This article discusses the largest and most complex international learning-by-doing project to date—a project involving translation from Danish and Dutch into English and editing into American English alongside a project involving writing, usability testing, and translation from English into Dutch and into French. The complexity of the undertaking proved to be a central element in the students' learning, as the collaboration closely resembles the complexity of international documentation workplaces of language service providers.

Do programs in technical communication thrive when administered in English departments or in other configurations of administrative units? This article examines the variations in professional, technical, and scientific communication programs at four universities across the north central U.S. The first three programs have histories that led them to be housed at increasing distances from their universities' English departments. The fourth is a nascent program emerging in its university's English department.

The global marketplace and the Information Age have combined to extend documentation across national borders. To date, however, few programs in scientific and technical communication have taken steps to accustom their students to the translation procedures they must undertake and the mind-set they must adopt to ready documents for translation. This article argues that technical communication courses, particularly introductory courses in technical writing, must include a translation component if they are to prepare students for the kind of work they are now likely to encounter as technical communicators.

Preview this article: Words Make a Difference: The Effects of Greco-Latinate and Anglo-Saxon Lexical variation on College Writing Instructors, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/rte/30/2/researchintheteachingofenglish15324-1.gif