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Do you struggle to communicate technical information to your audience? Here are 9 Simplified Technical English best practices.
7

April 2023

Do you struggle to communicate technical information to your audience? Here are 9 Simplified Technical English best practices.

by Shufrans Techdocs in Blog Comments Off on Do you struggle to communicate technical information to your audience? Here are 9 Simplified Technical English best practices.

Simplified Technical English (STE) is a controlled language that is used in the aerospace and defense industries to simplify the language used in technical documents. Here are 9 best practices of Simplified Technical English:

  1. Use a limited vocabulary: STE restricts the vocabulary used in technical writing to a specific set of words. This helps to reduce ambiguity and ensures that the meaning of the text is clear.
  2. Use simple sentence structures: STE encourages the use of simple sentence structures that are easy to understand. Complex sentence structures can lead to confusion and misunderstandings.
  3. Use active voice: The active voice is preferred in STE because it is clearer and more concise than the passive voice when writing procedural text.
  4. Use present tense: Present tense is preferred in STE because it is more immediate and makes the text easier to understand.
  5. Use the imperative mood: The imperative mood is used in STE to give commands and instructions. This is because it is a clear and direct way of communicating.
  6. Use standardized terminology: STE requires the use of standardized terminology to avoid confusion and ensure consistency.
  7. Use clear headings and subheadings: Headings and subheadings should be clear and concise so that the reader can quickly identify the topic.
  8. Use illustrations: Illustrations can help to clarify complex concepts and make the text easier to understand.
  9. Comply with established STE guidelines: To ensure consistency and accuracy, it is important to follow established STE guidelines when writing technical documents. This will help to ensure that the text is clear and easy to understand.

Looking to advance your technical writing career? Our Simplified Technical English workshop is the perfect opportunity to enhance your skills and stand out from the crowd. Don’t miss your chance to master this essential skill with our workshop.

 

🌐 Learn more about this international writing standard at our upcoming lectures and writing workshops in Q2 2023:

Europe Online STE Workshop | 2-day Training Course

April 13 – April 14

US, Canada | Certified Simplified Technical English workshops

April 17 – April 19

Asia Pacific: 2-day certified online STE workshop (APAC)

April 24 – April 25

Middle East & Africa (MEA) Simplified Technical English Writing Workshop | A language for all industries

May 8 – May 9

▶️ Sign up now!

The common denominator for credible & concise documentation across industries
25

December 2017

The common denominator for credible & concise documentation across industries

by Shufrans Techdocs in Blog Comments Off on The common denominator for credible & concise documentation across industries

TCLoc Master article on The common denominator for credible & concise documentation across industries by Ms. Shumin Chen, Principal ASD-STE100 Trainer & Consultant.

First published on TCLoc Master Blog • University of Strasbourg • 4 December 2017

Safety, efficiency, and readability are the main considerations for the use of ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English (STE) in the aerospace and defense industries. For many other industries, such as machinery, automotive, electronics, IT, and medical equipment, another important consideration is to save on translation costs without compromising on translation quality. As technical communicators, navigating the tricky terrains of cost, quality, and efficiency in project management can be an extremely delicate equilibrium to maintain.

Standards

To technical communication professionals, it makes a lot of sense to use standards whenever possible to achieve similar results. However, standards in the documentation field are often disregarded. Documentation always kicks in when the product is already behind schedule, and over budget for the product life-cycle. However, we still want to stand behind what we do and make sure we provide a quality product. How does a written language standard potentially help us to achieve this and why do we need a controlled language such as STE to begin with?

Consider the following example:

Standard English:

Follow these instructions to prevent potential failures and damage and to ensure as safe and trouble-free functioning of the product as possible. Read this manual before starting to work with the filter system, familiarize yourself with the functionality and operation of the product and follow the instructions.

STE:

FOR SAFE OPERATION, OBEY THESE INSTRUCTIONS TO PREVENT POSSIBLE FAILURES.
READ THIS MANUAL BEFORE YOU START TO DO WORK WITH THE FILTER SYSTEM. KNOW THE PRODUCT FUNCTION AND OPERATION, AND OBEY ALL INSTRUCTIONS.

Which set of instructions lets you understand and complete the procedure with greater ease?

