Hi Ottavio,

thanks for sharing these concerns.

With 'native speaker' we mean someone who is absolutely proficient in
English; no matter where they come from or how they obtained these
language skills. The only requirement implicit in that phrasing is
'Speaking English as good as if they never used any other language". Our
team of authors has a great diversity and global distribution (which we are
very proud of!). The main requirement for the authors as well as the
technical reviewers is their technical qualification, not their language
skills. Therefore the English texts have to be reviewed by someone who is
absolutely fluent and proficient in English to not only catch any formal
errors, but also ensure a good readability and appropriate use or jargon in
the texts. I wouldn't consider myself being able to do that, even though I
believe I can somehow get around with my English.

Just because we're asking for this level of language proficiency for this
particular role doesn't mean in any way that we do not welcome any
contributors, i.e. as authors, technical reviewers and translators. In
fact, we're looking for an English reviewer to keep the language burden for
all other roles as low as possible. This is something we're doing for all
translations and all our exams as well.

Sorry if the initial email hurt any feelings, that was never our intention.
If you have a better idea how to phrase our question, please let us know!

Fabian

On Mon, Jan 11, 2021 at 5:15 PM Ottavio Caruso via lpi-examdev <
[email protected]> wrote:

> On Mon, 11 Jan 2021 at 13:47, Dr. Markus Wirtz via lpi-examdev
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >
> > Thus we are looking for people
> >
> [...]
> >
> > 2. who are native English speakers
>
> Please define "native English speakers".
>
> I did raise this issue in private but I have no other choice than go
> public now. I find this requirement particularly annoying and, in my
> country of residence (United Kingdom), considered racist and
> discriminatory.
>
> There are folks around who are not blessed with having been born in a
> former colony of the Great British Empire, yet can speak English at a
> very good level. Besides, I can point out many contributors to LPI
> materials who are definitely not native English speakers, and I'm not
> talking of translators.
>
> Sorry for sounding unnecessarily difficult or argumentative, but I
> think this topic needs addressing.
>
>
> --
> Ottavio Caruso
> _______________________________________________
> lpi-examdev mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://list.lpi.org/mailman/listinfo/lpi-examdev



-- 
Fabian Thorns <[email protected]> GPG: F1426B12
Director of Product Development, Linux Professional Institute
_______________________________________________
lpi-examdev mailing list
[email protected]
https://list.lpi.org/mailman/listinfo/lpi-examdev

Reply via email to