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There’s been a great discussion about understanding content strategy that Val Swisher, Mark Baker and Marcia Riefer Johnston have engaged. Check out Marcia’s latest contribution to the conversation–which includes links to Val and Mark’s commentaries–for a great look at how technical communicators should be looking at content strategy, and how we can help others understand this complicated and complex topic in simpler terms.
This post is just a quick summary of the Adobe Day at LavaCon 2012 series from this past week. As you see, there was so much information that it took six posts to try to summarize the event!
Being in Portland, Oregon was great. It was my first trip there, and being a native Easterner, my thoughts pushed me to that pioneer spirit of moving westward in this country. Once there, I saw a hip, young, modern city, continuing to look towards the future. The information I gathered at Adobe Day was general information that was endorsement-free, and practical information that I can use going forward as a technical communicator, and that by sharing it, I hope that others in the field will equally take on that pioneering spirit to advance what technical communications is all about, and bring the field to the next level.
To roundup the series, please go to these posts to get the full story of this great event. I hope to go to more events like this in the future!
As I said, I really enjoyed the event, and learned so much, and enjoyed not only listening to all the speakers, but also enjoyed so many people who are renowned enthusiasts and specialists in the technical communications field and talking “shop”. I rarely get to do that at home (although it does help to have an e-learning developer in the house who understands me), so this was a chance for me to learn from those who have been doing this for a while and not only have seen the changes, but are part of the movement to make changes going forward.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of blog posts. I still have many more to come–at least one more that is inspired by my trip out to Portland, and I look forward to bringing more curated content and commentary to you!
The autograph from my copy of Sarah O’Keefe’s book, Content Strategy 101. Awesome!
Val is the founder of Content Rules, Inc., and she spoke about eight simple rules for technical communicators to follow to make content global-ready–now! Her specialty is doing translation work, so she knows a thing or two about making content ready for a global market. As she went through each rule, she would explain the impact of the rules and why the rules were in place, although some were self-explanatory.
The rule she listed were as follows:
Rule 1:Not all errors are created equal. Some can cost you thousands of dollars! This is one of those obvious rules. Taking the time to write content carefully as well as making sure proper editing is done is a necessity. Even one small typo can make a difference.
Rule 2:Creative Writing is a myth. Standardize. Val’s point with this rule is that superfluous writing is not necessary. Keeping content clear, concise, cogent and correct is especially important in translation, and allows for better reuse of content.
Rule 3:Real copy editors don’t do it without a terminology manager.
It is vital to use the same terms for certain words, especially for translation purposes. For example, the words “puppy”, “dog”, and “canine” all refer to the same animal, but are clearly different words, even though they essentially mean the same thing. In translation, there are times that this much word variation for a single item isn’t available in a different language, so choosing one word as the referential term is recommended. It keeps terminology within the content–especially if reusing content–consistent. Style guides are, unfortunately, not followed as often as they can be. A system is needed to manage terminology and help prevent problems like this example from occurring.
Rule 4:Have you got translation memory (a translation database)? Your vendors do. Use it. It keeps content standardized and saves money. This is another fairly self-explanatory rule. I was not aware, since I’m not in the translation business, that there are such things as translation databases. From what I could understand how it works (and someone please correct me if I’m wrong), a translation database has features that when a specific turn-of-phrase is used on one language, there is a specific translation for that combination of words into another language. When a translation is done, the database looks for that word combination and translates it accordingly. This, again, allows for consistency in translations between the different language editions of content. As a technical communicator who does translations, Val is saying that if you don’t have such a database in place, you should have one because in the long run, it will standardized content and save money.
Rule 5:Don’t complain about quality of your tech writers. You agreed to outsource docs to ___ in the 1st place.
Val pointed out that while there are good outsource resources for writing and translation out there, sometimes the quality is not as good as keeping it in house or closer to home, especially if the content is written by someone whose first language is not English. Good quality source material is key! Having good quality source material helps control costs, especially with translation!
Rule 6:If you write flabby copy, even the nicest vendors will email you a bill for localization that will astound you.
