Importance of English in Systems Engineering

 This is another of the posts I had written on a blog aimed at those who were starting out in the world of technology...

Because it is important to know how to speak and read English when working on systems. How much is enough to have an acceptable level of English. Here are the answers.

The importance of knowing English in systems

It doesn't matter in the country we live in, if we work in systems, speaking English is one of the most important tools we can count on. The "technical" part of working on systems is easy to learn, and fast.

The reasons for the importance:

• Most of the technology is developed in English-speaking countries.
• Most of the information and books available are in English.
• Certifying a technology requires knowledge of the language.
• The software update is done first for English systems.

The technology comes from English-speaking countries

Most of the technology we work with on day-to-day systems comes mostly from the United States, Canada and to a lesser extent from countries such as England or Israel.

There are other countries that develop technology, but in most cases the headquarters of the companies is English-speaking, so the information, documentation and updates are done in English.

Whether we like the language or not, if we work in IT, we're going to have to learn it.

Most of the information and content is available in English

Searching for information about technology in Spanish is a waste of time. Either no information is available or it is outdated. Trying to get current technology books in our language is impossible, so if we want to stay up to date we will have to speak English.

Although in recent years, with the development of blogs, technological information in Spanish began to develop, there is still a long way to go to be at the level of quantity and quality of what we can find in English.

Just to illustrate this point, I ask how many times you searched for a specific error whose message was in Spanish. In that same case, how many times did you try to translate the error message into English in order to find better results?

For workstations, it's a headache, but searching for error information in server logs can be mission impossible.

Take a certification exam

For the technologies with the greatest presence in the market, such as Microsoft, they have versions of the exams in Spanish, but the truth is that the translations that are made of these exams are truly disastrous.

Sitting down to take an exam and not understanding what we are reading in Spanish from my point of view is worse than taking in a language that is not my native language.

Unless we have an excellent level of knowledge, we will have to prepare the certification with manuals, videos and laboratories that will mostly, obviously, be in English.

We already talked in the blog about the importance of certifications when working on systems. How are we going to prepare for an exam if we don't understand what we're reading?

I saw a lot of people fail exams not because they didn't know about the technology or because they didn't have experience, but simply because they didn't understand what they were being asked while taking it.

The software update is done in English first

The software that comes in Spanish in some cases is a different version than the one we can find in English.

Because the installed software base in English is vastly higher than what we can find in other languages, at the time of developing an update, patch or response to a vulnerability, English software is always prioritized and the rest of the languages have to wait their turn.

In recent years this has changed a lot with the implementation of the MUI (Multingual User Interface) where the translations are not in a different version of the software but in an interface with the language specified in the MUI, but there are still very clear cases.

What level of knowledge is enough?

The level of knowledge we need will depend to a greater or lesser extent on the type of work we are doing at the time of our career. Or wherever we want to go.

For example, if we are preparing for a certification exam, we will need to be able to clearly understand the objectives of the exam. In this link are the objectives and details of the requirements of the Comptia A+ certification.

If we don't understand them, how are we going to be able to sit down and take an exam? Therein lies the answer.

In many cases, we work in companies that have headquarters in other countries whose language is not Spanish or English, but communications, whether face-to-face, by email or telephone, are carried out in English.

If we are working in a position with responsibilities, our English should have business and management nuances, which purely technical English does not have. This is for another post, it's a completely different animal.

Personally, I believe that mastering a language is a key that opens doors, many doors. You never know when you're going to have to use the language tool. I have several stories of people I know who, in difficult moments in their lives, English made things easier for them.