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Technical Writing Tips for Non-Native English Speakers

Vitor Paladini on July 29, 2020

I was born in Brazil so naturally I wrote my first articles and blog posts in Portuguese. Back then, the idea of being able to write a complete a...

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cromatikap • Aug 5 '20

I also do the same by searching on Google if a sentence I've made up has been used by other English fellows 😁
A great tool is translate-shell that lets you translate directly from the terminal: github.com/soimort/translate-shell

Daniel Khromov • Aug 5 '20

Hello Vitor! Thank you for the great article! I am also non-English speaker (Russia), so it is really helpful for me :)
In your profile you say that you love cooking. I am a developer, and we’ve created an app called RecipeFinder (Twitter: @RecipeFinderApp). We are just students, and it is our first iOS app that we want to publish in AppStore. Could you check out its demo video in Twitter and give feedback on functionality? Thanks!

Vitor Paladini • Aug 5 '20

Sure! It looks very promising, I can see that you guys are using that fancy new button UI. Where do you get the recipes feed?

Daniel Khromov • Aug 5 '20

Oh, thank you very much! We use Edamam API for recipes. Do you think that application is worth 1$/month subscription? Sooner we’ll add Discover tab, where users will be able to create and discover recipes.

Vitor Paladini • Aug 5 '20

Fantastic. And a really cheap API indeed, let me know when you guys ship an Android version 😄

Daniel Khromov • Aug 5 '20

Ok 👍

Zohar Peled • Jul 29 '20

As a non-native English speaker, that posts regularly in English myself, I've really enjoyed reading your post. I have to say I agree with all your points - and even would like to add a couple:

Use your browser's spelling corrector. It seems so obvious to me so I thought you might have left that out because it's too obvious.
Once I've finished writing my post, but before I publish it, I like to click the preview button - and then copy and paste the content, paragraph by paragraph, to translate.Google.Com - and translate to your native language.
If the translation seems half-decent, you're probably doing something right. As a bonus, a lot of times you'll be able to spot common mistakes like writing "then" instead of "than", "though" instead of "thought" or "through" and stuff like that.

Vitor Paladini • Jul 29 '20

Hey, Zohar. Thanks for your collaboration!

Regarding number 1, I always write in Google Docs first and found that the spell checker there is much better than in the browser, might be some configuration problem on my side though.

Number two is a great suggestion! And with Google Translate you can even make it say your text out loud, that helps you find errors that you could've skipped by simple reading it.

Dan Morrison • Jul 31 '20

Absolutely.
Whatever criticism we can make of auto-translators, if it gets it right twice in a row, that indicates it gets it right the first time!
I always reflect important paragraphs back from my target translation to double-check the meaning was clear. It can even lead to me improving the clarity of the original sentence. So much so that I wish that "translate back again" was a third pane on google translate! Luckily the browser-sized google translate has a one-click reverse translation.

Still, beware of colloquialisms that may survive the round trip. "Smack your ass" still comes back as "smack your ass" => "beat your donkey" => "beat your ass" in many languages.

Mary Dee • Jul 29 '20

"Try not to be too flamboyant, ostentatious or overelaborate." I teach English to non-native speakers and that is really good advice. Some of my learners do great writing but spoil it by over complicating not just the vocabulary but punctuation too. I see lots of over use of commas, semi-colons, and speech marks which makes good text hard to read. Simple is definitely best if you don't have the benefit of a proofreader nearby!

Mohammad Fazel • Jul 30 '20

If you don't mind please check one of my articles and give some advice thank you.

Itachi Uchiha • Jul 30 '20

Thank you for your good advice. I'm a non-native English speaker. Most of the time, I'm a little bit shy about English.

I felt shy because of a comment. dev.to/aligoren/javascript-reposit....

But I didn't stop. Because people can understand whatI'm saying.

Programming is like music. It is universal. I know, the language barrier is hard to do something easily. I'm still looking for friends to make practice in English.

I believe, my English will be good :)

I like your advice about "quote search".

Btw, in Turkey, there are people judging you if your English grammar or pronunciation isn't good.

Thanks :)

Vitor Paladini • Jul 30 '20

Hey, Ali.

Great mindset, man. Turkish language is very different from English and you're still putting in the effort, that is fantastic.

Btw, in Turkey, there are people judging you if your English grammar or pronunciation isn't good.

