Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation

Creating a User Profile 
In order to select appropriate participants for the usability study, it was nec-
essary to first identify the type of people who would make up the real users 
of the software being used. For the purposes of creating this profile, a user 
profile based on that presented by Dumas & Redish (1993:129-133) was 
developed (see Appendix 1). The purpose of this was to determine certain 
characteristics of the users and their backgrounds, skills and qualifications.
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Experiment to Test the Impact of Iconic Linkage
This questionnaire was completed by the software manufacturer in con-
sultation with a real user of the software. The questionnaire showed that 
users are always graduates with a beginner’s to intermediate knowledge of 
computing. None of the users could be defined as experts. The typical user 
has a background in an area other than politics or computing and all were 
recruited on the basis of their English language skills. The user profile ques-
tionnaire was subsequently used as the basis for selecting participants for the 
study later on. This will be described below. 
Creating an Informed Consent Form 
To ensure that all participants in the usability study understood their role in 
the evaluation process and to ensure that informed consent was obtained, it 
was necessary to produce a detailed consent form (see Appendix 2). 
This form sets out to explain the nature of subjects’ participation in the 
study and explains what type of data is recorded and how it will be used. 
To guarantee subjects’ welfare and to ensure that they do not feel pressur-
ised, stressed or otherwise influenced, the consent form sets out subjects’ 
rights and entitlements. 
Safeguarding Tester Identities 
Each participant or tester was assigned a unique identifier known as the 
Tester ID. 
All documents, files, tapes etc. produced in conjunction with a