Marc Achtelig

Translating Technical Documentation Successfully Marc Achtelig

Translating technical documentation, such as user manuals, online help, and other forms of user assistance, is fundamentally different from translating other documents. For example, using rich and diverse language, which can make a novel or sales brochure more interesting, can make a user manual just incomprehensible.

When translating technical documentation, you should understand how its writers have designed the document for clearness and simplicity. Only then can your translation reflect the same principles and achieve the same high level of quality.

This book provides you with a compilation of the basic technical writing rules that every trained technical writer follows. If you adhere to the same principles in your translations, it's almost guaranteed that both the writers (your clients) and the readers (your clients' clients) will be pleased with the quality of your work.




Topics covered:

General rules for writing in a simple, concise, and unambiguous way. Rules on the sentence level, such as rules for sentence length, sentence structure, word order, repetitions, syntactic cues, and more. Rules on the word level, such as rules for finding short, simple, common words, using strong verbs, and avoiding overblown and filler words. FAQ on grammar and word choice that often arise when writing technical documentation.