Technical Translation: Usability Strategies for Translating Technical Documentation

Future Directions 
Despite its prominence in this book, Iconic Linkage is just one way of 
adapting translations to suit the cognitive abilities of readers. It may be one 
of the more drastic measures but it is still just one possible strategy. There 
are numerous conceivable ways in which texts can be engineered to im-
prove usability, some of which are quite simple, for example, making sure 
sentences are not excessively long or that we phrase instructions logically. 
As mentioned in Chapter 4, Iconic Linkage is not suitable for use in all 
texts as it relies on a certain level of repetition of concepts and information 
for it to be practical and effective.
The challenge now is to examine other ways of improving the usability 
of texts not just in technical genres but in other areas. It should be pointed 
out here that while this study was concerned with software user guides, 
there is no reason why Iconic Linkage could not be used to produce the 
same benefits in any kind of instructional text dealing with any subject. It 
would also be interesting to see whether translations of poems or plays 
could incorporate some aspects of cognitive psychology to trigger specific 
responses or thought processes or to inspire specific mental images in read-
ers. Another possible application of cognitive engineering would be to see 
whether persuasive texts such as advertisements could be made 
more per-
we 
suasive
thanks to a translator’s ability to engineer the translation. Could 
make legal texts more usable through translation despite the very strict
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Conclusions 
ventions and requirements that affect it? Could usability play a role in 
any other types of translation? 
Another area of potential interest both academically and professionally 
would be to examine the role of controlled languages on the usability of 
texts. One of the aims of Iconic Linkage is to restrict the amount of varia-
tion which can occur in the way identical information is expressed in a 
text. While this is admittedly rather simplistic in comparison, it is hard to 
ignore the similarities with the aims of controlled language. By specifying 
approved ways in which information can be expressed in a text, controlled 
language seeks to make texts easier to understand and/or easier to translate 
using translation memory (TM) or machine translation (MT) systems de-
pending on the particular controlled language. It is conceivable that using a 
comprehensive controlled language we can implement the basic notion of 
Iconic Linkage in a wider range of texts and achieve similar improvements 
in usability while at the same time improving translatability. 
The concept of Iconic Linkage also highlights new areas for research into 
TM tools. We saw how one such tool, 
Trados Translators’ Workbench
, 
was used to introduce Iconic Linkage in one version of the user guide. 
However, this process was not without its difficulties, chiefly because of the 
tool’s inability to identify semantically identical sentences. While TM tools 
can identify Iconic Linkage in a text, and indeed benefit immensely from it 
(is designed to work best when there are identical sentences in a text), an 
ideal situation would see TM tools play more of a role in introducing 
Iconic Linkage into a text in the first place. To do this, the technology used 
in TM tools would need to be re-evaluated to see how they can “under-
stand” text in order to identify semantically identical information. 
Iconic Linkage also has an impact on the business of translating user 
guides. Since Iconic Linkage essentially involves introducing consistency 
and repetition into a text and limiting the ways in which information can 
be phrased, it has a significant effect on the effectiveness of TM tools. These 
tools are essentially databases which are used to store sentences and their 
translations so that if the same sentence is encountered again during transla-
con
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Future Directions
It is also clear from the preceding chapters just how important it is for 
translators to be familiar with technical communication in general. As men-
tioned earlier, if we want to translate technical texts effectively and achieve 
the highest standards of quality it is essential that we understand how these 
texts are produced in the first place. Technical translations invariably com-
pete with original texts in the target language. As such, translations must be 
produced to the same standards and expectation as “native” texts. This leads 
us to question whether technical communication should be included as part 
of a translation programme. Already several institutions include modules on 
technical writing as part of their translator training programmes but it is 
clear that they are the exception rather than the rule. 
In short, technical translation can benefit immensely from technical 
communication in its broadest sense: it helps us produce texts that can 
compete with original target language texts; it helps us engineer texts to 
meet the quality goals of acceptability, accuracy and usability and it pro-
vides us with mechanisms for assessing their quality. It is essential that we 
regard technical translation as process where information is designed and 
engineered rather than as a purely textual process. 
tion, the existing translation is retrieved from the database and inserted into 
the text. Since Iconic Linkage increases the likelihood that a text will con-
tain an increased proportion of repetitions, the effectiveness of TM tools 
will be increased. The benefits of this to industry include faster turnaround 
times for translations, greater reusability and consistency of translations. And 
because repetitions reduce the total number of words to be translated, the 
overall translation costs are reduced. Add to this the improved usability in-
troduced by Iconic Linkage and we can see how beneficial Iconic Linkage 
could be to the translation industry. 
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