Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation

Entry 
Beginner 
Intermediate 
Power 
Outsider 
Trust 
Self-confidence 
Initiative 
Competence
149 
,

---

Understanding Users 
guaranteed or even efficient. The chapter outlined the broad phases in-
volved in turning ephemeral information stored in STM into lasting 
knowledge stored in LTM through learning. Some of the various obstacles 
to this process were also presented. 
This chapter provided us with the foundations upon which we can pre-
sent a more detailed discussion of usability and how we can take human 
cognitive abilities and limitations into account to ensure that when we 
translate user guides, they are as usable as possible. The task facing us now is 
to take this knowledge and put it to practical use in the translation of user 
guides. The following chapter will look at how we can engineer texts to 
take advantage of the strengths of human cognition and compensate for its 
limitations. 
150 

---

Chapter 4 
Usability Engineering 
forces. (Schneiderman 1998: 18) 
This chapter deals with usability engineering and how we can adapt user 
guides or “interfaces” to suit humans while making their work as simple 
and undemanding as possible. In essence, usability engineering allows us to 
put our understanding of human cognition into practice. The chapter will 
discuss how an understanding of cognition can inform the way we look at 
the translation of user guides to make them more usable and to ensure that 
users can work with a product effectively and efficiently. First of all it is 
necessary to define what we mean by interface and then apply this defini-
tion to texts. By treating user guides as a form of interface between users 
and a software application, we are able to draw on various principles of in-
terface design and set clear usability goals which will guide the translation 
process. We will then explore ways of examining user guides from an inter-
action point of view to identify areas where we can make improvements. 
This chapter will then introduce Iconic Linkage (IL) as one possible 
method for improving the usability of user guides. The chapter will present 
the origins and nature of IL and proceed to discuss the potential benefits of 
IL and how it can improve usability.