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Shufrans TechDocs and Literra expand Simplified Technical English writing workshop to Russia and the CIS region

Shufrans TechDocs and Literra expand Simplified Technical English writing workshop to Russia and the CIS region

Given a highly rated online Simplified Technical English (STE) writing workshop in May 2016, Shufrans TechDocs, the global leader in technical English writing consultancy, and Literra, a leading Russian language service provider will jointly offer their next technical English writing workshop sessions to customers from Russia and the CIS region.

Upcoming STE webinar sessions:

  1. September 8 – 9, 2016
  2. October 13 – 14, 2016
  3. November 29 – 30, 2016

These sessions will be conducted online in the form of highly interactive webinar sessions where course participants are offered the unique opportunity of analysing their documents according to tried-and-tested technical writing rules, and then apply what they have learnt in an online classroom environment. All sessions will be moderated by an experienced technical English trainer.

What delegates say about our technical English workshops

“I fully appreciate the advantages and benefits of implementing international language standards to our documentation. My favourite technical English writing rule is to only use company-approved terminology in addition to the general vocabulary that is offered by the Simplified Technical English specification.“

“The technical English writing rules were clearly presented during this webinar. Overall, I have found this webinar to be useful for my work and Shumin responded well to all my questions and clarified the doubts I had before taking this course.”

For more information about the online workshops please contact Mr Dmitriy Parfenov at d.parfenov@li-terra.ru

 

 

 

Attend a 2-day hands-on Simplified Technical English editing & review workshop in Vienna, Austria

Attend a 2-day hands-on Simplified Technical English editing & review workshop in Vienna, Austria

Quick facts

Dates: 19 – 20 September 2016

Location: Vienna, Austria

Length of training: 2 days

Early bird registration: Before 25 August 2016

Sign up early to enjoy a 20% training discount

Deadline for registration: 9 September 2016

Summary

ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English (STE) is a controlled language that is used to write technical manuals in such a way that they can be more easily understood by an international audience. STE helps to make translations cheaper and more accurate.

ASD-STE100 is mandated by several commercial and military specifications (MIL-SPEC) that control the style and content of maintenance documentation. Military defence standards (MIL-SPEC / MIL-STD) such as MIL-STD-3048, as well as technical documentation standards like S1000D and ATA iSpec 2200 recommend the use of ASD-STE100.

Often a formal requirement for aircraft and defence maintenance documentation, STE can easily be adapted to all technical industries and beyond.

Course outline*

  • Practical overview of ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English
  • How STE helps both native & non-native speakers of English
  • Writing rules and how to apply them in practice
  • How to use the general vocabulary
  • How to deal with industry-specific terminology
  • How to use STE for various documentation types
  • How to implement STE with minimal disruption to on-going production and existing documentation
  • Hands-on STE editing and review

* Shufrans also offers customised ASD-STE100 training solutions tailored to meet your specific requirements. These courses are normally provided at the customer’s premises.

“STE is a ‘way of life’ in the field of technical writing and documentation. The ASD-STE100 exercises covered a wide spectrum of topics from choosing between approved and non-approved words to recreating documentation in STE. Shumin expertly guides us from classroom learning mode to real-life practical application of STE rules. The materials that she presented were informative and very convincing.” Martin Broekhuis, Technical Editor, Webasto.

Who should attend?

  • Compliance managers
  • CIO, COO, CTO
  • Customer support managers
  • Documentation managers
  • Editors
  • Engineering managers
  • Engineers and SMEs who create documentation
  • Graphics specialists
  • ILS managers
  • Maintenance managers
  • Operation managers
  • Product managers
  • Project managers
  • Quality managers
  • Software research engineers
  • Technical illustrators
  • Technical writers
  • Translation managers
  • Translators

What training outcomes to expect?

Ms. Shumin Chen will teach participants how to correctly and effectively use STE in practice. She will also address some of the mistakes commonly found in technical writing and the frequently incorrect use of common STE writing rules.

Our interactive training, exercises and workshop, will teach participants to standardise content to:

  • Author more efficiently
  • Communicate more effectively with a global audience
  • Improve operational safety
  • Reduce AOG / downtime
  • Facilitate modular writing and reuse
  • Facilitate teamwork
  • Facilitate translation
  • Maximise consistency
  • Optimise product lifecycle support
  • Reduce the cost of creating and maintaining technical publications

Trainer’s qualifications

Ms. Shumin Chen, principal trainer & consultant at Shufrans TechDocs received her professional on-the-job training in the field of STE under the tutelage of Dr Frans Wijma, a linguist and documentation expert. Together as an experienced global team, they provided their combined knowledge and dedication to benefit customers worldwide. To date, they have provided training and consultancy services to over 180 companies. Shufrans TechDocs is the only company with such vast experience in providing certified STE training.

Shumin has supported various companies with their STE and other documentation needs, based on standards where possible. Although STE was developed for the aerospace industry, more specifically for aircraft maintenance documentation, Shumin found that it made a lot of sense to apply the same principles to other industries and types of documents as well. Few -if any- changes to the specification are necessary to adapt STE to industries ranging from machinery to IT, automotive to medical equipment.

