Recently a friend asked me about my experience in the tech transfer office. In particular she was concerned with the language; English is not our first language. It reminded me of the days before I applied for my internship. After 3 months in the office I would like to share some of my personal experience about the language barrier.
My adventure started with drafting technology briefs, which was the first project I was taught to do. In order to write a good tech brief, I need to know not only the invention itself but also the whole area, so that I can properly position the technology in the market. Therefore, it requires reading a lot of material that is outside my expertise. In addition, tech brief, as the name indicates, is supposed to be succinct but informative, which makes word-choosing very important because every word counts. However, the most difficult part is neither of the above; it is determining whether a scientific term, such as monoclonal antibody, should be considered ‘technical jargon’ or ‘well-accepted common sense.’ This is challenging and it does take time to improve.
After a few tech briefs, I found the best way to learn is to read tech briefs, particularly related briefs. First, related tech briefs demonstrate the writing style in more detail and are tailored to this specific technology. Second, they are ‘gold standards’ to see to what depth the scientific description go. More importantly, they also show the big picture of the subject area. Above all, practice makes perfect and the learning process is very rewarding.
I still remember asking whether my language deficiency would be a disadvantage during the internship interview. The answer I received was: it all depends on your attitude. It turns out that I can’t find a better answer than that.
– Huanyu Zhao