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This article is geared more towards translation but I've found that many of the same principles of translation can be applied when trying to write academically. We are doing nothing more than trying to translate our thoughts and complex ideas and put them into the language of academic writing - usually a foreign language to us. Because I am writing on cultural barriers to academic writing, I thought it would be useful to see how other minds work. In this way we might be more empathetic to our students and it might aid our diagnostics as well. The author, Dirk Siepmann, compares the academic writing of English, French and German. "For a long time the idea has been around that the 'spirit' of a language exerts a formative influence on its speakers and writers" (Siepmann 1). This influence is something that educators need to be aware of when teaching writing. How can you help transition students into a different academic writing culture without making them give up their own? Siepmann also discusses what he refers to as "Intellectual Styles." He calls these the "Saxon", the "Teutonic", the "Gallic" and the "Nipponic". He has derived these terms based on writers' ability to organize thought, target audience, relationship of writer to audience and other criteria. The author also talks about the differences in learning systems and what is expected in those learning systems.

After much searching, I was able to find a book that was written by an educator from England about her varying experiences with excellent writers that had a difficult time adapting their writing style to the expectations the West. Helen Fox, author of "Listening to the World: Cultural Issues in Academic Writing, analyzes the effects of culture and the problems this cultural influence causes when students try to adapt their writing styles and personas to that of Western academia. Problems include; focusing on a group instead of emphasis on self, a mindset geared toward a focus on the past instead of a focus on the future and a circular approach to writing instead of a linear approach. Fox investigates these issues and other cultural effects on the writing process.