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Global Training Call for Papers

September 5th, 2010

Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization
Call for Papers: Special Issue
Navigating the Global Training Terrain: New Literacies, Competencies, and Practices
To be published in Fall 2011
Proposals (up to 500 words) for research papers, short best practices pieces (requirements detailed below), and tutorials are due by October 10th, 2010. Submission details follow the statement of purpose and scope.

Statement of Purpose and Scope

The pool of research on training for global audiences is limited, especially within the field of professional communication. A special issue of the Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization seeks to address this need by providing a space for scholarly research and best practices on the topic of global organizational training. The issue, entitled Navigating the Global Training Terrain: New Literacies, Competencies, and Practices, will focus on training in global contexts from the perspective of both those who train and those who learn, including current research and best practices. The special issue will also cast an eye toward organizational training as it is evolving towards the future.

Training is vital to the success of globally connected organizations and individuals, but success requires the trainers’ effective bridging of linguistic, cultural, and social distances. Only teams and individuals with facility in navigating diverse languages, cultures, technologies, educational practices, and rhetorical traditions will be able to successfully provide training to global audiences.

Professional communicators, whose discipline claims expertise in several areas relevant to training—including oral, written, and visual rhetoric, usability, information architecture, electronic collaboration, intercultural communication, and collaboration with translators—are well positioned to contribute to global training efforts or take on the role of trainers themselves.
The editors of the special issue welcome submissions from a variety of perspectives including business, science, humanitarian practice, health, social advocacy, education, and government.

Possible topics pertaining to the theory, teaching, and practice of training in global contexts include the following, among others:

  • Intercultural considerations in the design and delivery of training
  • Training and the social web
  • Cultural intelligence for trainers and training audiences
  • Language use and translation in training contexts
  • Meta-communication and training
  • Communities of practice
  • Legal issues in global training
  • Economic aspects of global training
  • Assessment of global training
  • Training from a distance

Submission Details

Review criteria can be found on the Journal’s website at www.rpcg.org. Proposals should be sent as an email attachment to one of the guest editors of the special issue:
Pam Brewer, Appalachian State University: brewerpe@appstate.edu
Jim Melton, Central Michigan University: james.melton@cmich.edu
Joo-Seng Tan, Nanyang Technological University: ajstan@ntu.edu.sg

Production Schedule
The schedule for the special issue is as follows:
10 October 2010 — 500-word proposals due
15 October 2010 – Guest editors return proposal decisions to submitters
10 January 2011 – Draft manuscripts of accepted proposals due
1 July 2011 — Final manuscripts due
September 2011 — Publication date of special issue

Requirements for best practices
We strongly encourage practitioners to submit best practices pieces on any of the topics identified in this CFP or on related topics. Best practices describe the training strategies, approaches, or methods that work in a particular situation or environment. What has worked and why? What has not worked so well, and what could work better? Authors may use the following optional framework for best practices pieces: title, description, methods used, results, technologies used, and lessons learned. While the proposal and review process is the same for research papers, tutorials, and best practices pieces, final manuscripts for best practices should be shorter: approximately 1000 to 3000 words in length.

About the Journal
The Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication and Globalization publishes articles on the theory, practice, and teaching of technical and professional communication in critical global and intercultural contexts such as business, manufacturing, environment, information technology, and others. As a global initiative, the Journal welcomes manuscripts with diverse approaches and contexts of research, but manuscripts are to be submitted in English and grounded in relevant theory and appropriate research methods. The Journal is peer reviewed with an editorial board consisting of experienced researchers and practitioners from over 20 countries.

The Journal is free or “open access,” using PKP open source software and housed at East Carolina University. The first edition is planned for September 2010, and it will be published thereafter on a quarterly basis. For more information, see http://www.rpcg.org.