 

Read the full article here
Join a 2-day Simplified Technical English training workshop session in Berlin, Germany
5

September 2017

Join a 2-day Simplified Technical English training workshop session in Berlin, Germany

by Shufrans Techdocs in News & Events Comments Off on Join a 2-day Simplified Technical English training workshop session in Berlin, Germany

Quick facts

Dates: 19 – 20 November 2018

Location: Berlin, Germany

Length of training: 2 days

Early bird registration: Before 19 October 2018

Sign up early to enjoy a 20% training discount

Deadline for registration: 2 November 2018

Register

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

All our training materials are updated according to the ASD-STE100 Specification Issue 7, January 2017.

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.

“The Simplified Technical English course content and requirements provided by Shumin Chen were an absolute good fit with the TCLoc Master’s program. A technical communicator has to know about the existing specifications for technical documentation. Furthermore, this course helps the students to acquire new skills in order to enhance the accuracy and clarity of contents.” TCLoc Master’s Student, University of Strasbourg.

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?

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.

Request for the full course description

 

Changing TC Market in a Changing World
11

October 2015

Changing TC Market in a Changing World

by Shufrans Techdocs in News & Events Comments Off on Changing TC Market in a Changing World

Quick facts

Date: Wednesday, 14 October 2015

Time of event: 09:00 hrs – 18:00 hrs

Location: COEX Conference Room, Seoul, Korea

Register

About the Conference

The 2015 KTCA Annual Conference takes place on Wednesday, 14 October, 2015. We cordially invite you to participate in a great number of premier events and  opportunities for networking experiences geared up for technical communication  professionals.

Our principal Simplified English trainer & consultant Ms. Shumin Chen will discuss the topic of ‘Optimising what is between the tags.’ In this session, Ms. Chen will highlight some of the key benefits and rules of STE that can help to address 99% of the main challenges behind documentation processes, such as high cost, ease of translation, damage to product, delayed time-to-market and inadequate customer support.

2015 KTCA Conference Programme

Start time End time Conference Room A (317) Conference Room B (318)
09:30 10:10 New Technologies that Change Our Life and Industry The trend of TC in Japan – Activities of Japanese Companies on the Changes of Market in Consumer and Industrial Manuals
Kwangsun Choi, Saltlux Kuroda Satoshi, ISE Japan
10:10 10:30 Tea break
10:30 11:10 How the Advance of Technology Affects TC Industry Chinese TC Market Status and Provision
Seokhwan Shin, President of KTCA Han Tao, CAS (China)
11:10 11:50 Development of Graphic Symbols and International Standards Optimise What is Between the Tags
Sokjin Jang, Standards Lab. of KTCA Shumin Chen, Shufrans TechDocs (Singapore)
11:50 13:10 Lunch
13:10 13:50 Korean Language Processing and Machine Translation in ICT Industry Solution for Glocal Contents
Seunghyun Seo, Wordwords SDL
13:50 14:30 3D Visual Communication with XVL (eXtensible Virtual world description Language) Total Solution for Structuring Contents: from Authoring to Publishing in a Solution
Dongsu Choi, Go Sato(AST, Lattice Technology) EKR & Saltlux
14:30 15:00 Tea break
15:00 15:40 Centralized Management of Content for Manual Development Why is a Game Company, Nexon Training their Customer Service Representatives on Writing Skills?
Seonbae Kim, HansemEUG Suki Song, Professional Writer
15:40 16:20 Content migration for structuring contents Intuitive Freedom is What Consumers Want in a User Guide
Jiyoung Kim, Saltlux Hijin Gim, Korean Language Institute
16:20 17:00 Analysis on UX in User Guides “Do you like sentences?” In defense of a liberal arts approach to technical editing
Minhye Lee, HansemEUG Seongil Lah, AST FACC
17:00 17:20 Event

 

Conference highlights

  • Simplified Technical English (STE) as the basis for global documentation
  • How to meet your business requirements cost-efficiently
  • Why the need for Simplified English?
  • The problems associated with the use of Standard English
  • A brief history of controlled languages
  • What is Simplified English?
  • The benefits of Simplified English
  • Some of the rules
  • STE textual analysis
  • STE business case study
  • How to get started with STE

About the speaker

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 170 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.