Global Language: Can’t get without English

Today’s Era of modernization has always lured us to study in English medium schools and colleges in order to be ahead in the career and job hunting. Its really pathetic and heartening that in spite of knowing that English is the language, which holds the key for the individual’s success in today’s world, our politicians have not promoted it in the school and colleges. Rather after independence the political will to promote Indian language, that is precisely regional in nature, and Hindi, which is the national language of the country, have taken the importance to be taught in the school and colleges and made compulsory as a vernacular.

It is but natural to have love for the national language and regional language. However, it should not be at the cost of ignoring to teach the language which can help you earn your livelihood. The motive to introduce regional and national language in government school and colleges gave a political opportunity for the politicians of the country to achieve their goal based on the language divide. English was out of the school in the primary school and introduced only from class six. Almost all the state government followed the same principle and English medium education remained isolated in few of the public, central, private and convent schools and the colleges.

Although, even in isolation, the worst English medium schools and colleges were considered better in education standard than so called good government schools and colleges. Most of the government schools and colleges deteriorated over the years because of lack of willingness of the teachers to provide good education. Yet, most of the IITians, IIM’s aluminous had government school education. However, they are again handful in sheer number who can hold few of the top positions in government and in the private jobs.

Whereas on an average, who can steer the main work of the corporate sectors and government sector, the convent and public school educated youths were always in demand because of the English language skills. Though we say that Hindi is our national language, English remained our official language because of the regional divide and lack of common will to make Hindi the national language in true sense and spirit. It lacked the political will to do so and because of that English survive the onslaught. Good that English survived the step motherly treatment.

Many of the so-called nationalist and pseudo nationalist might term me the anti nationalist in terms of the praise and importance I am showering for a foreign language. That too, this is called our oppressor’s language. And love for this language is clearly a sin in terms of the love for the nation. But if it is so, all the politician’s sons and daughters are the bigger sinner than me. They all have got educated in English medium.

Once while doing my post graduation, one of my teacher very clearly and forcibly had stressed upon that if you want to get something good out of your life, learn to speak and write good English. It was an advice, but off course it was a requirement for me. I studied from government school that too half of my schooling was done in the hinterland background and coping up to know English well was a major challenge for me. Well, over the years, I have grown and learnt English as days passes. Every day is a day of learning for me. And today because of English I am able to feed my family and myself. Kudos to English, which is sustaining my life.

The globalization has thrown open the door of opportunity and it is this language, which can help any one who wants to be successful. The global language, which can get you to the top, is none other than English. In past one decade the jobs, which are outsourced to India and to the Indians, are because of its English knowing talent pool. In future also more jobs will be offered to Indians because of their English communication skills. This is the fact and it is going to stay. Whether government believes it or not, without English our future is going to be ruined. It is no more the language of class. It is the language of mass. The better we know, the better we are equipped for the job.

Sensing the scenario, now even the common man thinks of sending their children to English medium schools. More CBSE, ICSE English medium private schools are coming up and these are no doubt attracting the crowd. The government schools are facing stiff competition. Especially in Kerala and Karnataka the government schools are the last resort. Other states also following them though bit slowly. People have lost faith in corrupt politicians who have kept the people aloof from the opportunity and now in this age of globalization they do not want their children to miss the opportunity what they might have missed because of not knowing English.

I wish good luck to the people for their wisdom of understanding the change and taking appropriate steps for the future of their children.

Problem and prospect of being in Technical Writing

I must tell the truth that I didn’t jump into technical writing because I love it. It will not be appropriate even to say that I knew the truth about technical writing before joining the job. In fact, before landing in technical writing career, I had gone through some of the articles published on the net which gives little insight about the job. The transition from my writing career to technical writing was consciously based on the pay cheque it offered. The organization, which hired me first for the job saw the potential of I becoming a successful technical writer. Whereas, I was not very sure of myself, whether I could make good use of my writing skills for the hired role.

Lot of questions kept haunting my mind till I joined the job. Well, first month passed smoothly attending different trainings and analyzing role and work. Job was much easier for me than I had expected to be. And it was not the place where I had to demonstrate the art of writing for attracting my readers and add value to increase volume of sales for the periodicals, as I worked for in the past years. The work is to write simple, grammatical error free English, following the style guidelines for the content structure and formatting. Obviously, it is more of a mechanical job than writing per-se.