Tech Comm News

UN asking for E-Learning course proposal

July 1st, 2010

Here is a link to an RFP regarding an e-learning course that needs to be delivered in English/French for the UN.

http://www.unhcr.org/4c18df679.html

Tech Comm News

Call for Contributors: Negotiating International and Cross-Cultural Technical Communication: Stories of Technical Communicators

May 24th, 2010

Summary

Story proposals of 300 words are requested for an upcoming collection Negotiating International and Cross-Cultural Technical Communication: Stories of Technical Communicators. This collection is designed for technical communicators to tell their stories working in international and cross-cultural contexts, working for and with clients and colleagues from diverse cultural backgrounds, or writing and designing for audience from diverse cultural backgrounds. The goal is for contributors to share their experiences and lessons-learned, to inform and educate fellow practitioners, and to demonstrate their value-add to employers and clients. Submissions that meet the scope of the collection will be followed up for full-length stories.

Themes (See Writers’ Guidelines, also, below)

The editors welcome a wide range of stories from technical communicators who work within or outside the U.S. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
* Working as technical communicators outside of U.S.
* Non-U.S. technical communicators writing or designing for clients or audiences outside of the communicators’ own countries or cultures
* U.S. technical communicators working with clients, subject matter experts, writers, or editors from various nations or various cultural backgrounds within the U.S.
* U.S. technical communicators writing or designing for audiences from various nations or various cultural backgrounds within the U.S.
* Coordinating or managing technical communication projects that span national or cultural borders
* Involvement in outsourcing, translation, localization, or globalization projects
* International and cross-cultural stories from various technical communication fields such as business communication, science writing, engineering writing, medical writing, nonprofit organizations or NGOs, government writing, usability testing, technical translation, etc.

Payment for Contributors

Contributors will receive a free copy of the book and book royalty shares. Specific amount of the share will be determined when a book contract is finalized with the publisher.

What to Submit Now
* Story synopsis (300 words)
* Biographical note (150 words)

How To Submit

Email submissions to both:

Timelines

* Submission of story synopsis and biographical note: July 31, 2010
* Notice of synopsis acceptance: August 31, 2010
* Submission of 1st draft full-length story: November 30, 2010
* Notice of draft acceptance: January 31, 2011
* Submission of final draft full-length story: June 30, 2011 Read more…

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Localization World to be Held in October

May 10th, 2010

A Localization World conference will be held October 6-8, 2010 at the Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle, Washington. For details visit  http://www.localizationworld.com/

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EuroIA 2010 Call for Papers Open

May 5th, 2010

The call for papers for EuroIA 2010, Paris, France, September 23-25  is open at www.euroia.org. The deadline is May 16.

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Seminar on Localization Basics

April 22nd, 2010

If you are new to localization, you may want to join SimulTrans for the “Introduction to Localization” webinar on Tuesday, April 27 or Thursday, May 19. 

This is an educational event. Details are:

SimulTrans Webinar – Introduction to Localization
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
2 p.m. EDT / 1 p.m. CDT / Noon MDT / 11 a.m. PDT
OR
Thursday, May 19, 2010
4 p.m. EDT / 3 p.m. CDT / 2 p.m. MDT / 1 p.m. PDT 
Free of charge   
Register at http://www.simultrans.com/register.cfm 
Contact: SimulTrans
education@simultrans.com
+1-512-670-8988 

Description: Introduction to Localization
This session addresses the basics:

  • What is all this “-zation” language?
  • How should you prepare a localization kit and request a proposal? 
  • What factors should you consider in choosing a localization partner?
  • How long does localization take? How much does it cost?
  •  How can you ensure high linguistic quality?
  • What are translation memory tools?

Presenter
Adam Jones, Chief Operating Officer, SimulTrans

Adam oversees SimulTrans’ worldwide operations, including project management, translation, engineering, testing, multilingual publishing, account management, and marketing. Adam has spent over 16 years directing the company’s customer outreach efforts, internal production groups, and other operations. He regularly gives training presentations at conferences of the Society for Technical Communications, the American Translators Association, the Software & Information Industry Association, and other groups. Adam previously worked as an International Strategic Account Specialist at Oracle Corporation and a high school English teacher.  He holds a B.A. and M.A. from Stanford University, in Public Policy and Education.  

To learn more about the company, visit SimulTrans’ website at http://www.simultrans.com.