 

 

Streamlining your documentation processes with a practical content strategy

Streamlining your documentation processes with a practical content strategy

Safety starts with quality. The best product is only as good as its documentation and technical data made available to the customer.

Case study

Our customer, the Finn-Power Group, established in 1969, is a multinational group of companies specialising in sheet metal working technology with 2 manufacturing sites in Italy, 1 in the US and 1 in Finland.

 

Industry concerns

Customer documentation is a vital and integral part of Finn-Power’s comprehensive range of machinery. Most crucially, the documentation needs to do its part to ensure the safe and correct use of the product by providing complete, accurate and effective information.

Additionally, with the EU machinery directive in place and the EU now comprising of 28 countries, there is a regulatory need for clear and accurate translation into many different languages as well as specific, safety-related content.

 

Using Simplified Technical English ASD-STE100 to create user content 

To make content easier to understand as well as faster and cheaper to translate, Dr Frans Wijma gave training to Finn-Power’s team of technical translators, writers and documentation manager in the rules and practical application of this international standard. Course participants did a complete rewrite of selected sample documents in Simplified Technical English.

Finn-Power has successfully implemented ASD-STE100 since 2010 with the continuous support from the team at Shufra.

ASD-STE100 standardises vocabulary, grammar and style, while letting companies control their specific terminology (Technical Names). The ASD-STE100 standard is widely used in industries ranging from aerospace to IT, consumer electronicsautomotive and machinery.

 

The next step – formulating/designing a useful information structure

Taking on the other important aspect of documentation is the structural reuse of content and optimizing technical means for reuse. With all their business requirements in mind, Finn-Power was looking for a highly intuitive, low-threshold content management solution (CMS).

We tapped into our partner network and found Author-it to be the perfect fit with the customer’s requirements as it includes a translation management module that allows users to efficiently and effectively manage multilingual content. Author-it allows you to reuse content with a high level of granularity. While most CMS systems just let you reuse whole blocks of text, Author-it allows for text reuse on the sentence level, doing away with the need to define portions of text intended for reuse.

Said Ms Hanna Korpinen, Manager of R&D and Documentation:

Now that we have also taken on this other important aspect of documentation, we are better positioned to provide quality documentation to our customers on-time and within budget!

 


Copyright © 2013 Shufra Consultancy. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. 

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Turkish Aerospace Industries ensures ASD-STE100 compliance

Turkish Aerospace Industries ensures ASD-STE100 compliance

Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI/TUSAŞ) is Turkey’s centre of technology in design, development, modernisation, manufacturing, integration and lifecycle support of integrated aerospace systems, including fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft, UAVs and satellites.

TAI asked Shufra to assess the level of compliance of its documentation with the ASD-STE100 specification. Based on the findings, Shufra delivered an advanced training course for the technical writers and other people in the ILS department, providing them with new insights to take compliance to the next level. Writers especially liked the workshop that allowed participants to review and rewrite their own document samples under the guidance of the experienced Dr Frans Wijma who is widely regarded as the leading expert in Simplified Technical English, aviation documentation and multilingual documentation.

 

He gave ASD-STE100 training to over 130 companies worldwide. Customers include Black & Decker, Boeing, Microsoft, Rolls-Royce and Samsung. Said ILS specialist Mr Halil Kan: “TAI hired Frans to work with our experienced team and help them to improve their ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English skills. Frans helped us to identify areas for improvement both in our own documents and in those supplied by our customers and partners. At the end of the training, we all had learned simple yet effective methods to improve the quality, readability and compliance of our writing. Most importantly, we learned how to scrutinize text for commonly made mistakes and how to balance compliance with optimum readability. We enjoyed working with Frans, who has a pleasant personality and an open mind. I am happy to recommend him to any company that wants to improve its documentation, be it for compliance reasons or to facilitate translation.”

Hear more from our satisfied customers.

Tata Consultancy Services hired Shufra to maximise customer satisfaction in terms of compliance with ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English.

Tata Consultancy Services hired Shufra to maximise customer satisfaction in terms of compliance with ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English.

ASD-STE100 was originally developed to make maintenance documentation for aircraft and their components easier to understand for a global audience. Over time, use of the specification was increasingly required for other types of manuals in the electronics, automotive and IT industries. Amongst them is Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a subsidiary of the Tata Group. By 2012 revenues, TCS is one of India’s most valuable companies, and the largest India-based IT services company.

 

Tata’s services include technical publications for major aircraft manufacturers and their suppliers, who require compliance with relevant standards such as ASD-STE100.

Airbus is widely known to have strict STE quality checks that are difficult to meet for outside suppliers. Head of Aerospace Vertical, Mr Sureshbabu says: “Amidst the financial turmoil of 2008, India continues to offer new business opportunities. At TCS, we constantly keep up with high quality standards and keep our customers happy. Learning how to optimally use a documentation standard like ASD-STE100 is a substantial boost to our technical writing team’s capabilities and significantly improved our compliance rating.”

Said Dr Frans Wijma, Shufra’s principal trainer: “To date, Shufra has trained 20 technical writers and SMEs at TCS and we expect many more companies in India to take this leap forward.”

Hear more from our satisfied customers.