Minding your language Setting procedures in stone

Transcription

Mindingprocedures
Setting
your language
in stone
How
A
legacy
do you
of user
tailor
instructions
your tone from
to your
theaudience?
ancient world
Communicator
The Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators
Spring 2010
Exploring translation
across borders and sectors
Reviewing version 6
of MadCap Flare
Asking who are today’s
internal communicators?
Looking at the TC
scene in New Zealand
Contents
12
Communicator The quarterly journal of the ISTC
ISSN 0953-3699
Providing early sight of the next release of the popular authoring tool
16
Production team
Editor
Marian Newell, [email protected]
or +44 (0) 1344 626895
Copyeditors
Tony Eyre and Nick Robson
Colum McAndrew
20
You think PDFs are old hat, don’t you?
Nigel Curtis
Taking a tour of the capabilities of interactive Portable Document Format
Tim Joynson, Linda Robins and Jean Rollinson
Layout
Newell-Porter Limited, www.newellporter.co.uk
22
Advertising
Tech comms in New Zealand
Steve Moss
Discussing the development and activities of TCANZ
Felicity Davie, [email protected]
or +44 (0) 1344 466600
Subscriptions
26
ISTC Office: [email protected] or +44 (0) 20 8253 4506
Submissions
www.istc.org.uk/Publications/communicator.htm
copy by
published
copy by
published
copy by
published
copy by
published
31 January
21 March
30 April
21 June
31 July
21 September
31 October
21 December
The Editor welcomes articles and letters for publication.
Opinions expressed by contributors are not necessarily
those of the ISTC. All articles are copyright and are the
property of the authors, who have asserted their moral
rights. For permission to reproduce an article, contact the
author directly or through the Editor. All trademarks are
the property of their registered owners. Advertisements
are accepted on the understanding that they conform to
the British Code of Advertising Practice. Acceptance of
an advertisement for publication does not imply that a
product or service has the ISTC’s endorsement.
Theresa Cameron
Authoring/translation in the life sciences
Richard Chin and Libor Safar
Reviewing the context for work within in this highly regulated sector
34
Languages of Central and Eastern Europe
Jurek Nedoma
Explaining the similarities and differences within this group of languages
40
Back issues
www.istc.org.uk/Members_Area/
communicator_archive.htm (ISTC members only)
A guide for inducing dreams
Introducing a Babylonian manual from the fourth century BC
30
Guidelines
Spring
Summer
Autumn
Winter
Standardising a documentation suite
Completing the project to turn disparate documents into a cohesive suite
Proofreaders
Deadlines
MadCap Flare version 6.0
Matthew Ellison
Who are today’s internal communicators?
Catherine Park
Exploring the dramatic changes in this field over recent years
44
Single sourcing with TemplateMapper
Andy Lewis
Developing content for multiple outputs in unstructured FrameMaker
47
Editing
48
Book review
The Institute of Scientific and
Technical Communicators (ISTC)
49
International standards
Airport House
Purley Way, Croydon, CR0 0XZ
E: [email protected]
T: +44 (0) 20 8253 4506
W: www.istc.org.uk
F: +44 (0) 20 8253 4510 50
A day in the life
Printed on recycled paper using vegetable inks and
low volatile organic compound (VOC) chemistry.
cover A Babylonian tablet for soliciting dreams (see pages 26–28)
Paul Beverley
Jean Rollinson
Richard Hodgkinson
Mark Swaine
© Trustees of the British Museum
Communicator Spring 2010
ISTC news
as she looks beyond the commonly
considered origins of our profession to
our Babylonian predecessors. Combined
with our continuing series and regular
columns, this makes for an unusual
issue that I hope you’ll find stimulating.
Finally, be sure to read these opening
pages as there’s a lot of news from
the ISTC. Opposite you’ll find details
of this year’s TCUK, the UK’s technical
communication event, and subsequent
pages cover the burgeoning local area
groups and the new mentoring scheme.
Technical Commu
Reaching out with Communicator
Editorial
In this issue
We’re looking beyond our usual horizons
in several ways. Catherine Park of the CiB
takes us into the world of the internal
communicator, exploring the impact of
new communication channels on the way
that organisations interact with their staff.
Steve Moss of Technical Communicators
Association of New Zealand (TCANZ)
discusses the professional scene there,
with some key survey findings. Libor Safar
and Richard Chin of Moravia describe the
particular challenges posed by the life
sciences for authors and translators, while
Jurek Nedoma of Lido-Lang focuses on the
problems presented by the languages
of Central and Eastern Europe.
As if all that weren’t enough, Theresa
Cameron takes us far back in time
We are fortunate to have many event
organisers distributing copies to their
delegates: I’d like to say ‘thank you’ and
‘welcome’ to them, respectively. For
details of the latest events, visit www.
tceurope.org, http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pcs,
www.gala-global.org, www.writersua.com,
www.inspirationdays.xtrf.eu and
www.rce.csuchico.edu/localize.
Article writing: tip #14
Don’t be afraid to express views. We’ve
found it difficult to sustain opinion-based
content, such as readers’ letters, in recent
years. This may be a result of the range
of online forums available through which
people can air their views. However, I think
there is a place in a print publication for
contributors to voice opinions, provided
that their ideas are well considered and
logically presented. Why not try to write an
essay on a topic that you think is, or will be,
important to technical communicators? C
Marian Newell FISTC
The launch of the Technical
Communication UK conference in 2009
was a huge success, with enthusiastic
support from delegates, speakers,
sponsors and exhibitors alike. The
team will be starting work on the 2010
conference soon, and we’re really
excited about making it even bigger
and better than last year’s event.
Feedback from 2009
We collected a lot of useful feedback
during and after the 2009 event which
we’re using as the basis of our plans for
this year. Delegates told us they liked:
 The broad variety of talks and workshops
 Off-centre talks from speakers in
related fields
 Venue and organisation
Recommendations for improvements were:
 Smoother online booking
 More case studies
 Updated website to make videos and
slides available afterwards.
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unication UK 2010: 21-23 September, Oxfordshire
The venue for the event is:
The Oxford Belfry
Milton Common
Nr Thame
Oxfordshire
OX9 2JW
This hotel hosted the ISTC’s 2004 Conference.
It provided very pleasant facilities then and
has since benefited from a £5 million
refurbishment.
We’re really sorry we didn’t do so well
with the videos and slides last year; we
simply ran out of time! If you have the
skills and time to make this happen,
we’d love to hear from you.
Call for speakers
exhibitors confirm they’ll be supporting
us again in 2010, so there’s no doubt
that Technical Communication UK
offers valuable opportunities here. We’re
reviewing the sponsorship packages and
we’ll publish them to our website soon.
We’re not quite ready yet but we’ll be
inviting submissions from speakers in
April. Keep an eye on the conference
website for the call for speakers.
We’ll be particularly keen to hear
from you this year if you’ve been
working on a project that you’d like to
share as a case study. Perhaps you’ve
changed the software you’re using,
implemented a new process or started
producing materials in a new format?
If you’re new to presenting or you’re
not sure if your topic will be of interest,
get in touch for a chat: [email protected]
TCUK10, in partnership with ...
Sponsor and exhibitor opportunities
Book early!
We’ve already had 2009 sponsors and
Technical Communication UK 2009
sold out. We’ve increased our capacity
this year, but we strongly recommend
you book early to reserve your place.
Rates for 2010 will be announced in
April and booking will open in May.
There’s a significant discount for ISTC
members, so don’t forget to renew your
membership to take advantage of it.
Last year, we partnered with X-pubs to
put together a stream of presentations
Join the team
that brought experts from the specialist
got a great team of volunteers to work
TheWe’ve
Oxford
Belfry
field of XML publishing together with
on this year’s conference, but more help
Milton Common
technical communicators.
is always welcome. E‑mail [email protected]
Nr Thame
This year, we’ll still have plenty of
if you’d like to join the team.
Oxfordshire
OX9 2JW
XML-related talks, but we’ll be partnering
with a different organisation in another
in touch
Tel:Stay
01844
279381
related specialist field. We’re not ready
For news and updates:
Fax: 01844 277560
to tell you what the field is yet, but we’re
 Visit our website
[email protected]
confident that this partnership will give Email:
www.technicalcommunicationuk.com
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us an exciting and interesting third
 Follow us on twitter
stream for the 2010 conference.
www.twitter.com/tcuk_conf C
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ISTC news
Presidential
address
Although it is unlikely that we will be
able to pay for any of these courses
for you, we will endeavour to secure
member discounts and will actively
promote suitable courses to you.
Mentoring – passing on the skills
The New Year celebrations being well and
truly over, welcome to 2010! I know that
things have been difficult recently and
that 2009 was not the best of years. I am
speaking from personal experience here,
as I have only recently secured a contract
that enables me to bring money into my
company for the first time since August
last year. For those of you in similar
circumstances, hang on in there. I am
noticing things starting to improve. There
has been a recent increase in the number
of jobs advertised on job boards for both
permanent and contract staff. Although
it may still be a little early, it does look
as though confidence is returning to the
economy and that businesses are looking
to invest, rather than just survive.
One thing that can help us all in difficult
times is to ensure that our skills are kept
up-to-date and relevant. We, as the ISTC,
can assist in this by a programme of…
Continuous Professional Development (CPD)
CPD is a major initiative for 2010. The
Education Group is in the process of
reorganisation and I want to expand its
remit. Although the Open Learning Course
will be a major focus for the group, I
want them also to work on developing a
CPD scheme and finding and promoting
suitable short courses that can assist us
all in developing our skills and careers.
I intend the CPD scheme to support
you throughout your career, when:
 You are starting out and need training
in basic technical communication skills.
 You have developed further and need
specialised training in tools or methods.
 You are moving into a supervisory or
managerial position, for which you
need to acquire the necessary skills.
One of the first steps in the CPD scheme
is the launch of the ISTC Mentoring
scheme (see Linda Robins’ article on
Mentoring on page 10 of this issue). I also
invite those who are more experienced
among us to offer their services as
mentors. There is a vast amount of
experience out there: let the ISTC make
use of it! If you want to volunteer,
contact the ISTC Office or Linda direct.
Awards 2010 – call for nominations
The Institute
The Institute of Scientific and Technical
Communicators is the UK’s leading
body for people engaged in technical
communication. It provides a forum
for members to exchange views and
represents the profession in dealings with
other professional bodies and with the
government. It was formed in 1972 from the
amalgamation of three existing associations.
To join the ISTC or change your grade,
contact the ISTC Office on 020 8253 4506,
at [email protected] or at Airport House,
Purley Way, Croydon, CR0 0XZ.
Council members
President
Simon Butler
[email protected]
Treasurer
Peter Fountain
[email protected]
Website
As you are probably aware, the ISTC
presents two awards, the Horace
Hockley award and the Mike Austin
award. I am inviting you all to submit
nominations for either (or both) of these
awards. Send your nominations, with
a brief justification, to the ISTC Office.
