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Subject:RE: Windows Vista tone (was RE: Pet Peeves) From:<beth -dot- tripp -at- verizon -dot- net> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Thu, 15 Feb 2007 16:17:36 -0600 (CST)
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Kevin wrote:
"Any multilingual people on the list who can tell us if MS exhorts similarly for Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, German, Indian... writers? Or is the approach/tone a lot different in those cases? I'm making the distinction between what such cultures expect/prefer in their instructional documentation versus what MS might be suggesting the local writers should do... if there is any distinction. Is there?"
I'm not multi-lingual, but the company that I work for translates their manuals into 16 languages.
>From the translation service side of the product:
* Contractions are not allowed
* Remember to use articles (Click the icon or in the case of a touch screen application with a mouse, Select the....)
* One term per word (I missed one at the last review, we have a piece of hardware that is called a tip, then in the manual we had a section titled "Tips for..." I changed the last "tips" to Suggestions...)
* No gerunds, sorry about that. In simple English, How to Clean the Machine vs Cleaning the Machine.
And yes, you might need to use more words to say the same thing, but in translations, it's all about clarity.
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