February 2021 | Shufrans TechDocs Home // February 2021 | Shufrans TechDocs

Juggling your business requirements using documentation standards, and why Simplified English matters?

Juggling your business requirements Part 1

How does Simplified English potentially help us to achieve high-quality product standards, and why for starters do we need Simplified English? Well, Simplified English consists of two words: Simplified and English. So for starters, why is it English? There are three times as many native speakers of Mandarin Chinese as there are native speakers of English. However, Mandarin Chinese doesn’t get us very far outside east Asia. So English is a much better choice because it is actually the language that has the highest penetration into other continents. It is spoken in all continents, but the vast majority of people has English as a second, rather than the first language. English is a very global language. We can find English speakers in almost every country, but their understanding of English could be different from ours and may actually be limited. 

Language is a means to communicate the information that we have to present to our users, to our audience.  

And English happens to be a very rich language, meaning that, amongst other things, it has a huge vocabulary. It has about three times as many words as French or German. However, in French or German, you can say just the same things that you can say in English. You can express the same thoughts as accurately as in English. So this implies actually that English has redundant or ambiguous words. There are too many words with the same or very similar meanings. Also, English grammar is a problem even for most native English speakers, and it can be highly confusing especially to people with English as a second language, or who have limited education. So we want to try and do away with this huge, unnecessary part of the vocabulary and we want to simplify grammar to what is essential to getting our message across.

We are not here to show off our literary skills, we are not writing poetry, we are not writing literature, it’s not about Shakespeare, it’s about informing your audience, the user.

After all, we are not here to show off our literary skills, we are not writing poetry, we are not writing literature, it’s not about Shakespeare, it’s about informing your audience, the user, whether he is a consumer or engineer, a maintenance technician, staff in a hospital. It doesn’t matter whom we are talking to, but if we have a message for them, it should really go without saying that we want to be understood, and language should never be an obstacle. Language is a means to communicate the information that we have to present to our users, to our audience.

🌐  Drop us a message here to learn how we can support your technical writing and documentation processes. 

Juggling your business requirements using standards

Most of us will recognise this kind of juggling in one form or another at the workplace. There are business requirements to take into account on top of our daily regular workload. Just getting the work done is not enough. There are various considerations, such as time-to-market, or, as the case may be, downtime. Of course, we are all forced to cut corners and save costs wherever possible. At the same time, we want to be less dependent on a specific supplier. This means a continuous juggling game where we are going to try and keep everything in balance, to get our projects finalised, on-time, within budget, with the right quality, and without any further compromises. We want to be able to do the work or get the work done our way.

Of course, we are all forced to cut corners and save costs wherever possible.

ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English is a guideline that regulates the wording and writing style used in technical publications. Simplified Technical English used to be known as Simplified English and the official name is this wonderful acronym ASD-STE100, and all three mean the same.

We are talking about the standard based on practical experiences over the past 15 years in many different industries. Seeing how this international standard helps to make the creation and management of global documentation a little bit less of a headache. We would like to share our experiences in the field of Simplified Technical English implementation with you. 

Documentation always kicks in when the product is already late, when we are already over budget for the product lifecycle..

To engineers, it makes a lot of sense to use standards whenever possible in order to achieve similar results. Yet surprisingly, in the documentation field, it still happens that standards are not highly regarded. We are not talking about technical writers or documentation managers. We all know about the importance of documentation, and the importance of standards to support their documentation. However, upper management and those people who basically sit on our budgets and who make the decisions for us, do not always have the same kind of regard for documentation that we know is very well deserved, and very much necessary. Actually, in this respect, the European Union for once deserves some credit in that it actually specifically states in its regulations that documentation is an integral part of your product.

Documentation is a very essential item, yet it always comes at the last moment. Documentation always kicks in when the product is already late, when we are already over budget for the product lifecycle and we just need to cut corners or are expected to cut corners. However, we still want to stand behind what we do and make sure we provide a quality product. 

Juggling your business requirements Part 2

🌐 Drop us a message here to learn how we can support your technical writing and documentation processes. 

Technical English writing with certified STE training

ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English is a guideline that regulates the wording and writing style used in technical publications. Writing in Simplified Technical English (STE) is about informing your audience: the user. Whether he or she is a consumer, an engineer, a maintenance technician, or a staff in a hospital, it doesn’t matter whom we are talking to. If we have a message for them, it should really go without saying that we want to be understood, and language should never be an obstacle.

Language is a means to communicate the information that we have to present to our users, to our audience. Since the early 2000s, STE as a versatile standard has become such a success that other industries have adopting and adapting its principles to meet their own business needs. Interest in this international writing standard has also proliferated in the fields of language services, professional translation, and interpreting, as well as academia.

Certified STE training is not rocket science, but there are some common pitfalls to avoid, and you can definitely use some help and guidance in dealing with STE technical writing rules, how to correctly, efficiently, and effectively apply them. The first day of the STE training course would be mainly theory coupled with some standard exercises. The second day would be more like a workshop practising on your own documents and learning how they change, and hopefully improve by applying Simplified English to them. 

Syntax, vocabulary and terminology all are covered by a good training course. If there is software to be used, it should also teach you not so much how to deal with the software menus, because the checker tools are pretty easy to operate. The problem is more how do you use a checker effectively, not being misled or governed by the software, but making the software an effective assistant in order to write, rewrite, and update your documentation most effectively and accurately. 

🌐 Sign up for a workshop or drop us a message here to learn how we can support your technical writing and documentation processes.