All nominations will be judged by the
ISTC Council, which will make the final
decision. The criteria for the awards are:
Horace Hockley award
This is an annual award and is
presented to someone who has made a
considerable contribution to the technical
publications industry over a period of
time. It is in recognition for promoting
the industry across other industries
and boundaries, and for promoting
quality in the industry, whether in
training or within the workplace.
Mike Austin award
This is a periodic award and is presented
to someone who has made a considerable
contribution to the ISTC over a period
of time. The award is in recognition for
promoting the Institute’s work or for
contributing to its success and growth.
John Lee
Technical Communication UK 2010
UK Technical Communication Awards
Plans for TCUK10 are well underway. It
will be held at the Oxford Belfry on 21–23
September. If it’s half as good as TCUK09,
it’ll be well worth attending. For details,
contact the ISTC Office or visit www.
technicalcommunicationuk.com. C
Simon Butler FISTC
[email protected]
Publications
Marian Newell
[email protected]
Education
Alison Peck
[email protected]
David Farbey
[email protected]
Marketing and events
Paul Ballard
[email protected]
International
Theresa Cameron
[email protected]
Membership
Iain Wright
[email protected]
Linda Robins
[email protected]
Local area groups
Rachel Potts
[email protected]
History and salary survey
Emma Bayne
[email protected]
Galyna Key
[email protected]
InfoPlus+ newsletter
Bob Hewitt (layout and artwork)
[email protected]
Andrew Marlow (content)
[email protected]
Local area groups for technical communicators
The ISTC local area groups are an
opportunity for fellow technical
communicators to network and share
knowledge and expertise. The groups
are open to everyone from all industries
in the local area (you don’t need to be
an ISTC member to attend), and it’s free.
The groups meet at intervals over the
year and hold talks, peer discussions,
demonstrations and social evenings.
Meetings will be driven by members, so
suggestions for discussion topics, meeting
locations and the agenda are welcomed.
The ISTC has already set up local area
groups around Cambridge, London,
Manchester and Glasgow. New groups
are being launched around Newcastle
upon Tyne (North East), Bristol (South
West), Stafford and Walldorf (Germany).
This is an invitation to join the ISTC
local area group in your region. Join
the network and help to strengthen the
technical communication profession
present throughout the country.
If you’re interested in attending or
you’d like more information, please contact
the ISTC Office or your local organiser. C
Contact details
If you are a…
 Technical author
 Illustrator
 Translator
 Information designer
 Editor
 Indexer
 Multimedia designer
 Graphic designer
 Publication manager
 Software designer
 E-learning specialist
 Technical trainer
 Technical communicator
and you want to…
 Meet other technical professionals
 Share expertise
 Benefit from peer support
or you…
 Want to find out more about technical
communication
 Have just realised you are a technical
communicator!
ISTC Office
Join an ISTC local area group!
London local area group
See panel on facing page.
New groups
North East local area group
Organiser: Janine Weightman
T: +44 (0) 191 295 9110
South West local area group
Organiser: Elena Amandola
T: +44 077 11 371 700
Stafford local area group
Organiser: John Kearney
Walldorf (Germany) local area group
Organiser: Paul Higgins
Existing groups
Cambridge local area group
Organiser: Richard Truscott
Organiser: David Farbey
North West England local area group
ISTC members: e-mail addresses
Please remember to inform the ISTC Office when your e-mail address changes. It’s a
great help for our administration staff to be able to contact you using this medium,
saving them time and the ISTC money — both of which can then be put to better use.
Even if you think you’re probably up to date, most of us have a sig block set up so it’s
the work of seconds to send the fullest version to [email protected]. This is one way in
which you can help the ISTC at absolutely no cost to yourself. Please, do it now!
Organiser: David Jones
West of Scotland local area group
Organiser: Katja McLaughlin
Elena Amandola MISTC
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13/11/2009 09:27
ISTC news
Online groups
Member news
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/ISTC_Discussion
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/ISTC_IASIG
New members
Legal disclaimers
Member
If a user guide is not accurate, does
the disclaimer ‘This guide is not
comprehensive and has no legal force’
protect an organisation from a lawsuit?
You are trying to say, ‘We did our best,
but we are not perfect. If we made a
mistake, do not blame us.’ The question is
whether the disclaimer indemnifies your
organisation if the information is not
correct. However, if the information in the
user guide is not reliable, then why did
your organisation supply the user guide?
In UK law and US law, documentation
must be fit for purpose. A disclaimer
cannot change that fact. ‘Due diligence’
is an important legal principle. If damage
or injury is a result of a bad user guide,
the only defence is that reasonable care
was used to make the user guide.
Possibly, a lawyer wanted the
disclaimer to be in the user guide. If you
want to remove the disclaimer, make
sure that you have written approval from
a senior person in your organisation.
If you work as a freelance technical
communicator, you need to think about
two possible problems:
 Your client’s customers make a claim
against your client.
 Your client makes a claim against you.
Most replies included a disclaimer such
as, ‘I am not a lawyer. Do not rely on
my opinion. Get legal advice.’
MA in technical communication
A member who wants to study for an MA
in technical communication asked, ‘… as
an author with over 30 years’ experience, I
wondered if it was actually worth doing?’
Members discussed technical communi
cation courses from the following universities:
 Portsmouth (www.port.ac.uk/
courses/coursetypes/postgraduate/
MATechnicalCommunication/)
 Sheffield Hallam (www.shu.ac.uk/
prospectus/computing/technical_
communication/)
 Limerick (www.ul.ie/techcomm/).
The primary question to ask is
whether having an MA is an advantage
compared to not having an MA.
An MA in a career-related topic
shows that you are serious about your
profession. However, an academic
qualification does not guarantee that
you will get a better job. Many good
technical communicators do not have a
technical communications degree.
An MA gives you a theoretical
background to your daily professional
practice and enables you to develop a wider
perspective. You will know more about why
you do what you do. A member who has a
technical communication MA wrote that
because she has the highest qualification [in
the UK] in the field of technical communi
cation, she has the confidence to talk
to new clients and to give them advice.
Reuse of content
One member must produce a proposal
to make the development of technical
information more efficient. He wants to
show his colleagues how they can use
content more than once. People work
in different departments, but they
write technical content and marketing
content about the same subject.
Members suggested the following
tools and suppliers:
 XMetaL (http://justsystems.com)
 Quark (www.quark.com)
 Mekon (www.mekon.com)
 Ovidius (www.ovidius.com).
Some people wrote that reuse of
content is not about tools. It is
about strategy, business processes,
who ‘owns’ the content, people, and
methods of writing. One member
wrote, ‘Start with a small project to
demonstrate the value of a CM system.’
The first step is to analyse the content
that an organisation produces. The
analysis can be a long and difficult task.
Sometimes, the task is political, because
department managers feel threatened
by attempts to control ‘their’ content.
Possible problems with reuse of
content are as follows:
 The style of a help topic is not
applicable to marketing material.
 You cannot expect a marketer to
learn how to use an XML editing tool.
 To get to the target of ‘write once,
use many times’, you will probably
need more style guidelines and better
processes than you have now.
Sources of information include:
 Books and articles by JoAnn Hackos
 ‘Authoring for maximum reuse’, Tim
Voss, Communicator, Winter 2006
 A website search for articles about
‘content strategy’.
Juliet Adlington
London
Mark Errington
Hereford
Gary Foster
Staffordshire
Nicholas Kenney
Australia
Emma Quigley
Galway
Heather Raybould
London
Francis Turton
Cambridge
Junior member
Tristan O’Gorman
Co Tipperary
Associate
Louise Byrne
Essex
Student
Robert Colvin
Peterborough
Geoff Convery
Lincolnshire
Diptesh Dasandi
Essex
Thomas Meechan
Suffolk
Lorcan Ryan
Limerick
Transfers
Fellow
Paul Barlow
Derby
Member
Trevor Grout
Middlesex
Colum McAndrew
Surrey
Andrew Owen
Chepstow
Joanne Warmsley
Oxfordshire
Mark Tamblyn
Altrincham
Junior member
Tracy Duckett
Luton
Rejoiners
John Burns
Birmingham
Andy Parrott
Derby
Rank Xerox award
A trophy was found in the old ISTC
office. Something that looks similar to
five vertical organ pipes is on the top of
the base. The text on the trophy is:
The Rank Xerox Award
ISTC/Technical Documentation
If you have information about the
award, please tell Emma Bayne (emma.
[email protected]). C
Mike Unwalla FISTC
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10 ISTC news
Mentoring scheme opened to Junior members
How it started
Conference does make a difference.
One of the suggestions made during the
brainstorming session at the 2006 ISTC
Conference was the introduction of a
mentoring scheme. This was suggested
as one method of raising the awareness
of the ISTC as an institute.
Another suggestion from a member in
discussions between sessions was the
introduction of a grade of membership
between Student and Member for less
experienced technical communicators
who are gaining professional experience,
instead of including them with people who
have an interest in the profession. (Both
were formerly classed as Associates.)
What happened then?
Creating a new grade
We introduced a Junior member grade
this year (as approved at last year’s AGM).
Linking the new grade to the mentoring scheme
With the new grade comes the
opportunity to develop the mentoring
scheme and take the ISTC further on
the route to a Continuing Professional
Development (CPD) scheme.
Preparing to launch the scheme
As well as soliciting views from Council
members, we took soundings from other
Mentors
Mentoring scheme
Purpose
Mentoring will involve guiding a newly qualified or inexperienced technical communicator
in the requirements of the profession. It is intended as an extension of formal training
and to assist in:
 Developing individuals in their profession
 Selecting further training and education options
 Applying techniques learned during training in real-world situations
 Developing an appreciation of the compromises that must be made in the
commercial environment.
Availability
The mentoring scheme is now open to all Junior members of the ISTC. In the future, we
will review the possibility of extending the scheme as follows:
 To Members (MISTC) who are new, say, to a sector or role
 To Student members who require specific guidance supplementary to that supplied
by their tutors.
Duration
Ideally, we are helping individuals to progress to Member grade (MISTC). Typical timescales
will suit this objective but we won’t rule out longer term mentoring if it is useful.
Junior member
A new grade for the technical
communication practitioner who is
active in the profession but is relatively
inexperienced; the next step in the
progression of a student who has
successfully completed a period of study.
members of the Professional Associations
Research Network (PARN). This is a large
network of associations, some similar
Qualifications
Mentors will have extensive experience (more than 10 years) as practising technical
communicators, ideally in a senior or supervisory role. Additionally, formal training
in technical communication at an advanced level would be valuable. Mentors will be
Fellows (FISTC) or suitably experienced and qualified Members (MISTC). Involvement as
a mentor can be considered as a qualification towards upgrade to Fellow.
Roles
Mentors will be experienced in nominated role(s) and sector(s); good communicators;
good (virtual) listeners; committed to the ISTC and the scheme; discreet; flexible; patient;
understanding; aware of what is needed for success. Mentors will: provide long-term
informal support; give feedback and guidance; understand the special nature of the role;
recognise their own strengths and limitations, arranging for another ISTC member to
provide information or guidance as needed.
