Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation

Preparing the User Guides 
The single most time-consuming and labour-intensive part of the prepara-
tions involved sourcing and editing the user guide. Firstly, a suitable user 
guide had to be found. The main challenge here was finding software that 
was both suitable for use in the study and which had documentation with 
the appropriate content and textual features (i.e. low levels of latent Iconic 
Linkage). The expression “appropriate content and textual features” en-
compasses a number of different factors. Obviously, the user guide needed 
to be of an acceptable professional standard from a quality perspective. 
Quality was assessed on the basis of completeness of information, spelling, 
readability, layout etc. 
Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, Iconic Linkage is only of use 
where the same or similar information is presented at various points in the 
text. The challenge here was to find a user guide where the instances of 
non-isomorphic, but semantically identical text were not so closely packed 
together as to render the learning aspect of Iconic Linkage irrelevant (e.g. 
identical information in consecutive sentences) yet not so far apart as to ne-
cessitate reading hundreds of pages of text. 
The nature of the software itself plays a crucial role in the presence of 
these features in that it is simply not possible to create full Iconic Linkage in 
the text where there is no similarity in the functions or procedures in the 
software.
Selected Test Software 
The user guide selected for use in the study was an extract from the docu-
mentation for the 
DigiTake
parliamentary recording suite developed by 
DigiTake Software Systems Ltd
. In addition to allowing the use of their 
software, the company also provided invaluable technical assistance in using 
the product as part of this study. DigiTake is a suite of digital audio re-
cording applications used to record the proceedings of meetings, debates 
etc. in digital audio format. This software is designed for use in venues such 
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Assessing Usability 
as parliamentary chambers, large meetings, tribunals etc. and is currently in 
use in the Irish Parliament (Dáil Éireann).
The extract used deals with an application called DigiLog. This applica-
tion is used in conjunction with the 
DigiTake
digital recording package and 
is used by parliamentary reporters to log the proceedings of meetings etc. 
As each speaker rises and begins speaking, the reporter types the speaker’s 
name either manually or using a shortcut and then types the first 4-5 words 
spoken. Once this is done, the reporter waits until the next speaker takes 
the floor and then repeats the process. This is repeated for each speaker. In 
effect, the reporter logs the turn-taking in a meeting to produce a log 
which serves as an outline when preparing the full transcript of the pro-
ceedings at a later stage. The study emulated this procedure with the par-
ticipants playing the role of the parliamentary reporter. 
This software was regarded as particularly appropriate because, although 
it is based almost exclusively on industry-standard technology and uses 
word-processing technology familiar to most users, it is designed for a very 
specific area of application. Consequently the procedures, rather than the 
technology, are quite specific and specialised and are unlikely to be familiar 
to participants. This is important in order to ensure that participants are re-
lying on the user guide and not on their own prior knowledge or problem-
solving skills. The familiarity of the word-processing environment serves to 
provide reassurance for participants and also to eliminate the need for more 
detailed profiling of participants’ previous knowledge. Another advantage of 
DigiLog
is that various steps and procedures are common to different proc-
esses. This means that the likelihood of similar information occurring in the 
user guide is high and as such, the user guide is more likely to benefit from 
iconic linkage.