admin on August 9th, 2010

by Jen O Neill Last April, the eruption by the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull caused an ash cloud that affected 10 million people worldwide and 77% of European civil aviation airspace. Over 100,000 flights were cancelled during the eight days of the crisis. One organisation at the centre of this event was Brussels-based Eurocontrol who are [...]

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admin on August 9th, 2010

by Jen O Neill One of the biggest problems I have when planning the localisation of the documents that I receive is the issue of embedded text in graphics. Embedded text is more expensive to deal with than using numbered callouts in a graphic. However, writers aren’t always keen on using numbered callouts with graphics [...]

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admin on June 2nd, 2010

by Jen O Neill Even if you only produce documentation in a single language and don’t deal with an international audience, using consistent terminology matters. SDL recently released the results of a terminology survey that they conducted earlier this year. The study is an interesting review on the trends and opinions on the subject of [...]

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We received the following request from the STC’s International Technical Communication SIG. Han Yu, Assistant Professor, English Department, Kansas State University, and Gerald Savage, Professor, English Department, Illinois State University, are looking for interesting stories from technical communicators to publish in “Negotiating International and Cross-Cultural Technical Communication: Stories of Technical Communicators”. Summary We request story [...]

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admin on May 25th, 2010

by Jen O Neill I’ve been reading up recently on agile environments. I don’t work in such an environment but have been struck at how often they discuss the importance of the office layout to encourage collaboration in a team. The preferred layout always cited is the open plan office. The layout of the workplace [...]

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admin on May 20th, 2010

by Jen O Neill Gripe no. 1. Where did “Why?” go? Nothing is more frustrating when reading a manual than when the instructions only seem to focus on “How” to do something without telling me “Why” I need to do it. Gripe no. 2. Receiving a manual for localisation that has serious usability problems. It [...]

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admin on April 23rd, 2010

by Karen Mardahl Wow! An STC event that is covered by the Huffington Post. Wow! STC France and STC Transalpine deserve a round of applause louder than exploding volcanos for putting together such an excellent event! I didn’t attend, but I can feel the waves of excitement pouring out of Paris. It seems everyone had [...]

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admin on March 30th, 2010

by Jennifer O Neill I work in the manufacturing sector and many of our products are outsourced to suppliers for development and manufacture, to be sold under our company’s brand name. The English terms I come across in the software and manuals that I check can often be amusing in their originality. A Chinese supplier [...]

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admin on March 29th, 2010

We have received an exciting announcement from our colleagues in TCeurope! The organisation representing national technical communication associations in Europe invites you to its Colloquium 2010. This year, to offer maximum benefit for technical communicators in Europe, the TCeurope Colloquium A new decade for technical communication: 2010 and beyond is scheduled to follow the STC’s [...]

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admin on March 29th, 2010

by Jennifer O Neill We work with words. Yet we handle numbers too in our work. And what I’ve noticed from working with manuals written by both professional and non-professional writers across many countries, sometimes with English as second language, is that often the cultural roots of the writer can be seen in how they [...]

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