Scope
Mentoring will take place by e‑mail and in other forms as agreed. Individual mentors will
decide whether to make other methods available (such as telephone or face-to-face).
Exclusions
As mentors are corporate members of the ISTC, they cannot and will not get involved in any
situation that may compromise either themselves or the ISTC. Specifically, they cannot offer:
 Job-seeking services (beyond directing an individual to relevant agencies or websites)
 Legal or financial advice
 Advice on employment disputes or employment legislation
 Advice on specific work-related issues, in particular any issue directly associated with
an individual’s or organisation’s work practices, delivery schedules, development
tools, standards, human resources policies or disciplinary processes.
in size to the ISTC and others that are
significantly larger. When asked if they
had CPD schemes, respondents said:
Yes
11
No
13
Currently establishing 6
Considering the possibility 3
Methods for meeting varied, although
there was a predominantly even split
between e‑mail, telephone, face-to-face,
or all three. A number of respondents
provided sample forms and checklists for
meeting preparation, participant profiles
and agreement of scope. All respondents
felt that their schemes were beneficial
to participants, notably to both parties.
Mentors reported satisfaction and a greater
sense of involvement in the organisation.
In launching our ISTC scheme, we are
using forms and checklists customised
from samples given and following a
model that favours informality, while
retaining sufficient structure to ensure
both parties know what to expect!
What happens next?
Council will appoint mentors and
reserves the right to monitor advice
given and take appropriate action as
required. Council will match Junior
members to mentors. The two parties
will agree a framework to their meetings.
Council will provide support as needed.
Interested? Then do get in touch. C
Linda Robins FISTC
T: +44 (0) 7786 245877 (mobile)
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12 Product review
MadCap Flare version 6.0
Matthew Ellison provides early sight of MadCap’s next release.
Will upgrading deliver significant benefits?
Introduction
MadCap Flare is well-established single-source
authoring tool known best for its use in the
software Help market, but also used for other
technical publication tasks such as policy/procedure
documents and knowledge base publishing. It was
first launched five years ago and has since been
through a number of new versions, each of which
has added major new areas of functionality. For
example: version 4 added a complete new print
workflow including Page Layout control in addition to
Global Project Linking (the ability to share common
resources across multiple projects), and version 5
introduced support for DITA (which I reviewed
in the Autumn 2009 issue of Communicator).
The most recent release, Flare 6, is somewhat
different. Rather than continuing to expand the
range of major features at the same relentless
rate, MadCap Software has chosen to consolidate
the product by focusing on usability: refining
existing key features to make them more useful
and easier to use, and refreshing the user interface
throughout. Although there is no change in the
product’s support for DITA, there is an assortment
of new features (most notable of which is the new
WebHelp Mobile target) and other enhancements
that more than justify a new version number.
This article surveys the changes in Flare 6. I’ll
start by considering the user interface changes
and improvements to existing features, since
these will probably have the most immediate
impact on current Flare users. I’ll then briefly
assess four new features: WebHelp Mobile, Link
Viewer, File Tagging, and Batch Generation.
Reorganisation and simplification of existing dialog boxes
Figure 1a. Add New Topic dialog in Flare 5
Figure 1b. Add New Topic dialog in Flare 6
One of MadCap’s priorities appears to have been to
rationalise and simplify some of the dialog boxes
that may have caused confusion previously. A
good example of this is the Add New Topic dialog
(Figure 1): while no new features have been added,
the controls in the dialog have been reorganised,
and some of the less frequently needed options
have been moved into an Advanced section
of the dialog that is initially hidden. I applaud
this change as it helps to focus users’ attention
on the most important options. The new
organisation also clarifies the fact that new topics
can be created either from a template or from
an existing topic file, something that was not
obvious from the previous design of the dialog.
Another example of a significant change is
the Insert Hyperlink dialog (Figure 2). To select a
destination topic, you previously had to make two
mouse clicks (select the Topic in Project option, and
then click the Topic button) to access the tree of
available topics in a separate window. In version 6, the
tree is directly available within the Insert Hyperlink
dialog, thus reducing the number of clicks required
and streamlining the process of inserting hyperlinks.
The Insert Picture dialog has also been given a
makeover. Like the Insert Hyperlink dialog, it now
contains a tree for selecting the required image and
13
Figure 2a. Insert Hyperlink dialog in Flare 5
it boasts several additional tabs (including Size, Print
Size, Position and Thumbnail) that were previously
available only in a separate Media Properties dialog.
This makes these options far easier to find.
A final example of simplification is in the
Target Editor. This contains a number of tabs,
some of which are not relevant to specific target
types. For example, the Performance options
are not used by any of the print media targets
such as PDF. In previous versions of Flare, these
options were displayed for all targets irrespective
of whether they were relevant or not. In version
6, only the options relevant to the selected
target type are displayed, thus simplifying the
interface by reducing the number of tabs.
Structure bars
Structure bars are a key feature of Flare’s XML
Editor. They expose the structure of the underlying
XHTML and crucially enable you easily to format
and move content at the block (or paragraph)
level. For example, you can drag and drop a tag
bar to move an entire paragraph (or other block
of content such as a list or table) to a new location
within a topic. In previous versions of Flare, the
user interface was a little quirky in this area — for
example, the context menu was available through
either the right or left mouse button, but if you
used the left mouse button you had to be careful
not to click on the structure bar’s label. In version
6, this has all been rationalised: you use the right
mouse button to display the context menu, while
clicking the left mouse button automatically selects
the corresponding block of content and dragging
the left mouse button moves the block to a new
location. This is a significant improvement to an
important feature in my view, and helps to make
the editor more intuitive and easier to use.
Figure 2b. Insert Hyperlink dialog in Flare 6
keywords. This action is particularly useful during
the late stages of a Help development project
when you are fine-tuning the index from the user’s
perspective. I am very pleased that Flare 6 finally
adds this capability. It does so by combining the
Index Entry and Index Explorer windows into a
single Index window. This window incorporates
an alphabetical list of all the index terms in the
project, showing the topics to which each term has
been added. Unlike the old Index Explorer, you
can use this list to assign any of the index terms to
additional topics, either through a context menu
option (shown in Figure 3) or simply by dragging
topics from the Content Explorer to the
required index term. You can also rename and
delete keywords, and the corresponding updates
are automatically made to the appropriate topics.
HTML import enhancements
Another long overdue enhancement is in the area
of HTML import. In previous versions of Flare, it has
been possible to import HTML files by simply copying
them into the Content folder within the project
directory. However, it has been necessary also to copy
manually any dependent files (such as a style sheet
and any images referenced within the page) into
the project, maintaining the correct relative paths.
As a result, HTML import has been a somewhat
laborious process that has been prone to error.
In version 6, there is a new Import HTML File
command (available from the Project menu). This
not only enables you to import multiple files in
a single operation, but also has an option for
importing resources (such as style sheets and images)
automatically. There is still no option to import
linked files, however, which means that you have
to be careful to avoid broken links if you import
HTML files that contain links to other HTML files.
Note
Indexing enhancements
Creating and saving templates
Since the first launch of Flare, I have always
expressed the view that its indexing process lacked
the crucial capability to assign topics to existing
Flare has always had the capability to create any new
project item (such as a topic, style sheet, snippet
or skin) from a user-defined external template.
This article was written
before the official release
of Flare 6, and is based
on a beta version of the
software. Some screens
and functionality may
change in the final release.
14 Product review
Figure 3. Index window with Context menu
Promised by MadCap
Some items slated for
this release weren’t yet
functional in the early
software to which I had
access. These include
support for many
more multimedia file
types than in previous
versions, enhancements
to the skin editor to
make customisation
of WebHelp faster and
easier, removal of the
MadCap Software
branding from the
DotNet Help Viewer
installer, and other
usability improvements.
Figure 4. WebHelp Mobile Preview window
This is one of its key strengths as it enables you to
get a head start with any new item, thus making the
development process more streamlined and efficient.
However, the problem in previous versions has
been that the process for creating custom templates
was somewhat arcane and unintuitive, and was not
supported by Flare’s own user interface — you had to
carry out the process by using Windows Explorer to
copy files and create directories using a strict naming
convention specified in Flare’s user assistance. In
version 6, two new commands are available from
Flare’s menus: Save as Template (which saves the
current item as a template) and Save Project as
Template (which enables you to select all the required
content items and project files and save them as a
template for creating new projects). Another welcome
change is that you can now store and use templates
in any desired folder location, including on a shared
drive. So it is now possible to share templates
with other Flare users on your network.
Review integration process between Flare and X-Edit
Flare has long had the capability to package and send
individual topics for checking and possible updating
by reviewers using a related (and freely downloadable)
tool, X-Edit. Version 6 extends this capability by
enabling you to include multiple topics within a
single package. This is very useful if you have a
number of topics needing review, as the process
of sending each one individually was previously
rather laborious and time-consuming.
PDF output improved
According to Flare’s own documentation, the PDF
output in version 6 is generated using a new engine,
resulting in faster generation times, more consistent
Figure 5. Link Viewer
formatting, better image quality and also smaller
file sizes. The claim about smaller sizes is borne
out by my own testing on a range of projects. Since
PDF is overwhelmingly the most popular format for
delivering print-oriented documentation, this could be
a very important enhancement for many Flare users.
Icon changes
A number of button and warning icons have been
redesigned. Although possibly an advantage for
new users, the icon changes could initially cause
a little confusion for experienced users.
WebHelp Mobile
WebHelp Mobile is a brand new target that
generates a single-pane documentation system
designed to be usable on web-enabled mobile
devices such as phones. It is able to adapt to the
capabilities of the mobile browser on which it is
displayed — for example, it will not show the Search
control if JavaScript is not supported. WebHelp
Mobile has its own new skin type that has been
designed specifically for this target, and MadCap
has provided a mobile screen emulator that enables
you to test how your WebHelp Mobile output will
look on a small screen (see Figure 4). The home
page of a WebHelp Mobile system provides links to
all the navigation options that users would expect
to find in a Help system (table of contents, index,
search, glossary and so on) and WebHelp Mobile
could potentially be a great way to implement Help
for mobile applications or to provide users with
other forms of documentation when on the move.
Link Viewer
The Link Viewer (shown in Figure 5) is a new and
15
powerful way of discovering all relationships,
both incoming and outgoing, that any item in
your project has with other items. It replaces the
Show Dependencies option in earlier versions of
Flare, but provides additional information. It also
has the advantage of having its own dedicated
window that can be left permanently on screen.
The Link Viewer clearly shows all links into and
out of the current item. This includes hyperlinks into
and out of topics, but also relationships such as style
sheet links, TOC links, snippet references and image
references. In the top part of the window, it lists the
associated targets for the current item; these are the
targets in which the item has been included, either
directly or indirectly, in the table of contents.
This will be most useful for print-based outputs,
but remember that when generating Help outputs
the search function will still find topics that aren’t
necessarily listed in the Link Viewer. Also, a slight
limitation of the Link Viewer is that it is unable to
take into account the fact that certain files might
be excluded from the output using conditions.
