How to Training Japanese Industry Research Students to Write Proper Technical Papers in English
For research Japanese students in industry research laboratories in Japan, writing technical papers and conference abstracts is one of the important activities. When they decide to write, they have already written internal research reports in Japanese intended for managers and engineers in the production divisions. Since they are not taught how to write English technical papers, they try to translate all the sentences in their Japanese manuscript directly into English in a word-for-word fashion using Japanese-English dictionaries.
Then they come to me with their manuscripts asking me to check the English. Unfortunately, their manuscripts written in this “Japanese-English” style are difficult to understand or sometimes are misunderstood by English-speaking engineers because of the following differences in the writing styles.
Japanese students in industry research laboratories have studied English at least eight years, three years at junior high school, three years at senior high school, and two years at college in liberal arts studies. They have been reading a large number of technical papers in English for their research and development. Regarding writing, they have only learned English composition, i.e., they translate Japanese short sentences into English equivalents using Japanese-English dictionaries. Therefore, Japanese industrial engineers can manage the sentence-level grammar and syntax of written technical English.
However, they are much less skillful in managing the design of technical papers on structural levels beyond sentences. They can write technical papers that are composed of correct sentences but fail to connect those sentences into effective patterns of arrangement. Sentences are not logically sequenced and paragraphs lack clear unity and coherence.