by Jen O Neill When writing a Dutch address in English, which country name format do you use: Netherlands or The Netherlands? Both work. Indeed on some English-language web sites you may even see both formats used. I admit I have always used the “The Netherlands” format in addresses, as do many people. The Dutch [...]
by Jen O Neill We’re increasingly hearing about how important it is for us to manage our terminology as it impacts documentation quality, translation cost, branding and customer satisfaction. It’s no secret that most terminology problems start in the source content. Unfortunately the inconsistent use of terms in user interfaces, online and printed documentation, marketing [...]
by Jennifer O Neill HONORABLE COLLEAGUE, WE ARE THE TECHNICAL WRITERS. YOU WERE RECOMMENDED BY AN ASSOCIATE WHO ASSURED US IN CONFIDENCE OF YOUR ABILITY AND RELIABILITY TO CARRY OUT PENDING REVIEWS IN GREAT MAGNITUDE WITHOUT RAISING ANY MISGIVING ATTITUDE. CONSEQUENTLY WE HAD THE COURAGE TO CRAVE AN INDULGENCE FOR THIS IMPORTANT BUSINESS FOR CHECKING [...]
by Jen O Neill Buy many products in Europe and inside the box you’ll probably find a printed multilingual manual. The manual could contain over a dozen languages. They can often elicit a groan from readers as they can initially be overwhelmed by all the languages in front of them. This type of document is [...]
Continue reading about When the manual speaks in many tongues: The multilingual manual
by Jennifer O Neill I oversee the localisation of my company’s video and an important part of the localisation process is the in-country review. This is where the translated material is sent to an individual in the target country to do a linguistic review. The in-country review plays an important role in ensuring the quality [...]
by Jennifer O Neill Although my focus at work is producing documentation for the EMA market (Europe, Middle East and Africa), it’s always interesting to learn about what’s happening in other regional markets. At the 2009 tekom conference in Weisbaden, Germany, a speaker from the Japan Technical Communication Association gave a presentation on frequent problems [...]
Continue reading about Producing documentation for the Japanese market
by Jennifer O Neill At the 2009 tekom conference in Weisbaden, Germany, Scott DeLoach of ClickStart Inc. gave an excellent overview of what research has found on the usability of user assistance. Research has found that Users prefer Arial over Verdana and Tahoma. The two latter fonts were developed for onscreen reading. People tend not [...]