File tagging
File tagging enables you to assign your own userdefined tags to topics and other project items.
These have no effect on the user, but can help
you with the management of the project. The way
it works is that you devise your own tag types
(which are like categories), and add named tags
within that type. For example, you might create
a collection of tags named after each of your
contributing authors within a tag type of ‘Author’.
You could then create a second tag type of ‘Status’.
This enables you to tag each project item with
the tag corresponding to the author responsible
for that item and the current status of that file.
You can then generate reports of items grouped
by the tag sets, such as a list of files assigned
to ‘Bob’ with a status of ‘Pending’. I’m told by
MadCap that file tagging is flexible enough to
be potentially used for providing metadata to
support new features in future versions of Flare,
so they may become increasingly important.
Batch generation
The batch generation and publishing of multiple
targets has previously only been possible through
the command line interface, which may have been
off-putting for some users. Version 6 now includes a
‘Batch Target’ project item that enables you, within the
Flare interface, to select multiple targets and generate
them as a group or even to set up a schedule that
causes the specified targets to be generated and/or
published automatically at specific times or intervals.
What about Team Server?
For some time, MadCap Software has been hinting
on its website of a new product called Team Server
that would add workflow and collaboration support
to the full range of MadCap Software products. I
have learned recently from a source at MadCap that
the product known as Team Server has undergone
some modification and will initially be released as
a connection component for Microsoft SharePoint.
MadCap says that more details about the FlareSharePoint integration will be released later this year,
and I look forward to learning more about that.
Conclusion
The headline feature of this release is the new
WebHelp Mobile target, which represents a signi
ficant advance in Flare’s multi-channel publishing
credentials. This potentially enables authors to make
documentation available to a new range of users
who are on the move and, if the mobile platform
is important to you, Flare 6 could be an attractive
option. In my view, the other most compelling
reasons to upgrade are the all-round improvements
in usability and the significant enhancements to the
indexing tools. The usability improvements have
ironed out some quirks in the interface, making
many key tasks within Flare more intuitive and
reducing the learning curve for new users. C
Matthew Ellison MISTC
provides training and
consulting on authoring
tools and technologies, and
is a MadCap Flare Certified
Instructor. He is a visiting
lecturer at Portsmouth
University for the MA
Technical Communication
course, and also organises
the annual UA Europe
Conference (www.
uaconference.eu), which
focuses on software user
assistance.
E: matthew@
ellisonconsulting.com
W: www.
ellisonconsulting.com
Call for Case Study Proposals
UA Europe is the only
European conference to focus
specifically on software
User Assistance.
This year’s conference features
Anne Gentle, writer of
Conversation and Community:
The Social Web for
Documentation. Anne will update
us on the impact of the social web
on User Assistance, and will also
offer valuable insights and tips on
collaborative authoring.
UA Europe is a unique opportunity for User Assistance
professionals to share ideas, experiences, and successes. We
invite proposals for either case study presentations or informal
demonstrations, and especially welcome projects that include:
• Innovative ways of presenting User Assistance content
• Use of a new technology, authoring tool or version
• Collaborative authoring or use of social media
• DITA or other XML-based technologies
• Localisation for a range of languages and cultures
For further information, or to submit a proposal, visit:
www.uaconference.eu
or email [email protected] or call +44 (0)1425 489 263
Matthew Ellison
Consulting
16 Project profile
Standardising a documentation suite
In the second of two articles, Colum McAndrew reports on how his team
completed the transformation of their documents into a cohesive suite.
Thankfully, attitudes to technical writers have
improved in recent years but there are still
those who believe we just write documentation.
As we all know, there is so much more to it
than that. This explains why so many technical
communicators call themselves ‘content
strategists’, ‘information design professionals’ or
‘instructional specialists’. Whatever the job title,
if it was just about writing, I wouldn’t be doing it!
If ever there was a project to highlight what
technical communicators really do, the one we
undertook at IDBS was it. Before we had written
a single word, we had completed an extensive
period of analysis. Now all we had to do was
write the documentation, but even that involved
so much more. Luckily, we had some existing
documents to work from. These included:
 The three product suite help files, one for
each executable. These are produced using
Adobe RoboHelp and output to a CHM file.
 An administration guide used by those
configuring and setting up the application at
a customer site. It was produced using Adobe
FrameMaker and output in PDF format.
 Training reference guides given to customers
who attend one of our training courses.
These are produced using Adobe FrameMaker
and output to PDF before being sent to the
printers for printing and binding.
 Assorted product white papers and user guides.
These are produced by a variety of people
(such as product managers and developers)
mostly in Microsoft Word, output to PDF and
placed on the customer area of our website.
Defining the requirements
The number one priority was to make all this
information available to all users directly from
a single help file. I had long argued that the
group of disparate documents made little sense.
It made for a frustrating user experience when
trying to navigate between them, especially
when there were few or no links between them!
A second requirement was the use of simulations
inside the help to demonstrate complex workflows
and provide practical work examples. In short, we
needed to plug the gap between providing generic
help that was relevant to all users and providing
essential context for specific job functions.
With the topic layout, we wanted to break up
text by providing notes, tips, warnings and best
practice. We needed to provide the information that
a user required to complete a function but wanted
a way of allowing for different experience levels.
This meant designing a layout that provided all the
detail, hiding some of it from the initial view, yet
making it easily available for those who required it.
Aligned with all of the above was the need to
provide three output types. In the first instance,
the help would be hosted online on an internal
server accessed directly from the application. If
the Internet connection failed, the application
would call CHMs installed locally on the user’s
PC. This was a key consideration because our
users (who are scientists) could be moving
between laboratories and offices, and working
over a wi-fi connection. Finally, we still needed
to output sections of the help to a PDF so our
product consultants could set-up the application.
Looking forward, we wanted to deploy our
documentation so we could immediately issue
updates and gather usage statistics. We had little
information about the documentation’s usage
other than the annual user survey that asked a
few general questions. Previously, if people asked
us how many users read the documentation or
what areas they looked at, we would shrug a
collective shoulder.
Our tools of choice
We make no bones about being an Adobe shop.
Historically, the technical writers are power users
of RoboHelp. We use unstructured FrameMaker,
although more for training materials than for
help documentation, and have produced software
simulations for one of our products using
Captivate. The trainers have also produced CBT
courses using Captivate. Add to this the other
occasional RoboHelp users elsewhere in the
company and you have a knowledge base and
investment that we were not about to change.
Implementing the results
To ensure that all of the existing documentation was
available to all users, we decided on a single help file
available throughout the product suite regardless
of where you were. However, the structure of the
help file, in particular the table of contents, made
it possible to access the relevant section with a
single mouse click. The large amount of content
generated other problems, namely how to enable
three technical communicators to document the
project at the same time. To do this, we:
 Split the content into 12 separate sections,
each with its own RoboHelp project.
 Generated all output to a shared network drive.
This was crucial in ensuring that we all had access
to the latest output when adding links to topics
in other RoboHelp projects. It also made it easier
to publish the generated output to the server.
 Created a further RoboHelp project into which
each of the others was merged.
17
The simulations had to be created from scratch. We
already knew who our users were as we had allowed
for this in the table of contents. We also had an idea
of what each user workflow involved. We worked
with the product managers to cement the workflow
detail and from there it was relatively simple to
write scripts and record the results. Implementing
the simulations was a breeze with the greater level
of integration between the products in the Adobe
Technical Communication Suite.
As for bringing in the existing content, we had
to knock it into some sort of shape. This required
significant effort. Remember, we wanted to
unclutter the help yet have additional information
available at a click of the mouse. Our solution was
to combine procedures related to the same process
into a single topic and define distinct areas of each
page. Specifically this meant sections providing:
 General introductory information (for example,
why they needed to perform a function)
 The different processes (for example, add,
amend, delete)
 Additional information that may prove useful but
which was not required in the first instance (for
example, the effects of process A on process B)
 Links to other procedures likely to be performed
or topics of interest.
We made extensive use of DHTML dropdowns
(Figure 1). This enabled us to hide information not
immediately necessary yet make it easily available
to those who needed it. Text boxes highlighted
useful information and snippet headings broke
up the content into relevant sections.
As many of these dropdowns contained
separate procedural information, and our style
guide defined how they should be displayed,
we ended up with a mixture of ordered and
unordered lists. This initially created a problem,
as a bulleted list could exist on its own or within
another bulleted or numbered list. What is
more, if it was within another list it needed to be
indented. To achieve this we used RoboHelp’s
multi-level list functionality. This created a fair bit
of confusion among those of us less used to the
similar functionality in Microsoft Word. Finally, to
address the need to highlight notes, tips, warnings
and best practice we added text boxes with
appropriate icons throughout. This not only drew
the user’s attention to something of interest, it
broke the text up into manageable chunks.
The different output types required us to be
creative in the way we entered certain content. For
example, redirect topics and hyperlinks navigating
to topics in other RoboHelp projects had different
syntax depending on whether we produced
WebHelp Pro or Microsoft HTML Help output. Add
to that certain master page elements that were
specific to one or other output type and you had
a recipe for a real headache. We used conditional
build tags to exclude content from each output
type. We even created a ‘DUMMY’ tag assigned
to a topic that contained frequently accessed
resources such as images and tables (Figure 2).
Figure 1. DHTML dropdowns enabled us to hide information until it was required.
Previously if people asked us how many users
read the documentation or what areas they
looked at, we would shrug a collective shoulder.
Figure 2. A ‘dummy’ topic with a conditional build tag at the topic level
18 Project profile
This gave us quick and easy access to reusable
content, some of which itself was tagged.
The multi-tab interface of RoboHelp 8 enabled
us to have this topic open all the time making it
easy to copy and paste content. By excluding this
conditional build tag from all output types we were
sure that the end user would never see it. We also
used RoboHelp’s snippet functionality for topic
sub-headings. The ability to click and drag these
from a pod into your content made this process
an absolute breeze. We would have made a greater
use of them if it was possible to use them inside
existing text but this was a minor limitation.
Reviewing
The Technical Writer and Training Consultant team
had a real mixture of Adobe product licences. Our
three RoboHelp X5 and six FrameMaker 6 licences
were no longer supported. This, together with
the fact that we had recruited another technical
communicator and, therefore, had to buy a new
RoboHelp licence, meant we had to upgrade. This
coincided with the arrival of the Adobe Technical
Communication Suite 2, which was too good
an opportunity to turn down. We got the latest
versions of RoboHelp, FrameMaker, Captivate
and Acrobat Professional as well as the other
tools in the suite. On top of this, we upgraded our
RoboHelp Server licence to version 8 to complete
our portfolio. We also contracted the excellent
Matthew Ellison MISTC to bring the team up to
speed with the new features. Together this was a
sizeable financial investment, particularly with the
price differential of Adobe products in the UK.
