Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation

Recorded Speech 
Since one of the tasks in the study involved logging a speech, it was neces-
sary to source a recording of a speech. Ordinarily, the DigiLog application 
would be used in conjunction with its sister application DigiTake to play 
pre-recorded audio files to which the log files would be appended. How-
ever, it was not possible to set up the client-server hardware needed to do 
this due to space and hardware considerations in the test venue. Instead, it 
was decided to record a speech and play it during the task independently of 
DigiLog using another playback device. 
As DigiLog is generally used in a political environment, it was felt that 
the speech to be logged should come from this domain. A range of 
speeches were examined before one featuring just two speakers – a male 
and a female – was selected. A speech involving a male and a female 
speaker was chosen to make it easier for the test participants (who are inex-
perienced in audio transcription) to differentiate between speakers. 
Once the text was selected, it was read out by a male and a female actor 
and recorded digitally. The recorded conversation was normalised and 
saved in MP3 format to reduce the file size and saved on CD. The file was 
played back on a separate PC to the one being used by participants. 
Task Event Log 
The quantitative data collected from the usability study consists of times 
and the number of occurrences of certain events. In order to collect this in-
formation, an event log consisting of two sections was created. The first 
section simply provided boxes for recording the times needed to perform 
each task as well as times for several other activities. 
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tion with the test administrator, if necessary. Furthermore, the need for re
was deemed to be of greater importance than convenient test admini-

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Assessing Usability 
The second section consists of a table listing each measurement criterion. 
Alongside each criterion, there is a list of numbers from 1 to 30 which is 
served, another number is crossed out. The total at the end of the test is 
then recorded. A vertical line is drawn after each task to allow a breakdown 
of instances for each task. Appendix 4 shows the Task Event Log.