Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation

Findings of Pilot Study 
The results of the pilot study can be grouped into the following categories: 
Results of Time Measurements 
Error Rates 
Results of QUIS Questionnaire 
Implications for Experimental Design 
Results of Time Measurements 
In calculating the times for the various activities set out in the Task Event 
Log, it soon became apparent that this list contained criteria and aspects of 
subjects’ performance which could not be detected easily, if at all. Problems 
arose mainly because of the difficulty in establishing exactly what a subject 
was doing at a given point in time. Thus, it was not always possible to dis-
tinguish between a subject who was recovering from an error and a user 
who was performing a task normally.
Similarly, determining when users could be regarded as being unproduc-
tive was impossible when we consider that users may be actively thinking 
about a problem or looking for information on screen while giving the im-
pression of inactivity. One way of combating this would be to implement 
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Experiment to Test the Impact of Iconic Linkage
some form of think-aloud protocol but for reasons described already, the 
use of think-aloud protocols would be of limited use here. 
Another problem which arose in the study was that of different subjects 
having different levels of manual dexterity. The result of this was that 
measuring the time subjects spent navigating menus was not realistic quite 
simply because it took some subjects longer to physically make their way 
through the menus. It would seem more appropriate to treat menu naviga-
tion as discrete events whereby each occurrence of a subject search through 
a number of menus apparently looking for the desired option is counted on 
a “per incident” basis. Ultimately, the only useful and feasible measurement 
which could be carried out was the time taken to complete each task. Table 
4 lists the nature of each individual task. 
Task 1 
Create two new entries in 
QuicKey
Task 2 
Create a new log in 
DigiLog
and configure the automatic 
save settings and set the working directory. 
Task 3 
Logging task 
Task 4 
Format the text in the log 
Task 5 
Manually save the log in RTF format to a specific loca-
tion 
Table 4: Pilot Study Tasks 
It was not possible to record times for subtasks because of the difficulty in 
establishing precisely when one subtask had been fully completed. Some 
subjects returned to certain parts of tasks which confounded matters. It 
should also be remembered that Task 3 involved subjects logging a pre-
recorded speech. As such, this task always lasted for the same duration (i.e. 
5:03 minutes). Consequently, there was little sense in including the times 
for this task as the fixed time tells us nothing about a subject’s performance. 
This particular task is better used as an opportunity to examine the usability 
criteria exclusively. 
In the case of the Experimental group, problems arose with one subject 
who failed to follow instructions regarding reading both the familiarisation 
material sent out as part of Session 1 and with regard to reading the user 
guide for the specified length of time during Session 2. Consequently, the 
subject was unable to complete the tasks and as such, no data could be col-
lected for this particular subject. 
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Assessing Usability