With the content written, we needed to get it
reviewed for grammar, style and accuracy. This is
rarely easy for technical communicators but getting
a complete help system reviewed exacerbated the
problem. We had buy-in from our Help Desk to
review it in between calls but needed a process to
handle their comments. In the past, most of our
reviews were paper-based but we needed a slicker
and greener method that could store the comments
online. A recent webinar run by Adobe’s Senior
Project Evangelist, RJ Jacquez, indicated that a
quarter of attendees still used a paper-based review
process. As the subject of the webinar was using
Acrobat.com to review PDFs, the audience was
probably not truly representative. I’d have certainly
thought the real figure was likely to be much
higher. We didn’t want to be in that category.
We had recently implemented Microsoft’s
SharePoint and we used this to meet our needs.
We created review spreadsheets that used
as many data validation lists as possible and
highlighted the areas requiring review. These
were added to SharePoint and assigned to
individuals using predefined workflows. As
SharePoint integrated with Microsoft Outlook,
each workflow generated a task in the reviewer’s
task list making it harder for them to forget it
and making it much easier for us to manage.
All we had to do was generate the output to the
shared network drive and create the workflow.
This process also fitted in well with our
second review requirement. The company is
audited by an external ISO 9001 auditor every
six months. As a result, we need to log all review
comments and demonstrate where and when
they are applied, or record why not. The use of
the spreadsheet, complete with the workflow
history, enabled us to do just that. Once we had
the spreadsheet workflow completed, we went
through making any changes or noting inside the
spreadsheet if we disagreed with the comment.
The final part of the jigsaw was our version
control software. This enabled us to prevent two
authors working on the project at the same time,
especially important when working with a help
authoring tool where amending one topic could
ultimately update numerous files. More importantly,
it also enabled us to record comments against the
source as we worked on it to ensure that we could
prove to the auditors what we had done and when.
Adobe product evaluation
We were using new versions of Adobe’s four major
technical communication products: RoboHelp,
FrameMaker, Captivate and RoboHelp Server. While
we did not start using them straight after their
release, there was a risk that something unknown
would jump up and bite us. As David Farbey MISTC
(@dfarb) amusingly tweeted recently, ‘The more
urgently a document is needed, the more likely it
is to go completely haywire in Microsoft Word.’
None of us wanted such an experience so we did
what we could to minimise the risk. We had done
research and already knew of a few issues before
we started. It also helped being in regular contact
with the Adobe Product Managers whom we met
on one of their UK visits. They were genuinely
interested in what we were doing.
The products stood up to the demands we
placed on them. When we found bugs, we were
able to find workarounds to them.
RoboHelp 8 is a good release of an established
application. We loved the level of customisation
that can be applied to the user interface as
well as the additional options available in the
output. We did have issues with templates
imported from our legacy help files (produced
in RoboHelp X5) that necessitated us trashing
them and starting again. We also came across
some minor issues around conditional build tags
and DHTML dropdowns. Space precludes me
from listing all the problems here but I would
be happy to pass these on, complete with our
workarounds, to anyone who contacts me.
RoboHelp Server 8 was probably the largest
risk to a successful project. The underlying code
for this version has been completely rewritten
in Java. As a result it requires a Tomcat Java
Servlet container on the web server as well as
either Apache or Microsoft IIS. We had experience
of using Apache but this was the first time we
had used the open-source Tomcat software. The
19
RoboHelp Server application itself was, thankfully,
easy to set-up once you had established how the
different elements fitted together. It was also
easy to publish to the server from the RoboHelp
client. However, following an e‑mail exchange
with Adobe, we discovered that it was not
recommended to use Microsoft Access as the
server’s database in a production environment.
Unfortunately, we discovered this relatively late
in the project and the risk of implementing our
alternative solution, SQL Server, was too big.
Not for the first time, the lack of good
documentation from Adobe on their new
RoboHelp and RoboHelp Server functionality had
hindered us. The one ironic failing of the Technical
Communication Suite, was the accompanying
documentation although, to be fair, Adobe is
belatedly addressing this through blogs and
webinars. However, there was a fair amount
of head scratching in those early days. Having
more detailed documentation would have saved
a lot of soul searching, e‑mails and forum posts.
...and relax!
At the end of a year-long project, it is always
satisfying to sit back and see what has been achieved.
Prior to release we had sent a beta release to a couple
of key customers and our internal staff also installed
pre-release builds. The feedback we received on
the help made all the hard work worthwhile:
 ‘Looks really good and is easy to navigate. Good
balance of new user and advanced user sections.’
 ‘Love the variety of different formats (for example,
movie clips, sample files, worked examples).
People have diverse learning styles so this is
a good approach.’
 ‘Every time I play with the new help I am more
impressed. I take my hat off to you.’
 ‘Wow! Very Impressed. Nice piece of work by
the team.’
Despite all the trials and tribulations we had
delivered a standardised documentation set that
raised the bar for what could be achieved from now
on. Now all we had to do was raise it even further! C
Colum McAndrew MISTC is a Senior Technical Author
for IDBS, a unique global supplier of innovative data
management and analytics solutions for R&D organisations
worldwide. Based in Guildford, Surrey, he has more than
ten years of front-line authoring experience and many
more producing training documentation. A user of Adobe
RoboHelp since 1999, he can frequently be found on that
product’s support forums offering advice to other users. He
also writes the RoboColum(n) technical authoring blog.
Twitter: @robocolumn
Ovidius – Systematic Success
TCToolbox –
The trusted solution
for technical content
management
TCToolbox
Webdemonstration
www.ovidius.com
Book your live
demonstration
by emailing
[email protected]
20 Tools
You think PDFs are old hat, don’t you?
Nigel Curtis suggests there is much more to Adobe’s
Portable Document Format than might first meet the eye.
History
Status
Believe it or not, when the Portable Document
Format (PDF) first hit the headlines in the early
1990s it was nothing short of revolutionary.
Just imagine: a computer file that retained all
the original fonts, graphics, images and design
of a document or publication in a format that
could be viewed on any machine without the need
for the application that created it. And, what’s more,
it could be distributed electronically around the
globe and then printed locally on a state of the art
(if massive and hideously expensive) laser printer.
The death of traditionally printed company
newsletters, manuals and brochures was
prematurely and, as it turned out, erroneously
announced. But, as much as we take PDF files for
granted these days, we shouldn’t underestimate
the impact they had back then when the Internet
was embryonic and the first graphical web
browser was still waiting to be invented.
In fact, PDF technology was originally developed
by Adobe co-founder Dr John Warnock as a purely
internal resource to enable colleagues to view
and share digital documents. The power and
universal potential of this was quickly realised
as the Internet boom created huge demand to
distribute information reliably and consistently
across all platforms. Adobe released the
software commercially in 1992 as Carousel.
The first version of Acrobat appeared a year
later but it was the decision to distribute the
Acrobat Reader software free of charge in 1994
(it previously cost $50) that proved to be the
springboard for global domination.
And for many people that’s where the PDF story
pretty much stays; a neat way to turn a printed
document into an electronic format that can be
e‑mailed. But during the nineties and noughties
more revolutionary, if low-profile, work has been
done by the developers at Adobe:
Support for embedded multimedia and links
to external files as far back as 1994
Support for complete print-production
workflows in 1996
Interactive e-forms in 1997
The ability to annotate and password-protect
files in 1999
XML support for forms and metadata in 2003
Launch of Acrobat 3D for easy conversion of
3D designs into PDF in 2006
Embedded cross-platform media player and
support for Adobe Flash in 2008.
The result? Acrobat 9 PDF files, arguably the
most powerful, flexible and universally acceptable
electronic content delivery channel on the planet.
The problem? Not a lot of people know that!
The reason? Our view is that Adobe’s marketing
strategy has failed to enthuse end users like us enough.
A classic sales mistake of focusing on technical
features rather than end-user benefits, perhaps?
If more people realised exactly how interactivePDF files can make their communications richer,
more engaging, more involving, more relevant and
basically more enjoyable, PDF would certainly not
have the image problem it appears to suffer from.
This point was vividly highlighted to us not so long
ago — and in the most unlikely of places (see panel).
Demonstrations of what you can achieve using PDF files
Our PDF expert Harry Hemus was invited by Adobe to present at the 2009
Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles. He gave a presentation called WOW
your audience with multimedia PDF documents, which you can view at:
http://2009.max.adobe.com/online/session/79
After the conference, Harry flew to Adobe’s headquarters at San Jose for
further meetings, including a session with Acrobat product managers. Not
long into the presentation one of them held up his hand stopping our hero
mid-flow: ‘Whoa Harry! Are you telling us… this is… a PDF?!’
Undoubtedly, these guys know their stuff inside out and back to front. But
they are so close to the product and involved in the functionality and technical
aspects that they appear to have lost sight of its practical application in the real
world and how it all comes together. Which no doubt explains why Harry was
asked by Adobe to put together a demo PDF file for the small- to medium-sized
enterprise market showcasing Acrobat 9’s practical benefits. The result was
What’s in the box, which you can download from:
www.cwcorpcomms.co.uk/ACROBAT_9_INTERACTIVE_NOVIDS_3.pdf
Note: This file requires Acrobat Reader 9 and is 32 MB. You will be prompted
for full-screen mode but you can decline and view in a window.
Potential
In my organisation, we have been successful for
some time in demonstrating the potential uses
of interactive PDF files to our corporate clients
but a common objection remains: ’Why should
I download information in a PDF file when I
could just view it online?’ or ‘A website can do
everything an interactive PDF file can.’
Well, an obvious drawback of an online
solution is that it is an online solution. And
that’s not intended to be flippant: some
intended recipients may not have access to the
Internet and no connection is 100% reliable.
But a PDF file can be created as a self-contained
delivery vehicle for almost any multimedia format
and for other standard file types (such as .mp3, .flv,
.swf, .e-pub, .doc, .xls and .ppt), which can be extracted
for use locally in their native applications on a
desktop, laptop or even a mobile phone. If e-mail or
downloading from a website is not possible, it can
be delivered on a memory stick or on a CD/DVD.
21
A website is a one-to-many, reactive
communication. People need to go looking for
it and have a reason to do so and everyone gets
the same information. A PDF file can be a one-toone, personalised and proactive communication,
targeted and sent to named individuals.
Development and production time, flexibility,
design integrity, security and cost all support the
interactive PDF option. A microsite to promote
or communicate a product or an initiative is a
perfectly serviceable solution, but if you had
dozens of products or initiatives to communicate
would you really want dozens of microsites?
Or, indeed, have the budget to create them?
E-forms as checklists or for feedback are also
well used. The ease with which returned data can
be imported into a spreadsheet for instant analysis
can save hours of ball-breaking data entry.
In-built archiving and search facilities
are perfect for training and this extends to
navigating to specific sections of a video, for
example, so that users can jump straight to the
bits they are interested in or need to recap.
Application
Perhaps a few pointers and examples will best
demonstrate the practical application of the
technology.
Always start from the user experience and
remember that the PDF file will be viewed on
a computer monitor. That means it should
be designed (or redesigned) to fit the screen,
essentially landscape A4. (The portrait A4
monitor never really caught on!)
