Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation

Retrieving Information from Memory 
There are two ways of retrieving information from memory: 
recall 
and 
rec-
ognition
. In the case of recall, we reproduce the information from memory 
whereas with recognition, the information presented informs us that we 
have seen the information before. Recognition is less complex than recall 
because the information is provided as a cue (Dix 1998:36). 
However, because recall actually reproduces the information and not just 
the knowledge that we have seen it before, it makes sense to try to assist the 
recall process. When we try to recall information from LTM, we do not 
know what the information is or what the cues that aid retrieval are (Card 
et al. 
1983:82). However, if we place cues in STM we can assist recall. The 
problem here is that if we add cues to STM we rapidly fill the STM capac-
ity of 7±2 chunks of information. The result is that while we speed up re-
trieval, we actually slow down processing in STM. In the case of user 
guides, the text itself can be used to place cues in STM, but if too many 
cues are added, the reader’s progress through the text and task will be 
slowed down. 
Given the fact that we can recognise information far more easily than we 
can recall it (Preece 1994:118) it is useful to have users recognise the infor-
mation they need to perform a task rather than recall it. Of course, there is 
a trade-off between recall and recognition. Whereas recognised information 
is easily retrievable whenever the information is present and it does not re-
quire learning, recall can be much more efficient because information does 
not need to be located and assimilated. If, however, information is repeated 
several times, it will in time become automated in procedural memory, and 
subject to recall rather than just recognition (Dix 1998:34; Raskin 2000:
18-20).