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Translation in China as a Form of Technical Communication: Rethinking Social Roles of Technical Communication in the Current Political and Economic Contexts in China

April 20th, 2010

This is a thesis for a Masters student, Kang Sun, from Bowling Green.  The abstract reads, in part: “This thesis identifies Chinese university situations specific to the transfer of technical communication to China, especially the relationship between general socio-economic settings in China and the influences these general settings have on the university disciplinary structure changes. The objective of this research is to reveal openings in translation discipline as a shell for technical communciation to merge with. [clip]. It is concluded that the merger of technical communication with translation can both gain technical communication a pivotal status of being a discipline in Chinese universities and solve some problems of the translation field. More importantly, such a merger offers a future-oriented perspective of development for the merged discipline to ride more successfully the stablly growing Chinese economic growth.

Full text via PDF:  http://etd.ohiolink.edu/send-pdf.cgi/SUN%20KANG.pdf?bgsu1122304773

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2010 Content Strategy Forum Covered by Huffington Post

April 17th, 2010

Be sure to read the article in the Huffington Post about the STC France Chapter’s Content Strategy Forum, held in collaboration with the TransAlpine Chapter and the Europe SIG. Developments in content strategy are also featured.

STC News, Tech Comm News ,

Accessibility Worldwide

April 12th, 2010

Bridging the Barriers was the theme of a conference on accessiblity in the workplace, including accessible technology, held in February, 2010 in New Delhi, India. This was the second Techshare Conference hosted by Barrier Break Technologies in conjunction with The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) of the United Kingdom.

The Phillipines and Korea have national web accessibilty guidelines based on the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) of the  World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

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Queensland Tech Writer Meeting on May 10

April 8th, 2010

The next Queensland (Australia) Tech Writer meeting will be held in Brisbane, Australia at 5:30 PM on May 10.  Details are posted on the Australian Society for Technical Communication site.

Tech Comm News

TCeurope Colloquium 2010

March 30th, 2010

TC europe, the organisation representing national technical communication associations in Europe, invites you to its Colloquium 2010.

This year, to offer maximum benefit for technical communicators in Europe, the TCeurope Colloquium A new decade for technical communication: 2010 and beyond is scheduled to follow the STC’s Content Stragety Forum 2010 in Paris in April, creating a unique double event.

TCeurope’s program brings together experts from many countries in Europe to present a broad range of stimulating topics for today’s technical communicators. Speakers include Paul Strickland from the European Commission and Michel Lanque from Alcatel.

Subjects include:

  • E-collaboration
  • A European Commission case study on clear writing
  • Writing English for non-native speakers
  • Preparing for the future of the profession
  • New applications and methodologies
  • More…

Anyone interested in technical or business communication, including professionals, students, teachers, and translators, is welcome to attend. 

Saturday 17 April, 2010 from 09.15 to 17.00
FIAP Jean Monnet, 30 rue Cabanis, 75014 Paris

For more information, send a message to colloquium@tceurope.org. Register online for FREE admission: http://www.tceurope.org/index.php/colloquium/25-2010.html

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GALA Webinar Schedule for April Published

March 26th, 2010

The Globalization and Localization Association, GALA, has published its full April, 2010 schedule of webinars. Topics covered are:

  • Taking Stock of Your Business
  • Global Sight Overview and Demonstration
  • Effective Localization Workforce Management
  • Plunet BusinessManager Version 5.0

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Employment Opportunities in Localization

March 26th, 2010

LocalizationCareers.net is an employment site focused on jobs in the localization industry. You can post jobs, post your resume, and browse jobs anonymously.

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Space-x Information Design Forum in October in Vienna

March 20th, 2010

Space-x, An Exchange Forum on Information Design for Visually Impaired People, will be held on October 25-26, 2010 in Vienna, Austria.

The forum will investigate the contribution of information design to make space more accessible and enjoyable for visually impaired people. This  design approach must fulfill the requirements of functionality but at  the same time, space-x introduces the aspect of aesthetics in barriere-free  design. The experience of public space, private space, work environment space, public transport space and sports spce will be approached from an intercultural East-West perspective.

This  is an exchange forum in cooperation with the Austrian Relief Organisation for Visually Impaired and the Japan Sign Design Association.

CALL FOR PAPERS ** DEADLINE: April 19 2010.

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Houston Technical Writer’s Time in India

March 20th, 2010

Houston technical writer Jamie West recently spent time working in India. Read about Jamie’s adventure in the March postings of Dateline Houston.

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