back to the salt mines

[redbird]

There was a revised, and expanded, manuscript chunk waiting for me this morning.

I've asked my contact how many revisions they get before we raise the fee for this; he thanked me for talking to him instead of directly to them, and said he'll see what he can do. I've also (in a later message) asked him for a revised schedule, one that incorporates revision cycles if we're going to have them.

Part of the problem is they don't seem to like "we have [verb]ed" twice in the same paragraph, or even repetition of "we". This for a report that is in the voice of an organization, about what the organization is doing. They haven't actually said so, but I think this means more stuff goes in the passive.

Comments

[webbob.livejournal.com]

You might try conveying to the original authors that it is usual in American business writing to emphasize and reinforce the active role and identity of a company's management through use of the first person and active voice. If my understanding of Japanese business practice is accurate, the clients might find too much use of the first person inappropriately boastful and pushy.

You might get away with more "our company," "our company's executive committee," and less "we," at a guess. Praise for the whole group the authors are part of in the third person might be more acceptable than first person self-praise.

That same vague understanding would also have said that contacting the end customer directly other than through the exchange of work would be less effective than using your contact. The person sending and receiving work might deal with your local person only through a higher-up, and might even be disturbed if you tried to bypass formal channels.

[redbird]

It's a little weird: I exchange email consisting mostly of "here is another attachment" with someone at the company. And she's leaving me lots of annotations in the Microsoft Word document, including the ones where she tells me to not reuse phrasing and such. (We who read Fowler at an impressionable age call this "elegant variation", a name that has the advantage of not being an obvious putdown: "elegant" is good, right?)

I'll try "the company" and "[companyname] has" and such in the next piece, I think.

[webbob.livejournal.com]

Please let me know how it goes: my Japanese people skills are really stale, but it was always very apparent at meetings between Japanese and Americans that the Japanese style was less directly assertive -- assertions were still there, but they were phrased more like irony or sarcasm than expository prose. Not always nasty, but indirect, referring to earlier parts of the discussion in allusive ways.

Always very careful to avoid giving the appearance of egotism: I was gratified to offer my limited abilities in support of the success of the common goal, and only wish I had been able to do more to surpass expectations. And i think much more likely to genuinely think in terms of success of self through the success of all than Americans or even Canucks.

I wouldn't call that a Japanese characteristic, but it seemed characteristic of most of the Japanese people Japanese corporations allowed to represent them at meetings I participated in.

You might be able to communicate back with your opposite number about technical terms and a common vocabulary and be able to chat about the editorial requirements for these particular elegant variations. Try putting in some very brief Word annotations ("this variation is criticized by Fowler as inelegant on page FOO, because it only lightly disguises inaccurate assignment of the first person" or whatever) to explain why something might be a problem in English prose. Referring to a specific style authority for a standard would be good, since it's easier to yield to a recognized authority than an underling, even for Americans.

The person in charge of sending and receiving e-mail might not be the same person making the annotations, and in any case annotations seem to be the place where editorial decisions are being recorded.