Now that I am a technical writer I often wonder what could be the road map of technical writing in the future and to gather some of the free information available on the net I came across an article written by Joann T Hackos, Fellow, Rocky Mountain Chapter, STC, titled, “Trends for 2000: Moving Beyond the Cottage”, which meticulously looks into the problem and prospects of industry in which the technical writers are employed. The writer precisely quotes the transition of technical writing from a cottage industry to a global business. I find it worth to summarize the concept and central idea of the article for the benefit of my fellow technical writers.

Cottage industry employees craftsmen and artisans who work in the small groups or independently and the arts and craftsmanship is an individual skills rather than a trait, which can be taught and people can be trained hands-on. Similar situation presently works even for the technical writing, where the technical writers work in small groups or independently on some products. Undoubtedly, the reflection of the their writing is the reflection of individual craftsmanship in their documents. Further to analyze the individual craftsmanship in writing, the article digs into some of the glaring problem the technical writers face.

Pressure to keep staffing low results in too few technical communicators to allow everyone to craft individual books and help files. Because of limitations on hiring and restrictions on number of personnel, organizations have entrusted some of their needs for additional people during peak periods by hiring contractors. The use of technical writer contractors will continue. However, at present, the industry is experiencing an increase in the number of permanent positions that companies hope to fill because of high and continued long-term demand for technical communication. In the current high-growth economy, the trend toward more in-house positions should continue, but the need for short-term contractors will also remain high.

Many technical communicators complain about the number of tools they have to learn. Unfortunately, there is no rest. The delivery technologies that are available to us continue to change and continue to display a frustrating lack of standards. Everything works differently everywhere. As a result, there is an increase in the number of organizations using production specialists to handle the technologies of final delivery to customers. Not only has the diversity of delivery methods contributed to increasing specialization, but also ignoring the importance of good content development. In an ideal situation, more than 75 percent of an individual communicator’s time is taken up by page design and final page production. Less than 25 percent of the time is devoted to user analysis and content development.

The need to interact with the engineering or programming teams often precludes working at home for long periods. In fact, there will be a decrease in opportunities for large-scale telecommuting because of the increasing use of information databases and the need for information reuse. Technical communicators who need to work closely with marketing, support, development, and consulting team members to better understand customers cannot be “home alone.”

Product-development schedules that are getting shorter and shorter in response to competitive pressures mean that our organizations need to find ways to eliminate process steps or decrease the amount of time we take to perform them. The simplest way to do so is through technology. Many departments have learned that, if we can automate production steps through technology, we can shorten cycle time without risking quality.

The need to help customers adopt our products to their industries means technical communicators must take responsibility for gaining domain and customer knowledge in addition to understanding the technology. At present, many technical communicators work closely with developers to understand the product and capture product specifications. In increasingly conservative markets, we have new roles to play, showing customers how products will affect their work. In other words, users don’t necessarily want to know what the product can do; they want to know how to do what they want to do.

Except for a few holdouts and a few organizations that are sensitive to customers’ needs for paper, we have experienced a complete transition to electronic delivery. Most of that delivery, however, has taken the form of book files saved as PDFs onto CD-ROMs or Websites. Cost savings rather than utility are still driving electronic delivery. This can be counter-productive, especially in global markets where Web access is not ubiquitous.

The dramatic increase in interest in single sourcing and documentation databases represents recognition that the cost savings from electronic delivery of information have already been achieved. Organizations are looking for additional means to reduce costs: information reuse, dynamic updating, decreased production times, decreased development times as a result of standardization, and so on. That means a reorganization of the technical writer’s environment. No longer technical writers work independently, responsible for crafting whole books. We need to work as teams, with some members responsible for technical content, some for customer requirements, and others for design and innovation.

The demand for skilled designers, knowledgeable about user needs and design issues; to participate on product design teams is already very high in innovative companies. This evolving role requires people who have learned a lot about design, work well in a cross-functional environment and are willing and eager to keep learning. People who do well in this heady atmosphere tend not to be typical technical writers.

Taking Business Perspective, it should be obvious that we take a strong business perspective on our future in technical communication. If we most value individual craftsmanship, there will be places where our skills will continue to be welcome. But we may well be missing out on the major paradigm shift and the greatest challenges we face. The choice is naturally ours