What are the most important skills for creating international technical communication?

CRITICAL THINKING An ability to identify and think through contradictions introduced by culture, translation, and design

INNOVATION An agility for discovering creative solutions that attempt to resolve these contradictions while maintaining the integrity of your professional context

Our Professional Context: Some Important Parameters of Technical Communication Practice

• Audience
• Multi-modal communication skills
• Schedule
• Budget
• Technology
• Team,corporate, and institutional cultures
• Social, political, and ethical impact

What is a culture? How do we define it for the purpose of audience analysis? Is it defined by . . .

• A market
• A nation
• An industry
• A profession
• A language
• A set of conventions
• An individual?

Exercise 1(culture):

Which of these images, if any, are GLOBAL?

Some Solutions from Industry Pull ideas from public spaces in major international cities around the world and from international and industry standards. Conduct multinational usability testing to develop a global graphics library. Use the library with consistency.

Exercise 2 (culture):

How can we develop information products that will be used by an audience of US Americans, Germans, and Japanese?

American Writing

Documentation in the United States tends to be hierarchical and designed for quick access to information. US writers usually start from simple general principles and proceed to greater levels of detail. Difficult procedures are often explained by a concrete example or a hands-on tutorial. It is assumed that the reader may jump back and forth between reading the manual and using the product, so facts are headlined and indexed for easy retrieval.

Source: Apple Computer, Guide to Macintosh Software Localization

German Writing

German documentation tends to begin with the history of its subject and proceed through a wealth of technical detail to produce specific recipes that can be followed literally. German technical writers often use scholarly footnotes and references to other literature, as well as detailed summaries as each point is made. Their sentences tend to be long, full of compound words and subordinate clauses. Prose that is simple and concise may be judged to represent a technology that is trivial.

Japanese Writing

Japanese documentation...tends to approach its subject elliptically. It often begins with a story that creates a setting, then examines the subject from differing perspectives. Japanese writers often use cartoons or sayings to make their point, and usually avoid summaries. Their basic aim is to create a mood in which the reader can absorb the subject most comfortably. It is expected that the customer will read the entire manual at least once before trying to use the product.

Some Solutions from Industry DON’T EMBRACE AMERICANIZATION! Apply object-oriented concepts. Rethink your information product library; showcase other perspectives.

What is translation and how does the translation industry affect technical communication?

Translation is the process of adapting concepts in the source language intoequivalent concepts inone or more targetlanguages.

The translation industry uses translation technologies to solve problems related to their clients’ high-volume andtime-to-market needs.

Exercise 3 (translation):

What strategies in technical communication take advantage of translation technologies?

Important Translation Technologies

• CAT - Computer-Assisted Translation
• MT - Machine Translation technology
• TM - Translation Memory technology

CAT - Linguistic Intervention DURING the Translation Process Addresses Cultural Integrity in Language Use

MT - Predictability of the SOURCE Language Version Measures Success

TM - Redundancy Reduces the Translation Effort

Some Solutions from Industry Standardize terminology: develop a glossary for translation. Standardize grammar: develop a style guide. Standardize style: use advanced organizers (abstracts, introductions) and summaries.

Exercise 4 (design):

How do you design information products that address the contradictions of culture and translation in innovative ways?

Planning for Text Expansion and Contraction

Arabic, 88 Chinese, 61 Czech, 117 Dutch, 128 Esperanto, 93 Farsi, 100 Finnish, 104 French, 111 German, 109 Greek, 129 Hebrew, 83 Hindi, 91 Hungarian, 113 Italian, 110 Japanese, 115 Korean, 124 Portuguese, 110 Russian, 116 Spanish, 117 Swahili, 89 Swedish, 96

This study used the official translations of the Preamble to the Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations to consider issues of translation expansion and contraction and typography. The source language, for the purposes of this study, was English. Type area comparisons are in percentages to English (=100%). SOURCE: Sadek, George and Maxim Zhukov, Typography: Polyglot: A Comparative Study in Multilingual Typesetting, New York: The Cooper Union, 1991. This book is very hard to find.

Text Expansion and Contraction

SOURCE: IBM National Language Design Guide, Volume 1, pp. 2-4 (Publication Number SE09-8001-03)	Number of Characters in Text	Additional Space Required
	Up to 10	100 to 200%
	11 to 20	80 to 100%
	21 to 30	60 to 80%
	31 to 50	40 to 60%
	51 to 70	31 to 40%
	Over 70	30%

Reading Orientation

• ENGLISH AND TECHNICAL JAPANESE
• TRADITIONAL JAPANESE AND CHINESE
• HEBREW AND ARABIC

English and Technical Japanese

Traditional Japanese and Chinese

Hebrew and Arabic

Some Solutions from Industry Avoid text in graphics. Use arrows to show reading orientation in sequences. Use your publications tools to support text expansion and contraction in callouts, or, use numbers.

• Cultivate your skills of critical thinking and innovation.
• Use the resources at your disposal in creative ways.
• Don’t feel overwhelmed by contradictions that international technical communication presents; apply your critical thinking skills to come up with innovative solutions.