That also happens around here. Funnily enough non-native speakers can be much more judgemental than natives. 🤷‍♂️

Tomas Fernandez • Jul 30 '20 • Edited

Great article. I use the "quote" tip a lot. My wife is an English teacher, and she proofreads most of my writing, so guess I'm spoiled. It's surprising the amount of errors and suggestions she makes on pieces that I thought were ready to go.

Tools like Grammarly or LanguageTool are godsend. I also found that printing the text also helps a lot during proofreading YMMV.

EDIT: I'm based in Argentina, so message me when you get here if you want :)

André Matias • Jul 29 '20

Cool @vtrpldn , that was a one more gratefull article here.
Your tip that could help me a lot is that:

Try writing down the core idea of your text and how you'll expand it. This will help you anchor down your train of thought and help you focus on that specific subject.

I'm always unsure about write or speakin english with others, some times is because I really overplan my idea, so if I do it more simple, maybe I make me to be understood.

I'm also a brazilian, and I don't have many friends or parents that speak in english, so for improve my knowledment with english I try to do the most activities using english in my days, and it has been working for me.

I've tried a course too, but it has been much boring and I feel that I can learn more using my own methods, like reading, writing and speaking too.

Thanks for that.

Vitor Paladini • Jul 29 '20 • Edited

Hey, André! Glad I could help.

English classes also didn't worked well for me. What really worked was listening to podcasts, watching tv shows with subtitles and reading articles on subjects that I'm already familiar.

Hit me up on twitter @paladini_dev if you need to practice sometime 🙂

Amruta Ranade • Aug 17 '20

Thank you for the incredible article! I found it so helpful, I made an entire video about it: youtu.be/J-HvCPaCLj0

Hope that's okay!

Vitor Paladini • Aug 17 '20

Whaaat 🤯

That's more than okay, Amruta, that's fantastic! Thank you very much, I'm super happy now 😄😄😄

Amruta Ranade • Aug 17 '20

Thank you!!!

Vitor Paladini • Aug 17 '20

Also, I'm super biased but I really liked the video. Great job!

Amruta Ranade • Aug 17 '20

Oh, I am so glad to hear that!!

Martin Belev • Jul 30 '20

I like the “Overcome the mental barrier” because I was in such a situation and it is pretty important.

The other one is “Simple is best”. If it is possible to explain the topic in very simple terms, this means for me that the understanding of the topic is pretty good.

Sergei Boishtian • Aug 12 '20

Thank you for the article. I expected more about non-native but got how to start.
I consider that article would be better if it had a title that mirrors the content.
So I would give your article name: "Technical writing tips for beginners" or something similar.
Because:

'Overcome the mental barrier' doesn't relate to non-native nature. You have barriers even when you native. But they are different
'Your first paragraphs will suck' doesn't relate to non-native nature. We all sucking when start something new. etc.

Cezar Augusto • Jul 29 '20

Love it! I like your writing style. Do you consider sharing it with a broader audience? Diverse communities such as FreeCodeCamp would benefit from this knowledge, in my opinion.

Julia 👩🏻‍💻 GDE • Aug 26 '22

These are pretty neat tips! 💯

I am doing your „write first correct later“ approach for quite a while, and it keeps me staying productive and motivated when writing blog posts.

I use deepl (free version) and I think it is a very good tool to fix my grammar or vocabulary issues.

(Not using it for comments though, so please be patient 😜)

Peter Mortensen • Jul 14 '21 • Edited

There are a lot of run-on sentences in this article. You may want to look into it and correct them. A guide is in Copy-editing essentials. One example: "The same applies to any skill you'll want to develop, learning goes hand in hand with repetition."

Also:
grammarly correct → grammatically correct

Matt Curcio • Jun 14 '21 • Edited

Write first, correct later

Absolutely, my friend the reporter says you have to get the ideas/story out first, then go back.
He says, don't try to craft every sentence to death one sentence at a time. It will take too long and you risk getting tired of it.

My favorite word is onomatopoeia ;D

Maxim Zhukov • Jul 31 '20 • Edited

Remember that your goal is to transfer your knowledge to an audience, so try and make it as easy as possible for them.

Writing is not about showing how much you know or conveying your ideas to an audience. It's about changing ideas of your audience and the amount of value you can bring in to the community. Nobody cares what ideas you actually have.

youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM