Re: Spanish translation of manuals

[Maynard Hogg <maynard -at- GOL -dot- COM>]

At [Thu, 8 May 1997 17:32:30 -0400]
JIMCHEVAL -at- AOL -dot- COM wrote:

> The conventional wisdom is that one should only translate
> INTO one's native tongue.

Conventional everywhere but in Japan, alas.

> you run the risk of creating
> a Spanish-language equvalent to those much-mocked manuals from Japan.

QED. Even the ones translated by native speakers of English (sometimes
ignorant in both languages) are subsequently "corrected" by self-styled
"English experts".

Then again, the 700-page data book that I'm currently working on
exhibits another all too common trend. Although the individual data
sheets have gone through anywhere between 3 and 5 revisions, they're not
ready for electrical engineers to read let alone be translated into
English.

The authors cannot decide whether they want to have an I/O direction
column in the table list pins and their functions. Two virtually
identical members of the same series can have totally different data
sheets--one with a block diagram, one without, for example--because they
were written by different people.

Editorial supervision? Consistency? Unknown concepts, I'm afraid.


===

Maynard Hogg
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