Technical communication and cross cultural miscommunication: usability and the outsourcing of writing

Writing is a culturally situated activity. When writing is outsourced to other cultures, because of a lack of knowledge of the users´ culture and also because of influences from the writer´s local culture, those doing the writing and designing, despite various strategies adopted for overcoming the disadvantage of not knowing the users´ culture, may not know how to culturally situate writing. It is, therefore, important that bicultural people, who know the users´ culture, as well as the culture of those doing the outsourced work, give writing teams feedback about the users´ culture. Doing so can make outsourced writing more culturally situated.