Multilingual User Guides (a little long)

[Larry Grinnell <Larry_Grinnell -at- PTS -dot- MOT -dot- COM>]

Fellow "Whirlers",

I'm looking for any information some of you might be able to share about the
pros and cons of combining multiple languages into a consumer product (in this
case, radio pagers) operating instructions manual. My organization has been
challenged by our manufacturing organization, whose workers are having
difficulty packing the correct language user guide with our paging products.

Being a global company, we produce our operating instruction manuals in many
different languages, individually, and for purposes of corporate identity,
they all look alike--the only difference being a unique part number and barcode
associated with that part number (printed on the back of the book). Well, the
factory says they can't tell the difference (illiterate workers?), and can't
make their production rates if they have to individually "wand" every
manual's barcode.

Our U.S. factories (we also have manufacturing facilities in Europe and Asia)
produce products primarily for the Pan-American marketplace: The U.S., Canada,
Central America, South America. This requires four languages: American English,
Canadian French (Quebecois), Brazilian Portuguese, and as "generic" as possible
version of Spanish (whatever is most widely acceptable in Central and South
America).

There's the background. Here's the situation:

Manufacturing wants us to produce 4-language operating instruction manuals for
the Pan-Am marketplace. We (the technical communications organization) feel
it's a bad idea. Marketing thinks it's a bad idea. Purchasing thinks it's a
bad idea. We all told Manufacturing that it's a manufacturing problem. By
providing barcodes, we feel we have provided the appropriate tool for the
factory. It also avoids the problems associated with color coding, an
alternative suggestion by Manufacturing (extra printing costs to add another
color, problems with corporate identity, if European and Asian languages are
added, how many colors might we need?). Manufacturing also wields a lot of
power here, and will essentially force us to produce these multilingual
monstrosities unless we can provide them with quantitiative data (!) that
it's a bad idea.

Here's how we see the situation:

Pluses:
* Fewer part numbers to manage
* Less inventory to manage, saving storage space for us and suppliers.
* Quicker to global markets--able to launch product more places simultaneously.
* Vastly reduced chance for wrong documents packed with the product (but not
  eliminate--as our user guides all look alike, the correct language manual
  could be shipped, but it could be the wrong product!).
* Less dependence on competent operators: e.g., expecting them to "read" part
  numbers or use technological solutions such as barcode readers to ensure the
  correct document is shipped with the product.


Minuses:
* Higher unit costs for all. More languages mean more pages (by definition).
  More pages mean more (ever rising costs) paper.
* Foreign shipments, while growing, are still quite small compared to our U.S.
  sales (obviously I can't disclose those numbers!), therefore our U.S.
  customers will have to subsidize the cost of providing multilingual
  documentation to everyone else in this hemisphere in higher cost of their
  products (see below).
* Thicker books might not fit into current packing. A 12-page book would go to
  48 pages. It might require different binding techniques. A 20-page book would
  go to 80 pages! Remember--this is supposed to be a simple beeper!
* Additional document weight will most likely increase shipping costs.
* Longer document development leadtime, as all four languages would have to be
  ready at product shipment time (leadtime with the translators and the ensuing
  review process).
* May have to pass on the higher printing and distribution costs to our
  customers, all the while these same customers (distributors mainly) are
  exerting tremendous pressure to get us to LOWER our prices.
* There may be a big customer acceptance problem in the U.S. (xenophobia is
  rampant--especially in this era of "new conservatism," resulting in the
  increasing tacit social approval of mistrust and open hositility toward
  virtually any foreigner/foreign language) toward the distribution of
  multilingual user manuals. There is a real potential backlash,  e.g., "I
  bought an "American" product, and I only want "American" instructions in my
  manual. While multilingual instruction manuals may be acceptable to Sony,
  remember that Sony is a foreign company to begin with, so there is less
  "emotional baggage" with which to deal. Additionally, does someone in Brazil
  want to see French text, or does someone in Ecuador need to see the English
  text, and so on...?

So, there you have it. We don't have an inventory control problem. We always
have sufficient stocks of manuals to avoid that problem (reference the comments
of Robert Plamondon a few days ago). We have our suppliers on a tight leash
with just-in-time shipments to our plant, so we don't have a storage problem.

Europeans apparently don't have a problem with multilingual manuals. You see
them all the time. From their standpoint, with smaller markets it makes
economic sense to do multilingual docs--there is a definite cost advantage of
combining several documents into one big one if the overall press runs are
small.

That isn't the problem here. The fundamental problem is that the folks in the
factory seem incapable of reading a simple part number on the back of a manual
to ensure the correct one is shipped with the product.

The bottom line for my department is that we feel the benefits (fewer factory
quality rejects) are vastly outweighed by the increased costs of combining four
languages into a single user guide. Remember, pagers are a high-volume consumer
item. They sell in the millions. Add 10 cents (or more) per unit and you will
very quickly get into seven figures of cost increases. Oops, did I forget about
the added shipping costs?

Could you please electronically share your comments and feelings about this
topic with the group and me? Are there any studies, articles, or papers out
there about the impact of multilingual operating instructions? I'll be happy
to compile the comments into a relatively coherent posting in the very near
future. And hey, if you feel we SHOULD do multilingual user guides, tell us
why you think that is so, too.

Sorry for the length. I get carried away at times... Thanks in advance for
any assistance you can render.

Larry Grinnell

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 Larry Grinnell, Motorola, Inc., Paging Products Group
                 Boynton Beach, Florida
           Email: Larry_Grinnell -at- pts -dot- mot -dot- com
   "History Delights in Details"--John Quincy Adams
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