The World Beyond Our Door. (EDITORIAL).

A glance at the cover and table of contents of this issue makes A clear that technical communication is becoming an increasingly global enterprise. Although a world that is increasingly without borders may frighten some, it offers technical communicators everywhere plenty of opportunity to learn,

LEARNING ABOUT DIFFERENCES

Although it may be obvious, the most important lesson a traveler learns is that other places are different from home. We confront different languages, customs, foods, and expectations. We need to be prepared for these differences and accept them to be happy in our travels. Four of the articles in this issue drive home the theme that those visiting or living in another country need to understand the culture as well as the very practical realities of everyday life.

Filipp Sapienza's "Nurturing translocal communication: Russian immigrants on the World Wide Web" shows how those who are new to a country can use the Web to help them adjust to life in a strange land and cope with the challenges that being an immigrant poses. It also demonstrates how this technology can soothe the anxieties that being far from home can cause.

William and Betty Coggin's "So you want to work in China" describes at length just how different life and work are in China compared with what we in the West are accustomed to. Their detailed introduction to the Chinese concepts of guanxi (network of relationships) and mianzi (face), their explorations of Chinese distinctions between public and private space and behavior, and their description of Chinese courtesy and etiquette will be invaluable to anyone planning to travel to the People's Republic of China or to work with companies located there.

The articles by Carol Barnum and her colleagues ("Globalizing technical communication: A field report from China") and by Daniel Ding and John Jablonski ("Challenges and opportunities: Two weeks of teaching technical communication at Suzhou University, China") provide practical insights into the many differences between China and the West. They also point up the facts that technical communication is understood and practiced very differently in China than it is today in the West and that we need to learn about these differences and adjust our expectations accordingly.

These two articles describe at length the differences in pedagogical philosophy and methods between China and the West, and their impact on exchanges such as those the articles describe. Another area that the two articles consider in less detail is how differences between Western and Chinese rhetoric and document design shape technical communication within China today, and how they will affect Chinese attempts to communicate about technology with the West, and vice versa. We know almost nothing about the rhetoric of information products written in Chinese today and very little about the design of technical documents in Chinese. There is still much for us to learn.

SHARING KNOWLEDGE

Both Barnum and her colleagues and Ding and Jablonski describe experiences in which they shared with Chinese faculty and students some of the insights about communicating technical information to a variety of audiences that we in the West have developed during the past 50 years. The Chinese who participated in their programs, however, were teachers and students of English, and the Western visitors' goals weren't always aligned with the goals of the Chinese participants.

It isn't surprising that the Chinese often seemed more interested in the English language than they were in what we in the West consider the essentials of technical communication. From their perspective, the vast differences in grammar, syntax, pronunciation, and orthography between Chinese and English probably make considerations of purpose, audience, and organization seem much less significant to the Chinese than they do to us, or at least make them seem to be of less immediate concern.

Nevertheless, this sharing is important because for China to become fully integrated into the world economy, the Chinese must first understand Western consumers' expectations about information products and then learn to meet them. I think that for this sharing to continue and advance at the needed pace, many more visits such as those described in this issue must take place, not only of Westerners to China but of Chinese to the West. It also seems clear that it is in the interest of both the Chinese and Westerners to recognize that instruction in English is at least as important at this point as what Westerners can share about the concepts and methods of technical communication. Millions of Chinese will need advanced English language skills if China is to deal successfully in the world marketplace.

I've heard that in some places in China, conversational English courses are taught in soccer stadiums, with thousands of students repeating the words, phrases, and sentences they hear spoken over loud speakers. Whether that story is factual or not, it rings true. If the Chinese are hungry to learn about technical communication as it is practiced in the West (to paraphrase the title of an article by Sam Dragga and his colleagues published in this journal in February 1999), they are starving to learn English. Those who wish to teach technical communication in China or to work with Chinese companies on technical communication projects would probably do well to acquire some knowledge about teaching English as a second language. Even if they don't actually teach the English language to Chinese, the insights gained from such knowledge could prove invaluable in a variety of ways.

GROWING IN SOPHISTICATION

Despite our travels and our immigrant roots, we in the U.S. are often rather unsophisticated when it comes to dealing with the world beyond our door. We have a reputation for expecting that the rest of the world should be just like our own country. Whether as tourists or business travelers, some of us would not consider staying at a hotel that doesn't meet the standards we have come to expect when traveling in our own country, and we often expect those in other countries to speak English, though Japanese or German tourists in the U.S. would be hard-pressed to find someone who speaks their language in most restaurants or shops. The "ugly American" stereotype is, unfortunately, all too apt when many of us travel or do business abroad. Articles like those in this issue can do much to help us avoid those problems by building awareness of differences and sensitivity toward dealing with them.

Just as the Chinese need to learn English to do business with us in the West, we need to learn Chinese to do business with them, but how many of our secondary schools and universities offer courses in Chinese? I'd wager that in the U.S., anyway, the answer is very few. It's probably too late for the current generation of technical communicators and other business people to become fluent speakers of Mandarin, but what about our daughters and sons? The importance of Chinese language skills will only grow in the coming years, as China becomes more and more a partner in global business. We and our children need to learn their language as much as they need to learn ours.

Similarly, we need to learn enough about Chinese society, culture, history, and politics to be comfortable in our travels and our personal interactions in China. Most of us know little about the country and its people, and most of what we do know we have learned through Western points of view. The articles in this issue provide an excellent first step, but we can't stop there.

A world without political and economic borders frightens some people. Those people seem to be mostly concerned with how to tell the difference between "them" and "us" when the borders disappear. The answer, of course, is that differences will remain, at least in the short term. The languages and cultures of Europe that have developed over more than a thousand years don't seem in serious danger of disappearing because of the European Union or its single currency. We need to develop the wisdom and sophistication to understand the value of diversity and the opportunity of open markets. We won't become citizens of the world as well as citizens of our home countries overnight, but we certainly need to work at it if we want to succeed and thrive as business becomes increasingly global.

A WELL-DESERVED THANK-YOU

This issue marks the last for which Rita Reaves will serve as editor of the "Recent and relevant" department of Technical communication. For 10 years, since the February 1992 issue, Rita and her enthusiastic group of volunteer monitors have listed and abstracted recent articles in other technical communication journals, as well as articles in publications outside our field considered of interest to those in our profession. The department has made a significant contribution toward a comprehensive bibliography of technical communication. Indeed, "Recent and relevant" and the "Books received" section of this journal's "Book reviews" are the most current sources of information about work being done in technical communication.

As Rita leaves the journal staff, I want to express my appreciation and gratitude for the timeliness, dependability, and consistently high quality of her work.

Sherry Southard, Rita's colleague at East Carolina University, will assume the editorship of "Recent and relevant" beginning with the February 2002 issue.