Technical communication in China : studies on the user experience of technical documentation

Abstract

Conducting global technical communication requires strong language and communication skills, especially in English and other widely spoken languages.According to our findings, 62% of participants employed two or more languages in their daily work. English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish are the most used foreign languages. 38% engaged in only one language, either Chinese or English. Geographic locationParticipants' workplaces were distributed in 13 provinces and municipalities (or 20 cities) of China's 34 provincial-level administrative regions. Two thirds of technical communicators lived in three cities: Beijing (26%), Shanghai (25%), and Shenzhen (15%). 90% of participants worked in China's eastern and southern coastal region, which is the most economically developed area in comparison to the country's central, western, and northeast regions. All 20 cities are municipalities, provincial capitals, or other big cities with thriving economies, diverse workforces, and high wages. Professional experience and work practiceWe studied participants' past and present practices of technical communication in the following aspects. Previous professionHalf of the participants (54%) began working in this field soon after graduating from college or graduate school. In other words, technical communicators were half of practitioners' first jobs. Among people who switched to technical communication from another field, we see a strong connection between their prior and current jobs. Engineers and translators ranked second (19%) and third (15%), respectively, as the most likely previous jobs. Other previous jobs include management and marketing specialists, product trainers, editors, consultants, English teachers, etc. It shows that most people's previous professions required dealing with various aspects of enterprise products or services, such as design, management, training, and document translation and editing, making the transition to technical communication easy.