Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Terminology, language, and controlled authoring


The first thing must be the term. A well-established terminology strategy will help your product description writers avoid ambiguity, especially if your company is implementing machine translation in a localized workflow, which can be a tricky issue. Similarly, a well-structured termbase will help improve the accuracy of document writing and the reuse of content units. Don't forget to train; and user support staff may use the same documentation as your users, so maintaining consistency will help reduce phone calls and complaints.
There is no doubt that writing style is also important. Information writing must be as simple as possible, but remember not to sacrifice accuracy for simplicity. Business and technical writers like George Orwell's six writing rules, while others like William Zissner's classic advice. In any case, "Elements of Style" is a classic.
Different languages, different writing rules: For example, you will find that many Italians are (almost) familiar with the writing principles of Umberto Eco. In any case, a large number of writing manuals are available online or through bookstores and public libraries.
Consider writing a company document style guide. In some industries, such as the publishing and advertising industries, there must be a style guide. This is also useful for any organization that prepares documents for internal and external use. With a style guide, your writers will use a specific tone and present your business/brand in a consistent way.
Choose the creative tool that suits your needs. There are many tools available for controlled authoring based on your language needs. If you want to keep it simple, Microsoft Word provides syntax syntax checking and readability ratings. Google Docs has recently adopted similar features.
If you want to make sentences short and effective (think Gordon Lish), or if English is not your native language, then the Hemingway app or WriteFull can help keep your sentences simple.
For example, Acrolinx is a more complex (and more expensive) tool. There are also a variety of tools to help you organize your technical content. The most popular are Oxygen and Adobe FrameMaker.
Scalability and maintainability
You must adapt the document to a variety of media and formats. To do this, you need two basic tools.
Translation Management System (TMS) : TMS usually contains a glossary (again the term!). There is also a translation memory containing source text and translated text. Translation memories will help you re-use previously localized content (in short, you never have to translate the same sentences), reducing overall cost and delivery time and improving translation consistency.
Content Management System (CMS) : Be sure to consider how to link content to different media that may publish content and connect content to a translation management system for two-way localization. There are specialized CMSs (designed specifically for precise types of content) and a generic CMS, which is usually more flexible and allows for the release of different types of content.
If you need to localize your documents, we recommend that you choose a CMS that can easily connect to the translation management system to speed up your translation projects and increase their efficiency. When you connect your CMS to TMS, translators will be able to access content to be localized and translate in context. For example, when translating a website, they will translate directly on the page. Then, you can post the final version to your website (or other platform) with just a few mouse clicks. Here,You can take more helps about E learning translation services