4-99 (December 1999) by Udit Chaudhuri Special Aspects India The Original Article:SA01: Technical Writing in India

(SA 4, TC-Forum 2-99)

I was presented with a copy of the June '99 Issue of TC-Forum by your NCP for India, Mr Guru Kamath. It has made most interesting reading. I would like to share my reactions to the articles in the above Issue.

 

Tech Writing in India

While the recent development of TWIN as a tech writers (TW) group is a valiant attempt at bringing this profession in India together, its list (now over 500) mostly comprises those from the IT industry and very few others who have full-time Internet access. These may be economically the strongest segment of TWs, given the growth of IT exports from India and the consequent shortage of competent personnel. They may also wield some clout, being journalism institute products. However, they are yet to be a fully representative body of this profession.

Beside IT support documentation, marketing (including technical copywriting) and customer servicing, technical communication in India has played an important role in corporate development functions:

• Licencing/approval of new projects. India is a controlled economy to an extent. Detailed techno-economic presentations are required to be made to 'sponsoring' departments and ministries in the Government of India and various state governments according to the type of industry and its proposed location. This type of writing is done by specialists in government liaison. Large companies maintain a Liaison/PR Cell at their Delhi branch while others can avail themselves of consultants to do this work. Persons trained and deputed in-house for this work are a mix of engineers, MBAs and accountants. Their writing involves a thorough understanding of manufacturing/business processes, licensing policy, environmental and labour laws, import/export regulations and, above all, the types of arguments that would gel with the target audience: that is, administrators and technocrats heading regulatory decision-making functions in Government.
• Obtaining input from the Government for new project clearances. These would involve demand projections based on its economic surveys, budgetary allocations for loans and subsidies, sanctions of foreign exchange, infrastructure support like roads, utilities and energy, and tax concessions or exemptions, etc. A licence morally binds the Government into assuring those inputs critical to the viability of the licensee
• Technical knowhow. This is a critical asset, being mostly bought from a foreign collaborator at a large cost or in exchange for a sizeable equity stake. The collaborator who must provide quality assurance and often a Process Guarantee lays down rigorous details for each step of manufacture and imposes quality control regimes. This calls for cataloguing, standardisation, indigenisation or re-adaptation, and control systems for access and issue of all drawings, data-sheets, procedure manuals, databooks, standards, related reference books and periodicals. Here engineers were trained in the relevant documentation techniques.
• Increased Specialisation. Although de-licensing, downsizing and function-crashing have taken their toll, there still must be 500 well-organised technical documentation/standards departments employing 1500 to 2000 specialists in technical communication in all these industries together, excluding design engineers, draughtspersons, and administrators.

There is also a large industrial and technical press with publications ranging from restricted-circulation journals, mostly from manufacturers, which cover technically specialised subjects. They too employ specialists from relevant fields to write and edit. Details on the readership and manpower figures of these journals can be sourced from Indian press directories like that of the IENS - Indian English Newspaper Society; INFA Directory; ISA - Indian Society of Advertisers; and AAAI - Advertising Agencies Association of India.

 

Language Aspects

I am happy to report that earlier I attempted (in a very small way) Mr Gordon Farrington's 'Method of Text Representation' when writing the descriptive chapters in O&M manuals for DC Drives and SCR (RMS Power) Controllers.

In India, not only is English a foreign language but common workmanship terms like spline, through-bore, square cut, shank, inner loop, wire harness and cable dressing are not understood by engineers from one specialisation or another. Another barrier is that OEM buyers and end-users belong to fields as diverse as plastics, metallurgy, and machine tools. Hence one has to introduce the concepts of circuitry rudiments and feedback control, including special units like Rate Programmer, Speed Control Amplifier, Current Control Loop, without using 'technocratese.'

 

Education/Training

Regarding the education and advertising or promotion of technical communication, our engineering courses do contain a module on technical documentation in progressive universities although there is always scope for more in the light of the information age. Here the exam-dominated education system also helps because the engineering student's future depends entirely on the skills of writing answer papers, 'Journals' on lab and workshop assignments besides term papers, and vocational training reports.

My own technical writing skills came to the fore (and to my bosses' attention!) in the early 1980s while I was working in my employer's Corporate Development Group assisting new manufacturing projects, collaborations, agency development, advertising coordination and tendering in a company where every diversification began with foreign-agency-marketing, leading to collaborative research and manufacture. The skills were put to test while on assignment at our Delhi office to follow up/conduct liaison for manufacturing licences, foreign collaboration clearance and (agency customers') import licences, where an application or proposal had to be quickly re-worked on the advice of Government officers in consultation with company bosses. So, encouraged, I followed this up by writing technical articles and later mailers, brochures and manuals. I now practice full time in technical communication.