Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation

Modules 
The majority of technical documents and user guides in particular consist of 
small, independent sections (Markel 2003:15). Weiss (1985:52) describes 
these sections as modules which are small, independent, functional entities, 
which are components of some larger entity. Modules are functional in that 
they do something, they perform some task. What is more, they perform a 
complete task with a clear beginning and end. 
Modules Are Independent 
Modules do not depend on their context. Since there is a clear beginning 
and end, the module can function in isolation and may even perform that 
function in more than one situation (e.g. a module explaining how to save 
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Technical Communication 
a file under a different name in Microsoft Excel would be equally effective 
at explaining how to copy a document to another location using 
Microsoft 
Word
). Thus, modules can, according to Weiss (
ibid.
), become part of a 
“library of reusable modules”. And so these modules eventually resemble a 
set of stock modules which can be picked and mixed by writers. 
We know that modules perform only one function (even though this func-
tion can be performed in a number of contexts). But this does not give us a 
clear understanding of how small a module should be. It could be argued 
that it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty how small is small. 
As modules get larger, they begin to incorporate more functions and begin 
to lose cohesiveness. On the other hand, however, as they get smaller, the 
links between modules become more complicated. So in the absence of any 
real alternative, we find ourselves faced with a balancing act of “not too 
much, but just enough”. A practical approach would be to concentrate on 
one “task” as opposed to a function.