Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation

Examples of Guidelines 
Where principles are goals or ideals, they do not say how to achieve the 
goal. Guidelines are more specific goals and they explain how a principle 
can be implemented. Dumas & Redish (
ibid.
) state that any one principle 
can give rise to numerous guidelines although not all of them may be appli-
cable at the same time. Thus, guidelines are derived from principles for a 
specific context and set of circumstances. Crucially, Dumas & Redish claim 
that interface design principles and guidelines are only intended to supple-
ment usability testing and that there is no guarantee of a completely usable 
design, even if all of the relevant principles and guidelines are followed. 
However, adhering to guidelines makes the incidence of serious usability 
flaws less likely. Guidelines based on the aforementioned principles might 
include: 
Always phrase instructions consistently 
Avoid excessively long sentences 
Only use approved terminology 
Use the same formulations and constructions for sentences 
Avoid confusing verb tenses 
Rules
Although guidelines are more explicit than principles, they are not explicit 
enough with regard to actually implementing principles. Thus, Dumas & 
Redish introduce the notion of “local rules” (1999:58). Local rules provide 
clear, unambiguous and repeatable strategies for implementing the knowl-
edge provided by principles. For example, if we use the principle “be con-
sistent” and develop a guideline for it like “use the same formulations and 
constructions for sentences”, we could produce the following rules: 
Always use active verb constructions when describing actions performed 
by the system 
Only refer to the product as X, never as Y or Z. 
The verb “run” must be used instead of “execute” or “call”. 
Conditional sentences must take the form “If [condition], then [action]” 
Sentences must not exceed 20 words 
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Usability Engineering 
A significant difference between guidelines and local rules is that while 
guidelines may conflict with each other in certain situations, rules aalways 
apply; they are absolute constants in the context where they apply. 
Creating and compiling sets of guidelines and rules is complex and time 
consuming according to Dumas & Redish (1999:60). In this regard, they 
say that it is not always necessary to do so because there are numerous 
sources of guidelines and rules available. Such guides include the Microsoft 
Style Guide, the SAP Guide to Writing English, AECMA and so on. These 
publications provide a way of implementing various principles and guide-
lines without the effort or expense of drawing up complete sets of rules for 
each context. 
Iconic Linkage 
With the knowledge gained from the previous sections, the next step is to 
establish how to improve the interface, i.e. the user guide. Having discussed 
the concepts of principles, guidelines and rules it is now time to implement 
our understanding of human cognition, usability and cognetics. We can do 
this by selecting one guideline and implementing it in a practical context in 
order to gauge its overall effect on usability. The following sections intro-
duce Iconic Linkage as one possible guideline and discuss its associated rules 
while seeking to elaborate on its practical implementation. The potential 
benefits of implementing this guideline will also be discussed.