OnApril 20, 2017, the first session of the third MTI “Language Service and ModernSocial Life” salon was held in room A310 of the College of Foreign Studies. Thetopic of this salon session was “Technical Communication”. Georgia StateUniversity Professors BaotongGu and George Pullman, along with Southeast University’s MTIdirector Professor Qing Guo, senior corporate technical communication engineer,Jiannong Zhang, and Shanghai DC’s technology architect, Lei Fan, all attended.Experts and teachers from Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing University ofAeronautics and Astronautics, and Jincheng College participated in discussionswith MTI students and teachers from our college. The salon was hosted byAssociate Professor Yeping Qian and featured a dialogue between corporationsand institutions of higher education on the establishment of technicalcommunication courses.
Firstly, our college’s associatedirector, Professor Xinyu Cao, delivered a welcome address. Georgia StateUniversity’s Professor Baotong Gu and George Pullman gave a presentation titled“A Technical Writer’s Technical Specifications”, which summarized the requirementsof TC writing development from a higher education perspective centered on theanalysis of corporate expectations of technical communication personnel, basedon the demands of over one hundred job recruitment postings. Shanghai DC’s LeiFan delivered a presentation titled “Technical Writer Competence Models”. Basedon survey data from Acrolinx and LinkedIn, the presentation explained the skilldemands and information architecture workflow of technical communicationwriters. Jiannong Zhang is a senior technical communication engineer with overten years of professional experience. His presentation, titled “TW Competenceand Development”, introduced the experience derived from over decades oftechnical communication training for marketing and product descriptions at Huaweiand provided relevant lessons that could be used for future talent developmentin higher academia. Southeast University’s Director Qing Guo not onlyintroduced the experience derived from running the academic collaborationbetween Southeast University’s MTI program and Germany’s Tekom, but alsoexplained the state of the courses currently offered. After the presentations,students engaged the expert panel in passionate discussion of relevant topics.Associate Director Xinyu Cao gave a summary of the expected requirements oftechnical communication writers, how to become an outstanding technicalcommunication writer, and the appropriate demands of the talent developmentprocess.
With the consistent progression ofglobalization and the “Going Out” Chinese corporate strategy, the demands that domesticcorporations place on technical communication talent are constantly growing. Ledby industry trends, Chinese institutes of higher education have actively takenon the social responsibility of developing relevant talent through theestablishment of technical communication courses. Our university’s MTI major inboth 2016 and 2017 offered “Technical Text Writing” courses and will blendtechnical communication, translation, and localization together to improve thepracticality and employability our university’s translation master’s degreeprograms in the future.
