Sun, 12 Nov 2006 08:01:08 -0500
Tom wondered: << I am wondering about the possibility of working as
a technical writer in Madrid, writing in English rather than Spanish.>>
English being one of the main European languages of trade and
commerce, it would surprise me greatly if there aren't many such
opportunities. However, you should make time to investigate the
requirements for becoming a citizen (or at least obtaining permission
to work) in your country of choice; a year ago, I lost an interesting
and lucrative translation client because their funding guidelines
required them to work exclusively with EU contractors, and someone
caught them violating that guideline by working with me. Sigh... so
it goes.
<<... perhaps there are also Spanish companies who would require
writing done in English (e.g. if expoerting to English-speaking
nations).>>
Definitely. If you have access to a good library and are interested
in working in the sciences and related lines of work, scan through
the archives of _Scientific American_ for the past year or two. They
periodically publish a large "special advertising section" in which
various countries or regions of countries advertise all the cool
science work they're doing, including business-related technology
opportunities. I know they did one on some region of Spain during
this period--but I don't recall whether it included Madrid. In any
event, it should give you some interesting food for thought and lots
of potential contacts in Spain.
<<If anyone has any experience or knowledge of the technical writing
industry in Spain I would appreciate a reply. An initial reply can be
to the list and if the discussion becomes very specific we can take
it off-list.>>
For future reference, all initial replies should be on-list. You'll
get a much wider array of responses when people start responding to
other replies (it's called "synergy" <g>), and I'm sure you're not
the only one interested in the topic. The discussion then becomes
part of the archives too.
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