Communicating effectively with people from another culture requires

understanding a number of cultural issues that lie on the surface.

You need to be aware of political, social, religious,

and economic factors that can affect how readers interpret your documents.

Understanding these factors is not an exact science,

but it does require that you learn as much as you

can about the culture of those you are addressing.

A brief example. An American manufacturer

of deodorant launched an advertising campaign in

Japan in which a cute octopus applied the firm's product under each of its eight arms.

But the campaign failed, because in Japan,

an octopus is viewed as having eight legs, not eight arms.

Nancy Hoft from the International Technical Communication

describes the following major issues.

Political – This category relates to legal issues.

For example, some countries forbid imports of

certain chemicals and laws about intercultural property,

product safety, and liability.

Economic – a country's level of economic development is a crucial factor.

In many developing countries,

most people cannot afford devices for accessing the Internet.

Social – This category covers many issues including gender and business custom.

In most Western cultures,

women play a much greater role in

the workplace than they do in many Middle Eastern or Asian cultures.

Religious – Religious differences can affect diet or attributes towards,

for example, individual colors.

Educational issues.

Technological issues – They need to know whether your readers have the hardware,

the software, and technological infrastructure to use them.

Linguistic – In many cultures,

the orientation of text on a page and in a book is not from left to right.

In addition to this basic differences,

you need to understand dozens of other factors.

For example, the United States is

the only major country that has not adopted the metric system.

Whereas Americans use periods to separate whole numbers

from decimals and commas to separate thousands from hundreds,

much of the rest of the world reserves this usage.

Also, in the United States of America,

the format for writing out and abbreviating dates is

different from that of most of other countries.

The following eight suggestions will help you communicate more

effectively with multicultural readers.

Limit your vocabulary.

Every word should have only one meaning.

It's called for simplified English and in other basic English languages.

Keep the sentences short.

There is no magic number,

but try for an average sentence length of no more than twenty words.

Define abbreviations and acronyms in a glossary.

Don't assume that your readers know that a GFI, ground fault interrupter,

is because the abbreviation is derived from English vocabulary and word order.

Avoid jargon unless you know your readers are familiar with this jargon.

For instance, your readers might not know what a graphical user interface is.

Avoid idioms and slang.

These terms are cultural aspergers.

If you tell your Japanese readers that your company plans to put on a full-court press,

most likely they will be confused.

Use the active voice whenever possible.

The active voice is easier for nonnative speakers of

English to understand than the passive voice.

Be careful with graphics.

The garbage can icon on the Macintosh computers does not

translate well because garbage cans might have

different shapes and be made of different materials in other countries.

Be sure someone from the target culture reviews document.

Even if you have had help in planning the document,

have it reviewed before you publish it and distribute it.

One of the challenges of writing to people from other cultures is that

they are likely to be nonnative speakers of English.

One way to overcome the language barrier is to

use effective graphics and the appropriate document design.

However, the most appropriate graphics and design can differ from culture to culture.

Business leaders in Australia use

a different size paper and a different format than those in the United States.

An icon for a file folder in a software program created in the United States could

confuse European readers who use file folders of a different size and shape.

A series of graphics arranged left to right could

confuse readers from Middle East who read from right to left.

For this reason, you should study samples of documents written by

people from the cultures you're addressing to learn the important differences.

Writing for Multiple Audiences

Technical Writing

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