Isabelle: Multilingual Technical Communication

Multilingual Technical Communication

tcworld India 2011 Conference, Bangalore

Isabelle Fleury, Fleury & Fleury Consultants

© Fleury & Fleury GbR, www.fleuryfleury.com 2

Challenges

• Number of document types increases

• Number of versions and variants grows

• Number of languages grows

• Product life cycle gets shorter

• Quality awareness grows

• BUT: Budget does not increase accordingly

MORE

FASTER

BETTER

FURTHER


High Complexity

Technologies

Processes

Stakeholders

Exchange

Exchange

Develop Author Localize Test Launch

Client Your organiza-tion Suppliers


Solutions: Reduce complexity and workload

• Tools

• Document structure

• Text

• Workflows

• Communication

• Data

• Process steps

• Exchange of data

• Administration

Standardize

Centralize

Automate

Two areas of leverage


Technical Writing Localization




Objectives for Multilingual Technical Writing

• Standardized document and information structures

Enable reuse at a high level

• Clarity of expression

Avoid misunderstanding, queries, errors and rework

• Consistency in style and terminology

Reduce amount of new text, queries and enable

reuse

• Translation-oriented authoring

Allow for market-specific contents and enable

processing by CAT-Tools


Consider Cultural and Market-Specific

Characteritiscs while Writing

• Connotations: Cultural and historical references

• Meanings of colors

• Use of pictures

• Formal requirements: norms and directives

• Qualification profile of users


Mind the Interdependences between

Writing and Localization

• Command of authoring tools

Impacts the degree of reuse of translated materials

(match rate)

• Authors are not native speakers

Causes comprehension issues

• Degree of completion at the start of localization

Leads to rework and higher process complexity

• Education and experience as technical writer

Awareness and ability to write for various target groups


• Please enter start date before or equal to the end date.

• Please enter a start date earlier than or the same as the end date.

• Please enter an actual start date earlier than the actual end date.

• The Start Date cannot exceed the End Date.

• The End Date cannot precede the Start Date.

• End Date must be later than Start Date.

• End date must be equal to or later than the start date.

• The end date must be later than or the same as the start date.

• End Time must be later than the Start Time.

• The valid grade's end date must be later than or equal to its start date.

• Please enter an End Date that is later than or the same as the Start Date.

• Competence end date has to be later than or equal to the start date.

• The start date cannot be later than the end date.

• The appraisal end date must be later than or equal to appraisal start date.

• The Effective start date cannot be later than the Effective end date.

• Date from cannot be later than date to.

• The start date must be on or before the end date.

• The Start Date cannot be after the End Date.

• Your end date must be after your start date.

• The end date cannot be before the start date.

• Start date must be before end date.

• Your start date must be before your end date.

• Enter a Start Date that is on or later than &LL.

• …


Best practices: Which rules are useful?

• …




Tool Landscape

Translation Authoring

CMS

Authoring tools

MS Office

Layout Tools

SW Development

Image processing

tools

Translation Memory Systeme

CAT-PM-Tools

Terminology-Tools

Online dictionaries

Quality control tools

Machine translation systems



Translation Memory Tools

• Some TMS providers: SDL, STAR, across, MultiCorpora, Kilgray…

• Advantages:

– Never translate a sentence twice

– Increase consistency

– Context sensitive suggestion

– Processing of various authoring formats

– Knowledge-base available across departments

• Risks:

– More interfaces mean new sources of errors

– Reuse of wrong translations

– Too much faith in technology: Loss of criticism


Language specific aspects

• Alphabets and their various special characters,

some use double byte characters

• Writing direction (bi-directional languages)

• Punctuation

• Dates and numbers

• Measurement units

• Text expansion

Unicode

ISO 639


Parameters to Keep in Mind

when Defining and Assessing Translation Quality

• Languages are not homogeneous

– Various registers: formal, informal

– Dependable on target group: technicians, end users, teens, IT early adopters…

• Terms are not always translatable as in source language

– Umbrella term: snow, screw

– No corresponding concept

• Synonyms in source and target languages

• Languages are subject to change

• Language is highly subjective

• Strong identification with own language


Process Landscape in Localization Projects

Request Execution Delivery

Projektdefinition Planning Controlling Closure

Engineering Translation DTP Publication

DATA MANAGEMENT

QUERIES

CLIENT CORRECTIONS

CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Definition

LOCALIZATION

PROJECT MANAGEMENT


Process Modules and Steps

Proofreading of source

First translation

Peer-review

In-country review

Subject Matter Expert

Copywriting

Translation DTP Engineering

Internationalization

Textexport, import

Layout

Image processing

In-country layout QA

Linguistic layout QA

Internationalization

Pre- / postprocessing

Functional Testing

Linguistic QA

Software development

CAT Engineering


Criteria to Define Localization Process

• Depending on Source document and objectives

– File format of source and target document

– Quality of source document (text and form)

– Level of text complexity

– Target group and quality objectives

– Liability risks

• Depending on Localization process:

– Expertise and availability of resources

– Cost and time frame

– Translation technologies used


Specifics of International Teams

• Different cultures (geography and company)

• Language barriers

• Different concepts of time

• Acceptance and display of emotions

• Handling of rules and instructions

• „Yes“ or “No”?

• Hierarchy and gender

• Humor


Key Success Factors for Multilingual TC

• Standardize documents and source text to support reuse

of content and translation

• Document the defined processes and procedures and

deploy them across departments

• Control application of defined rules and processes

• Establish technical writing and localization as own steps in

the product life cycle

• Mind cultural and language specific aspects while writing

and communicating

All the best for your next multilingual projects!

Isabelle Fleury Tel: +49 2104 8089920

E-Mail: [email protected]

Internet: http://www.fleuryfleury.com

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.fleuryfleury.com/

Documents

Isabelle: Multilingual Technical Communication