Again, this comes back to having quality content in place. Val’s point was that if you do write weak content that is difficult to translate because it is not quality content, even one’s best clients will send you a bill for the translation for localization purposes, and the bill will be VERY HIGH. Again, having quality content saves money!
Rule 7:Get rid of extra adjectives and superlative words! Delay this product launch, and there’s no next product launch.
This rule is a strong recommendation related again to how content should be written. The use of extra adjectives, adverbs and other superlative words do not enhance the content. Using such words that have to be rewritten or translated can delay a product going out, and for a client, that can be a deal-breaking move. By delaying the product due to not meeting a deadline due to overdue time for translation, and there will be no next time being able to help with a product launch. Obviously, that would be bad business.
Rule 8: Translation is a team sport. You want to work alone? Become an accountant. While this rule elicited a laugh from the audience, it was a point well taken. Teamwork is KEY! A better source of English content will result between source writers and translators if they work together.
Val was asked the question at the end of her presentation, “What alternative tools for style guides are on the market?” She responded that there are lots of software tools out there, but to be careful about push technology within those software items.
I found this presentation rather fascinating, especially since Val presented it with a sense of humor. But her point was clear. Content needs to be as precise as possible when it will be reused and especially when used in translation for consistency. By following her basic rules, costs can be controlled, and the quality of the content can only get better.
I thought about what it takes to do translation, searching my own memory banks from when I almost minored in French during my undergrad years and had to do translations, to the present day watching my husband translate literature written in German to Spanish for a group he’s been involved with for years, to my own struggles to translate what I want to say to my in-laws into my broken Spanish. Translation is not an easy task, but when thinking about translating my English thoughts into another language, it can get tricky because of the turn of phrase or colloquialisms used from area to area. Even in talking to my husband about the topic, he will say that there are different idioms used between Spanish speaking countries, although Spanish will still be relatively “standard.” Being from Ecuador, he can still understand someone from Spain, Mexico or Argentina as much as an American can understand someone from the UK, Canada, or the Australia. But I’ve even found in my own teaching of a business and technical writing course to a corporate group in Asia is that English taught globally is not consistent due to the source English being from different countries, so I have to go and set the record straight. I can certainly appreciate where consistency and choice of words can lead to better quality content and communication in the long term.
I’m in the process of recovering from a great weekend I had at the pre-conference of Lavacon hosted by the Adobe TCS team this weekend. There is so much to tell, but I’m working on a separate post for that, so stay tuned–it should be up in a day or so.
In the meantime, I just wanted to share something that I thought was pretty cool. Lavacon is taking place in Portland, Oregon, which is the home of the world famous Powell’s Bookstore. It is one of those landmarks that anyone who visits Portland has to visit, even if it’s just for a few minutes. The store occupies an entire city block, and includes both used books and new in print books. I was told by multiple sources that one should not think that an hour is enough time to spend in the store, as an hour easily turns into a whole day there. It’s THAT cool.
Marcia leads Val and I to Powell’s!
Well, I had a very limited window where I was going to be able to check out the city before returning home from the Adobe Day event, and my new friend, author Marcia Riefer Johnson who writes the blog, “How to Write Everything,” took me and Val Swisher, who is an Adobe Day and Lavacon speaker as well as the CEO of Content Rules, to Powell’s just for a quick visit, so that a) we could say that we had been to Powells, even if it was just a brief visit, and b) to show us this neat machine that prints books for customers on the spot! It’s called the “Espresso Book Machine“, and it prints out digital publications that are in the Powell’s catalog, and will print the book for you right on the spot.
In the meantime, as one of the things Marcia posted on her blog, she shared a YouTube video of how Powell’s Espresso Book Machine (EBM) works. I think this is pretty cool:
Now…imagine writing the user manual for this gadget? That would be quite the interesting and exciting task, now wouldn’t it be?
Val Swisher and I at Powell’s!
Val and I both felt that if we had the chance to go back to Powell’s, we definitely would. Thanks for taking us, Marcia! This looks like a great tool, not only as a consumer (this way, we can find lots of great tech comm resources and have them specially printed for us), but also as creators, allowing us to print our content as needed. Print is not dead! It has gone digital in more than one way!
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