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Subject:Re: Tweaking English in manuals and localisation From:"Bonnie Granat" <bgranat -at- editors-writers -dot- info> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 12 Apr 2002 00:03:46 -0400
>
> So where do you draw the line when you want to freeze the language in a
> manual and just have technical changes done when updating? How tolerant
> should one be of inelegant English? How do you persuade tech writers to
> consentrate on what must change (eg, techncial content) and not fiddle
with
> what can change (eg, language) when updating a manual?
>
>
I'm a little confused by your chronology, because it sounds as if you sent
the manual for translation before the update. But leaving that aside and
assuming that I misunderstood what you wrote, we had the identical situation
at Parametric Technology when I worked there (seems like a lifetime ago).
It was not without some pain on all sides, but the writers and the editors
were simply not permitted to make changes of a certain type. Technical
writers and editors were told by their supervisors what types of changes
were permitted and what types of changes were not permitted.
We used to shake our heads at the realization that localized versions of our
product and documentation were no doubt of a higher quality than their
English counterparts, chiefly because translators and localizers would
generally improve the documentation during their own work, while we were not
permitted to do so. In the end, we might wind up with a product that looked
as if it had been *machine* translated into English from Japanese or
Spanish. That the company did not want to spend the money to get a decent
English version always bothered me.
It's awful, but management has to issue an imperative and then enforce it.
That technical writer who rewrote the manual should have been told. All
members of the documentation team have to be operating with the same rules,
and the technical writer should have made only the permitted changes. I hate
it, but there's no other way for such a system to work.
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