There should be no need to scroll down or around
a page to find more content, or to zoom in to be
able to read the content. It should all be there on the
page view in front of you, or available at the click of
a button. The document should launch full screen
so that users can give it their undivided attention,
always remembering to provide an obvious escape
button to get back to the desktop. The key is
simplicity for the user, no matter how complex the
scripting or coding going on behind the scenes.
A particularly effective use of interactive PDF is
for multilingual communications. Several languages
can be accommodated in a single document and
the user can flick between them at the touch of a
button. On the face of it, the document might be
a four-page PDF file but every page might have a
dozen layers revealing different languages.
PDF files have long been able to link to other PDF
files, web pages, e-mail addresses and other files
(such as Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and
PowerPoint presentations). With the huge storage
capacity of DVD, all manner of digital assets can be
archived on disk and an interactive PDF file is the
perfect user-friendly interface to access the content.
Host it on a network server and the potential is vast.
A real-life example of this is one of our clients,
a major multinational, which uses interactive PDF
files to deliver a training guide and portal to help
employees learn best-practice communication
skills and access approved templates for
newsletters, presentations and feedback forms.
Some of our clients in the human resources
departments of larger organisations are using
interactive PDF files to deliver induction manuals.
They make maximum use of multiple-layers to
ensure that a single document can accommodate a
comprehensive suite of information yet individual
employees access only the data relevant to them.
Montage of covers from communications delivered using PDF
Away from the constraints of the corporate
world, opportunities for creativity and media
convergence using interactive PDF files are
even greater. Pioneering use of the technology
was made by Harry Hemus and designer
Steve Knee for Pink Floyd guitarist Dave
Gilmour (www.davidgilmour.com/freedom/
AGreatDayForFreedom.pdf). This example
also demonstrates how delivering multimedia
through interactive PDF is now easier and more
accessible than ever. The integrated Flash player
included in Acrobat Reader 9 natively displays
embedded or streamed rich media content,
including 3D models, without the need for a
third-party media player.
Conclusion
PDF was originally created as an out-and-out business
tool, a means to an end, but it has developed into
a communications channel in its own right. It is,
in fact, the most universally accepted format to
deliver complex, media-rich, personalised, highly
technical and/or commercially sensitive content.
A properly conceived, imaginatively designed
and robustly constructed interactive PDF file
pushes all the right buttons when it comes to
user engagement, ease of use, versatility,
accessibility and functionality. Aside from a
personal one-to-one presentation, I can think of
little else that will engage your audience more
and immerse them in your message. C
Nigel Curtis is
Managing Director of
CW Communications,
a corporate communi
cations company that he
started in 1988. Before
that, he was a newspaper
journalist and an editor
of employee publications
at Cadbury Schweppes.
E: nigel.curtis@
cwcorpcomms.co.uk
W: www.cwcorpcomms.
co.uk
22 Professional
Tech comms in New Zealand
Steve Moss discusses the development and activities of the
Technical Communicators Association of New Zealand (TCANZ).
Background
TCANZ was formed in 1997 as the New Zealand
Technical Writers Association (NZTWA). Its aim now,
as then, is to provide professional development,
support and networking opportunities to its
members. NZTWA was renamed as TCANZ in
2002 to recognise the fact that our members are
technical communicators working in a wide range
of organisations and disciplines, performing a
broader role than that generally encompassed
by the title of technical writers.
TCANZ activities
Conferences
The first major event held by TCANZ (then NZTWA)
was a two-day conference in Auckland in 1999.
The conference was a great success; in fact, it was
almost impossible to resume presentations after
each break, such was the excitement of a large
group of technical communicators conversing
with each other! TCANZ has run five national
conferences since then. We generally include
a mixture of local and international speakers,
covering everything from the most practical handson topics to cutting-edge thinking. Guest speakers
over the years have included Bogo Vatovec,
Carol Barnum, Jean-luc Dumont, JoAnn Hackos,
Patrick Hofmann, Richard Hodgkinson, Rob
Houser, Scott Deloach and Whitney Quesenbery.
The next TCANZ conference is in September 2010
in Wellington with the theme Intranet solutions:
Delivering information — enhancing communication.
Our intention is to focus on all aspects of intranets,
while at the same time addressing wider issues
faced by our members on any project.
Training workshops
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank
Maryanne Cathro and
Margery Watson for their
assistance in preparing
this article and Carin van
Bolderen, Chris Dorsey,
Emma Harding, Grant
Mackenzie, Jody Winter,
Karlene Robinson, Luke
Pivac, Nic Coldrick, Peter
Russell and Simon Fea for
their invaluable comments
in relation to their work and
technical communication
in New Zealand.
TCANZ has been running training workshops since
2001. Typically, we run two or three workshop
events each year with each event being run in our
main urban centres of Auckland, Christchurch and
Wellington. These are important, as in New Zealand,
short courses designed to meet the specific needs
of technical communicators are very rare. These
workshops are open to non-members as well, and a
typical course will attract not only our own members
but participants from associated professions such
as business analysts, trainers and administrators.
Branch meetings
Originally branch meetings comprised a cut-down
training workshop on a monthly basis, usually with
a speaker delivering a short presentation on a topic
of interest. The talk was followed by a networking
opportunity for participants, with drinks and
nibbles to stave off early-evening hunger pangs.
Over the years, the popularity of these events
waned and a fresh approach was needed.
More recently, a Wellington committee member,
Emily Cotlier, decided to emulate the networking
trends among software developers and started
holding ‘round table’ discussion group meetings.
A typical meeting convenes at a local pub or coffee
shop to discuss a pre-arranged topic relating
to technical communication. This approach has
been extremely successful and similar sessions
are now held in Auckland as well, run by
Auckland committee member Luke Pivac.
TCANZ website
The TCANZ website (www.tcanz.org.nz) forms
a focus of information resources for TCANZ
members and casual browsers alike.
I developed the original TCANZ website in late
1999. It was basic but functional and served the
association well for a number of years.
Our new website went live early in 2010.
It has a modern and professional format, is
search-engine friendly, and provides a members’
only area and a discussion group forum. Other
useful functions include e‑mail contact lists for
members and non-members alike, membership
and event registration, situations vacant and
product reviews.
Membership
TCANZ offers three types of membership: Student,
Individual and Corporate. All three membership
types provide the same benefits, such as reduced
fees to attend TCANZ events and access to the
‘members’ only’ resources area on the TCANZ
website. Members may also access copies of the
Southern Communicator journal (published three
times a year in conjunction with the Australian
Society for Technical Communication), as well as
other journals and resources.
Currently, most of our 236 members are
Corporate, with a small number of students.
Numbers have fluctuated over the years with
2005 being the best year so far. Members pay an
annual subscription according to their member
type: $25 (Student), $100 (Individual) and $300
(Corporate). The current conversion rate is
NZ$1~ £0.48—roughly equivalent to £12 for
students and £150 for Corporate members.
TCANZ annual survey
Since 2000, TCANZ has carried out an annual
survey of technical communicators working in
New Zealand, which provides a snapshot of the
profession here. The scope of the survey covers
salary and hourly rates, software tools used, hours
23
100
35
50
60
40
male
20
2008
20
15
0
2009
100
80
60
40
20
0
20+
30+
40+
50+
age (years)
60+
Figure 2. Survey respondents by age
Auckland Christchurch Wellington
Other
80,000+
80
15
10
90,000+
2007
2008
2009
Figure 7. Salary rates (NZ$)
20
60
20
0
0
Auckland Christchurch Wellington
60+
40
5
70+
80+
2007
2008
2009
Figure 5. Relative TCANZ membership by city Figure 8. Contract rates (NZ$/hour)
80
percentage
80
percentage
0
100
100
60
40
60
20
0
0
7+ 10+ 15+ 20+
years
Figure 3. Survey respondents by experience
worked and number of writers in each organisation.
The survey results give a reasonable idea of the
work environment in New Zealand. Some trends
from the last three surveys are discussed below.
General information
A total of 96 TCANZ members (and non-members)
responded to the 2009 survey. The majority
of responses were from women, in increasing
numbers over the past three surveys (Figure 1).
In 2009, the largest group of respondents was
in the 40-45 age group (24%). Only about 8% of
respondents were under 30 years of age and
almost 74% were over 40 (Figure 2).
The largest group of respondents had 1–3 years’
experience (19.8%), and only one respondent had
less than a year’s experience. Almost 68% had
five or more years’ experience, 37% had 10 or
more years and almost 23% had 20 or more years.
These age and experience results suggest that a
significant number of technical communicators
have moved into the work as a second career
and then continued to work in the field for a
considerable number of years (Figure 3).
Location
As in most countries, most technical communi
cators work in the larger cities (Figure 4). While
the distribution across the major cities is fairly
paper-based
40
20
5+
70,000+
20
25
100
1+ 3+
30
Figure 4. TCANZ membership by location
members per 100,000 of population
Figure 1. Survey respondents by gender
40
10
5
percentage
2007
25
10
female
0
percentage
30
percentage
percentage
80
percentage
60
40
online (PDF)
online (help)
2007
2008
2009
Figure 6. Survey respondents by output type
even, against population size there is a dramatic
difference, with a far higher proportion of
TCANZ members in Christchurch and Wellington
(Figure 5).
Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city with
about 1.4 million people. Industry types employing
technical communicators are varied and include
manufacturing, software development, banking,
education and local government. Christchurch
is the largest city in the South Island with about
350,000 people. Most technical communicators
in Christchurch work in software or technologybased industries, education or local government.
Wellington is the capital of New Zealand with about
450,000 people. It is the centre of government
with many corporate head offices based there.
Qualifications and training
 95% qualified to degree or diploma level
(89%, 2008; 82%, 2007) but not necessarily in
technical communication
 20% had no formal training in technical
communication (24%, 2008; 26%, 2007)
Types of output produced
The majority of respondents produce paper-based
documentation, even though it may be delivered
online as PDF (Figure 6) — respondents can choose
several options, so the values do not add up to 100%.
24 Professional
Salaried or contract work
Most respondents (70%) were employed in
salaried positions (full or part time) with the
remainder on contract.
Salary rates have been rising recently, but salaries
at the upper end appear to have been affected most
by economic downturn (Figure 7). The largest group
of respondents (29.6%) was earning NZ$70,000–
79,999 a year, 27% earning over 80,000 and 10%
over 90,000 (2009 survey results).
Hourly rates were also rising but have been
affected significantly more than salaries with
major drops across the range (Figure 8). The
largest group of respondents (39.1%) earned
NZ$60–69/hr, with 30% earning over NZ$70/hr
and 22% over NZ$80/hr (2009 survey results).
Note: Although the current conversion rate for
NZ$ to GBP is about 0.48, the direct conversion
from New Zealand dollars to pounds is slightly
misleading. The average annual salary in New
Zealand is NZ$45,000 before tax (source: http://
www2.careers.govt.nz/who_earns_what.html) while
the average salary in the UK is around £26,000, or
for full-time employees around £31,000 (source:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8151355.stm).
