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Subject:Re: Examination for Japanese tech communicators From:Karen Kay <karenk -at- NETCOM -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 8 Mar 1995 14:23:24 -0800
Robert Plamondon said:
....
> you'll understand that Japanese technical writing is the
> laughingstock of the entire world. Not just among professionals,
> but among hundreds of millions of annoyed users.
Don't confuse bad technical writing with bad translation. A bad
translation can easily wreck good writing. Bad translations are
usually made by non-native speakers of the target language.
Japanese technical writing runs the same gamut that American technical
writing does. The mode of expression, however, is quite different from
English, regardless of the quality of the writing. There's a big
debate right now on the Japanese translator's list whether translation
takes place at the paragraph level or the document level; many bad
translations have been translated sentence-for-sentence.
