A few days ago, I received an email from my teacher :
 

"Chers étudiants,

j'ai reçu un message de mon ami Bruce Maylath. La partie figurant ci-dessous vous concernait.

The last suggestion listed came after the videoconference ended as the last students were leaving the TV studio. The students who wrote instructions for assembling a bicycle and for tuning alpine skis mentioned that they never received any questions from their translation partners. When they asked their partners why, the translators said that they were able to find answers to their questions by asking friends in France who are knowledgeable about bikes or skis. While it’s certainly understandable that asking target-language friends would be easier and more convenient than it would be to write an e-mail in the source language to the source-language author, such an approach undermines the value of the collaborative project. It seems that while some writers are slow to answer questions, some translators are reluctant to send questions. There certainly is a high degree of individual variability among the students who populate our courses.

Je serais très intéressée par votre réponse à cette question. Je veux bien un retour de votre part par courriel à m'adresser en anglais. Je veux bien aussi que vous parliez de ce sujet dans vos carnets de bord. Pourquoi n'aviez vous pas de questions à poser à votre partenaires américains, de quel ordre étaient les questions posées à vos experts, qui étaient vos experts ? Bien sûr tout ceci sert nos recherches et je ne veux en rien vous pointer du doigt.

Bien cordialement, 
Patricia Minacori "


Thinking back on it all, it is true that I didn't ask that much questions to Scott. I mostly asked him if he could add some images, and if he could tell me some file guide well-known brands, and to explain to me this term overall. I didn't really had questions about what he wrote in itself, for I mostly understood his english document. However, because of that, it's likely that it could be misunderstood as not being interested in communicating or being reluctant to ask questions. So I explained myself :

"Madame Minacori,

Thank you for your email. I'll try to answer your question as clearly
as possible.
My paternal family has been living in Haute-Savoie for several
generations and is deeply bound to the alpine world, so kids of the
family are often taught about alpine sports, such as mountaineering or
skiing. Even though I'm not familiar with the specific vocabulary of ski
tuning, I didn't have any problem visualizing the informations written
in the instructions guide. Thus I didn't have any specific questions
about the global understanding of the english text (even though I asked
my coworker several advices to understand the material name "file
guide", which I struggled to picture).

My expert was my father. Since he has been skiing his whole life, he
knew about the specific vocabulary, especially when it comes to the the
different parts of the alpine ski. I also asked him to reread my
document, in order to tell me if he agreed with the terms I used.

There is also the fact that I like to work on my projects as soon as I
can, so that I don't have to rush it the few days before the deadline.
Since I understood most of the instructions guide, I didn't want to
bother Scott with questions I knew I could answer by myself if I looked
hard enough into it. Moreover, since most of my problems were about the
french terms in themselves, and not about the english document itself,
there wasn't much Scott could do, so I really didn't want to bother him
with it, especially since he, too, had a busy semester.
Still, I asked him if he could use some pictures of the various
materials and steps during an audioconference. He did so, and I think it
was a good idea, for it looked clearer afterwards!
However I'm sorry if I seemed reluctant to ask questions.

I hope this could answer your question. Can I use your email and mine
in my blog, in order to illustrate my point?

Sincerely,
Camille Croz"

So I think that I need to ask more questions and overall communicate some with my eventual coworker the next time I do a collaboration.