Effects of current economic climate
Resources
Small business in New
Zealand. Website of the
New Zealand Parliament.
http://tinyurl.com/yl24fc2
Graduate Diploma in
Information Design at
Christchurch Polytechnic
Institute of Technology
www.cpit.ac.nz/courses/
flexible_learning/
graduate_diploma_in_
information_design
Professional & Technical
Writing course at Open
Polytechnic based
in Wellington www.
openpolytechnic.ac.nz/
programmesandcourses/
courses/72144
Introduction to technical
writing at Unitec, Auckland
http://tinyurl.com/ya34od2
For salaried workers, the effects of the recession
appear to have been limited, with only one
respondent indicating that they had been made
redundant. About 13% indicated that another
member of their team had been made redundant.
26% had noticed no change in activity and 50%
indicated that they were busier than ever.
Contract workers do not appear to have
fared as well as those on salaries: 13% had not
been able to find any work and 43% indicated
some difficulty in finding work, although 30%
indicated no difficulty in finding work.
Talking with technical communicators in New Zealand
I recently contacted a small group of experienced
technical communicators (who also happen to be
TCANZ members) to ask them for information
about their jobs and for their views on the state
of technical communication in New Zealand.
One of the most common comments they made
was that as a technical communicator working
in New Zealand you are expected to be a ‘jack
of all trades’. Although there is some degree of
specialisation between different types of technical
communication, such as developing online help or
paper-based operations manuals, most technical
communicators find that they are required to
produce complete information products, from
start to finish. This means that a typical technical
communicator needs to have a wide range of skills
including information gathering, information
design and capabilities with commonly used tools
such as Microsoft Word, RoboHelp, Visio, Authorit or FrameMaker. In addition, they need to have a
good level of competence in project management
and interpersonal skills as well, not to mention
the essential writing and editing skills. This relative
lack of specialisation could be seen as an advantage
for small organisations with limited resources.
However, some organisations encourage some
degree of specialisation as they feel it enables
them to produce higher quality material.
On a day-to-day basis a typical technical communi
cator might be involved in any of the following:
 Document planning and design
 Interviewing SMEs
 Developing technical guides, product manuals,
online help
 Capturing videos for online use and running
webexes
 Preparing technical marketing material and ‘how
to’ notes, technical notes and white papers
 Developing templates
 Editing, proofing or reviewing documents
 Providing training or guidance on better
business writing
 Updating material on the organisation’s
website, knowledgebase or intranet
 Project management and development of
related project documents.
The size of the technical communication team
varied significantly from one organisation
to another. Some organisations have a single
technical communicator performing many of
the above tasks, while in others the tasks were
shared between a team of two or three (or more).
Although some technology-based organisations
have larger teams (10 or more), there has
been a trend towards smaller teams in most
industries. However, the small size of teams may
simply reflect the fact that most New Zealand
organisations (89%) have five or fewer full-time
employees (source: NZ Parliament website).
Most technical communicators are expected to
work with a wide range of professionals within
or outside their organisation. This may involve
working with cross-functional teams on a project,
liaising with graphic artists or the marketing
department, or simply working with SMEs to
gather information to put into online help or
a manual. Some organisations take advantage
of New Zealand’s 12-hour time difference with
Europe, to give an overnight turnaround for work
from head office. The reverse benefit can apply
when sending material to Europe for translation.
Conversely, working with teams in the States can
be problematic due to time-zone differences.
When asked to comment on any issues that
affected their day-to-day work some interesting
points were raised:
 Lack of understanding from management about
what constitutes good-quality technical writing
 Getting management to fully engage and
commit to the work and the ongoing
maintenance of any documents
 The time it takes to educate people on the
formal methodologies used (and that we are
not just slapping documents together!)
 Getting respect from some of the technical staff
25
 A silo effect in some organisations means
that groups go off and do their own thing,
sometimes duplicating effort, often not
consistent with what has been done previously
and elsewhere in the organisation
 Major variations on the quality of SMEs: some
provide detailed and complete information with
helpful review comments and feedback, while
others do not
 SMEs not available when required, either to
provide information or to review documents
 Keeping up with trends: manuals are dying,
everyone Googles everything these days, I
need to keep up
 People looking at our work and seeing how
lovely it is and thinking that because it's so
succinct it must have been easy to produce
 Being hijacked or ambushed by technology:
trying for hours to get something to work,
which should have taken only a few minutes
 The limitations of various forms of communi
cation (such as Skype, e‑mail, telephone) when
compared to face-to-face discussion
 Avoiding being forgotten is the biggest challenge:
getting involvement in project teams (especially
remote teams) and ensuring that we are in the
product update and notification loop.
Most of the issues mentioned above are probably
familiar to technical communicators wherever
they work, and not just restricted to New Zealand.
Finally, a few comments about working as a
technical communicator in New Zealand:
 STC's free webinars are on at 4 or 5 AM
 Major variations in documentation maturity
across organisations, from nearly non-existent
to very well done
 New Zealanders are generally very forward
thinking and early adopters of new technologies
for communicating user assistance. We are
generating videos on YouTube and running
video conferences using WebEx
 The profession is very low profile here and
pay is normally low because organisations still
don't understand the complexities of our role
 New Zealand technical companies provide a
good working environment and scope for you
to get involved.
Technical communication education in New Zealand
Several technical communication courses or
papers are available in New Zealand, provided by
local polytechnics. The longest-established course
is the Graduate Diploma in Information Design
(GDID) offered by Christchurch Polytechnic
Institute of Technology. The GDID is a distancelearning course and is popular among more
experienced technical communicators.
Open Polytechnic (based in Wellington) also
provides a range of distance-learning courses
including the introductory level Professional &
Technical Writing course. Unitec (in Auckland)
provides a part-time paper introducing technical
writing (COMM 6538), which runs during the first
semester each year (February–June). Manukau
Institute of Technology (south Auckland) provides
a technical writing paper as part of their bachelor
of information systems course.
The local Information Mapping® training
provider is a company called TACTICS, based
in Wellington. Write Group (also based in
Wellington) provides a range of writing and
editing workshops for generic writing skills.
Related organisations in New Zealand
TCANZ is currently the only professional
organisation for technical communicators in
New Zealand. Until 2009, the US-based STC
operated a local chapter, but it is no longer
active. STC has a number of New Zealand
members but no local activities or events. We
work closely with the New Zealand Association
for Training and Development (www.nzatd.
org.nz) and the local chapter of the usability
professionals’ association (www.upanz.org.nz).
The following organisations also provide support
and activities for related professional groups:
 The International Association of Business
Communicators (www.iabcwellington.co.nz)
 Science Communicators Association of New
Zealand (www.scanz.co.nz)
 The New Zealand Writer’s Guild (www.
nzwritersguild.org.nz).
The future of TCANZ
As for most small voluntary professional
organisations, TCANZ has to deal with a number
of ongoing issues. Our two primary issues are
attracting and retaining members, and attracting
and retaining committee members to run the
organisation. When TCANZ was formed in the
late 1990s, there were almost no technical
communication courses available in New
Zealand and recognition of the role of technical
communicators was very low. Ten years later,
a range of courses is available and project
teams in software development, manufacturing,
telecommunications, local and central
government routinely require the services of at
least one technical communicator.
We would like to think that these changes are in
some way due to our activities in promoting the work
done by technical communicators and supporting
our members in their day-to-day activities.
After 12 years working with the technical
communication community in New Zealand,
TCANZ is well placed to continue in its networking,
support and professional development role.
Successful training workshops and conferences and
expanding links to related organisations suggest
that there is plenty of opportunity for further
growth of the association. It also suggests that we
have a key role to play in expanding the awareness
of the key role of technical communicators in
industry, education and government. C
Steve Moss has worked
as a self-employed
technical communicator
in Auckland since 1988. He
trained as a mechanical
engineer in the UK and
has extensive experience
in the computer industry
in software support,
development and training.
Steve is an Information
Mapping® certified
trainer and is particularly
interested in editing
and the development of
online training material.
He is a senior member of
STC. Steve has been on
the TCANZ committee
as website administrator
since 1999 and Vice
President since 2001.
E: thevicepresident@
tcanz.org.nz
W: www.tcanz.org.nz
26 History
A guide for inducing dreams
Instructional texts existed before the 20th century. Theresa Cameron
introduces a Babylonian manual from the fourth century BC.
When BBC Radio 4 broadcast How to
write an instruction manual last year, the
Communications Department where I worked
reserved a meeting room for the event. RSSB,
the Railway Safety and Standards Board, does
not produce instruction manuals but has a keen
interest in technical information and we were
all looking forward to a stimulating session. As
examples of instructional texts, the programme
offered manuals for car maintenance and a
robotic voice for a contemporary user guide.
Of course, a half-hour broadcast cannot cover a
great deal but there is so much more!
Technical documentation forms the backbone
of all industries and we are surrounded by
instructional texts in most facets of everyday life,
from buying a ticket at a machine to cooking a
recipe to connecting a computer peripheral, and so
on. Indeed, popular contemporary opinion is that
manuals came along with computers (or cars) and
are products of modern times but technical writing
has existed for hundreds, even thousands of years.
The invention of writing
References
Finkel, I and Seymour, MJ
(2009) Babylon – Myth
and Reality, The British
Museum Press.
Robinson, A (2009)
Writing and Script: A Very
Short Introduction Oxford
University Press.
British Museum online
research database.
Wikipedia (as accessed in
January 2010): Cuneiform
script, Akkadian language,
and Achaemenid Empire.
The invention of writing as a system of graphic
symbols that expresses a spoken language cannot
be given a precise date. The ancient Egyptians
accredited their god Thoth as the inventor of writing
but available evidence suggests that the reason
for the development of writing is more pragmatic:
trade. The growth of commercial activities inevitably
prompted the need for a method of recording
transactions and although we can probably
discount divine intervention, we are unlikely
to know if an inspired individual or a group of
clever traders created the first writing system.
Archaeological findings indicate that the earliest
known full written script — as opposed to Neolithic
pictograms, for example — was cuneiform. It
served originally as the writing system for
the Sumerian language spoken in southern
Mesopotamia, and dates from around 3100 BC.
Earlier scripts may well have existed in China or
India for example, but we lack the archaeological
evidence or perhaps the knowledge to encipher
messages from past eras. Bark, bones or skins
that have been used for written messages rarely
withstand the test of time.
Cuneiform
As it happened, the preferred surface for cuneiform
was clay, of which there was an abundant supply
from the riversides. Clay would have been a useful
surface for text. Soft, it could be rolled out and
reused; baked, it would be durable for recordkeeping and transport, and could be glued back
together if broken. Further, a baked tablet could not
be overwritten or fade, unlike ink, for example.
Perhaps the decision to use clay influenced
the development of cuneiform script. The word
cuneiform derives from the Latin cuneus, which
translates as ‘wedge’ — but it took a few centuries
to arrive at a wedge-like script. The first attempts at
writing were pictographic. Then the direction of the
pictographs changed so that to read Hammurabi’s
Code (written around 1790 BC) for example, it is
necessary to ‘put your head on your right shoulder’
(Robinson, 2009). Over time, the stylus was adapted
with a wedge-shaped tip and the script refined
to symbolic representations of arrows and lines
for words, which would have been much easier
and quicker to impress into the clay. Another
innovation rotated the text direction from vertical
columns to horizontal left-to-right orientation — but
only after it had been right-to-left for a while.
