Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation

Questions 4.1, 4.11 and 4.12 
Page layout was helpful: never/always 
Amount of information displayed on a page: inadequate/adequate 
Arrangement of information on page: illogical/logical 
The results for these questions converge between the two groups. The fact 
that there is no noticeable difference between the two groups can be ex-
plained in light of the fact that the questions relate to the amount of infor-
mation on the page and the layout of information on the page. Neither of 
these factors was altered in the study. In fact, every effort was made to en-
sure that these factors were identical in both versions. 
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indicating that there is a statistically significant difference between the average
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Assessing Usability 
Question 8.3
 
Remembering names and use of commands: difficult/easy 
This question relates to how easy subjects found it to remember the names 
of commands and how to use them. Both groups provide almost identical 
ratings indicating that they both felt that they could remember this infor-
mation with above average ease. However, it is clear from the Post-Test 
Survey (PTS) scores for the two groups that this is most certainly not the 
case. With an average PTS score of 9.3, the Control group clearly found it 
more difficult to remember commands than the Experimental group with a 
PTS score of 4.5. To put this in context, Control subjects remembered on 
average just 5.7 commands whereas subjects in the Experimental group re-
membered on average 11.5 commands; the Experimental group performed 
roughly twice as well as the Control group. 
In the other sections of the questionnaire, we can see quite striking dif-
ferences in the satisfaction levels of both groups with regard to the various 
aspects of the user guide, product and tasks. In the following paragraphs we 
will examine these sections.