Offshoring: Lost in translation

On the heels of my post on Microsoft's experiences with blogs in China, I saw another China-related item that has been making some waves in the IT world. Offshoring in China vs. offshoring in India. Stan Gibson in eWeek is the latest tech writer to offer an opinion on this issue, in a column entitled "China or bust" (renamed China is next offshore frontier for the online version).

Gibson's column talks about one company's take on hiring out development work to China vs. offshoring in India, and how it thinks China is the Next Big Thing for enterprise software development: China has the talent, costs are low, and the market in India is "rapidly reaching saturation."

But the column doesn't even mention a factor which should be near the top of the list of concerns for any U.S. company considering outsourcing development work overseas: language.  

When the offshoring boom started in 1990s, India was an attractive destination not only because of a huge pool of talented and cheap developers, but also because most developers and project managers speak English. In the U.S. and Canada, developers not only have the right language skills, but also have the cultural and time zone connections that put them at an advantage.

The same cannot be said for China. Yes, there is a great deal of talent, and costs are low in some areas, but the pool of English-speaking project managers and programmers is limited, and no doubt in high demand. Instead of having open and direct communications between all members of an international development team, work-related communications have to be funneled through one or two people who can serve as translators. For some types of development work, this may not be an issue, but I can imagine other development projects which would be impacted with longer timelines, more errors, and at the end of the day, higher costs.