Finally, the number of characters was reduced
significantly from over 1,000 to around 400.
Figure 1 shows the evolution of the word ‘head’
from 3000 to 1000 BC. Number 7 is the simplified
sign used by Assyrian scribes in the early first
millennium BC.
Figure 1. Evolution of cuneiform
One other curiosity about cuneiform is that
it was retained as a written form until the first
or second century AD although the spoken
language(s) were different. For example, from the
first millennium BC, Aramaic was the predominant
spoken language, although written texts continued
in Akkadian. And just to add to the confusion,
there were variations of the Akkadian language as
well, including Babylonian, which writers in English
(and other multinational languages) can relate to
today. Rulers’ whims also influenced the script.
Nebuchadnezzar II instigated the construction
of Babylon’s greatest monuments, such as the
blue-glazed wall. His inscriptions were written in
Hammurabi’s style — used 1200 years earlier.
Babylon in the Achaemenid Empire 550 BC – 330 BC
Part of the reason for the language variance is due
to the inevitable wars as rulers and invaders vied for
power over Mesopotamia. Another is the market.
The imperial city of Babylon was a bustling
The number of characters is still a subject for research
as scholars continue to examine these ancient scripts.
27
international hub. The Achaemenid Empire at the
time of Alexander the Great, the last king of the
period, extended from the Mediterranean Sea,
including Libya and Egypt, to the borders of India in
the east. Traders and scholars came from all parts of
what the people of the time must have considered
the globe. Figure 2 is a Babylonian Mappa Mundi
depicting Babylon as the centre of the world with
triangular pointers indicating regions of the empire.
During the Achaemenid Empire, texts were written
in abundance to promulgate the exploits of kings
as well as scientific discoveries, education and
much more. And as foreigners flocked to Babylon,
itinerant teachers and scholars in return spread their
accumulated wisdom far beyond Mesopotamia.
Babylonian technical writers
Scribes in ancient times were among the social
elite. Occasionally we even know the names
of the scribes, such as Ea-bel-ili. One of his
descendents — alas unnamed — inscribed the
Babylonian map of the world. The map tablet,
incidentally, is partly a recounting of the creation of
the world according to Babylonian mythology and
partly geographical with recognisable landmarks.
Given the complexity of the cuneiform
script — and the noticeable lack of usability in its
earlier forms — it is unsurprising that reading and
writing was restricted to a select few. A word could
be written with a single sign, or more frequently
spelt in syllables. Apprentice scribes had a choice
of signs for a given syllable and each syllable could
have additional phonetic signs so that ‘cuneiform
signs were always multi-functional’ (Finkel and
Seymour, 2009). It was used for Sumerian, Semitic
Akkadian (including Babylonian), Elamite, Hittite,
and Hurrian languages. Sumerian and Akkadian
were taught in schools and ‘some knowledge of
Sumerian [...] persisted until the final demise
of cuneiform’ in the first or second century AD
(Finkel and Seymour, 2009).
The simplification of the script was intended
to allow greater access to these skills but the
scribes defended their roles — probably with
some justification. The notion that ‘anybody
can write’ may have been perceived to be just
as threatening to those scribes as it is to (some)
technical communicators today.
Employment for scribes appears to have been
plentiful as there was a large demand for scripts in
a variety of domains including law, trade, medicine,
magic, accountancy, religion, chronicles and more.
Education was not available to all but apparently
scholarly academies were open to girls as well
as boys. Examples of school exercises preserved
on clay tablets provide insights into the range of
subjects. One specimen is the Essagil Tablet, which
is a mathematical exercise for calculating the area
of the ziggurat of Etemenanki in Babylon. The
scholar dates his work 229 BC and notes that he
faithfully copied the text from an older manuscript.
A standard text for apprentice scribes was
Tintir = Babylon. This group of manuscripts began
© Trustees of the British Museum
Figure 2. Babylonian map of the world, probably 6th century BC
with the 51 Sumerian names of Babylon (Tintir is
the first) and contained useful practical knowledge
of the city as well as ideological and religious
principles. These Sumerian texts with explanations
in Babylonian were copied by generations of
scribes until the first century BC, by which time
the Babylonian elite were speaking Greek. The
lingua franca in the meantime was Aramaic!
Copying text may not seem like an inspired
teaching method but the art of observation
was invaluable. Paying great attention to detail,
Babylonians observed and recorded the movements
of celestial bodies, the symptoms of an ailing
person, and the properties of plants for healing
purposes, as well as chronicles of events. Rituals
and recipes were written down, stored in libraries,
and shared amongst the relevant fraternities.
The dream manual
In biblical references, Babylon ‘embodies pretty
well every human shortcoming’ (Finkel and
Seymour, 2009). It also provided us with examples
of instruction manuals. Whereas some may
dispute Old Testament representations, others
might agree with this statement when it comes
to technical writing. For those who consider a
user guide as the source of all evil, history gives
us reasons to re-evaluate this perception.
Acknowledgements
Figure 2 and cover courtesy
of the British Museum;
Figure 1 from Wikipedia,
released under GNU Free
Documentation Licence
The author also wishes to
thank the British Museum
Middle East Department
for its generous assistance
and the permission to
reproduce the images of
the clay tablets.
28 History
Note
The BBC series ‘A History
of the World in 100
Objects’ included a
Mesopotamian clay
tablet about beer
rationing. You can listen
to a podcast at www.bbc.
co.uk/podcasts/series/
ahow/all#playepisode15
Babylonians and many other peoples of the
past were preoccupied with dreams, oracles
and omens. While the interpretation of dreams
is well documented, for example in the Book
of Daniel, it is the Babylonians who show us
the extent of its importance by studying and
recording methods for inducing dreams.
The clay tablet featured on the cover of this
issue is a guide for soliciting dreams. After the
text for the ritual (see panel), the incantations
are given in full in the lower half of the tablet.
When this part of the ritual is complete, the god
of dreams, Mamud, is asked to grant a vision
that is reliable and shows good fortune.
When you perform the ritual for a dream oracle
[On a propitious day ...], you set up a censer on its left-hand side. [You put ...
(and)] mountain businnu in it (as a wick); you light the lamp; [you set up] the
censer [...]; [you recite] the incantation ‘Mamu, god of dreams’ three times
[before the st]ars (?). You crush (?) magnetite and add it to oil; you recite the
incantation ‘Enmesharra’ and the incantation ‘...’ three times over it and you
anoint your face. [You ...] atāišu plant, myrrh, juniper balsam (and) tamarisk
seeds [...]; he should place coals on the censer [(and) set it up] in front of your
bed. (You recite) the incantation [‘...]s’ (and) ‘Oh wind, be present!’ three times
each over the [...] aro[matics]. [You lie down (?) and] recite the incantation ‘You
roam about, Shedu and Lamassu’ three times (and) [you will see the oracle.]
[Its ritual ... ..., you light] the ‘star’ (?) torch. You crush anamīru plant (and)
magnetite and) throw (them) into oil.] You recite the incantation ‘Enmesharra’
three times over it, and you anoint your face as if [at night(?)] [you sprinkle] ...
aromatics. You lie down and [you will see] an oracle.
(Finkel and Seymour, 2009)
Theresa Cameron MA
MISTC writes business and
technical documentation
for many industries.
She is the International
Representative for the ISTC.
E: international
@istc.org.uk
Tw: www.twitter.com/
intecommunity
The modern technical author might remark on the
lack of numbering for the steps and perhaps the lack
of white space to enhance usability. Indeed, there is
no punctuation or space between words. Nor do we
have the quantities of the ingredients. Apart from
the lack of spacing, which was not yet in use at the
time of writing in the fourth century BC, we might
be concerned at some imprecision. However,
this guide includes the part usually omitted in
modern guides — the prayer that it will work.
Another tablet for a dream ritual describes a
different method. In this, a miniature ladder is
prepared for the dream messenger to ascend.
Just in case the patient metaphorically falls
off the ladder, a one-line spell is added ‘as a
safety precaution’ (Finkel and Seymour, 2009) to
counteract any alarming experiences or visions.
It seems that Health and Safety existed 2,500
years ago.
These texts may bear other similarities with
some current practices: they were written
by and for subject matter experts. If a scribe
was employed to record the procedure,
the professional dream-inducer must have
considered the resulting text sufficient for
purpose. Otherwise, the tablet would not
have been preserved — unless it was a case of
requiring a guide but never referring to it.
Conclusions
Today, we cannot know if this guide was useful
or successful. The British Museum in London has
over 20,000 cuneiform tablets dating between the
seventh and third centuries BC, many of which are
still waiting for transcription. Perhaps somewhere
lies a record that will give us further insights
into the practical uses of these instructions.
There are, however, some remarkable aspects of
this ancient text that reveal similar preoccupations
today. Babylonian scribes may not have had
version control, but they often dated their copies
and acknowledged that their text came from an
earlier version. They also functioned in a nearglobal, multilingual market, juggling with a variety
of languages and the demands of translation.
Like us, the scribes lived in innovative times.
We cannot know our legacy for future generations
but we still use the Babylonian division of time
into one hour of 60 minutes and one minute into
60 seconds. Also like us, scribes were perhaps
protectionists but they upheld writing standards.
And they had to contend with subject matter experts.
Today we have disclaimers in guides should
the user not achieve the desired results. There
was a different take on this in ancient Babylon.
In Greece, around 370 BC, Plato was writing the
Phaedrus Dialogue. In this, he relates a story told
by Socrates concerning a king of Egypt speaking
to the god Thoth about the invention of writing:
The specific which you have discovered is an aid
not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give
your disciples not truth, but only the semblance
of truth; they will be the hearers of many
things and will have learned nothing; they will
appear to be omniscient and will generally
know nothing; they will be tiresome company,
having the show of wisdom without the reality.
(Phaedrus by Plato, translated by
Benjamin Jowett, 1817–1893)
If the speakers of Greek in Babylon were aware of
Socrates’ warning, evidently they did not agree and
continued to write volumes. Babylonian law also
contained safeguards. Instead of disclaimers for
potential errors, the Babylonian solution was direct:
a lie could be punishable by death, if deemed
serious enough. Was a scribe executed for writing
a falsehood? I cannot say, but certainly the threat
of such a punishment allows the assumption that
care was given to accuracy and truthfulness.
And if we cannot test or verify the effectiveness
of the dream manual today, not least because
we do not know all the plants required for the
ritual, there is an opportunity in a different
text. Dr Irving Finkel offers us a passage for a
Babylonian medical treatment which ends:
He should eat regularly(?), drink good brewer’s
beer and he will recover.
(Finkel and Seymour, 2009).
Any volunteers to test the restorative qualities
of real ale? C
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30 Translation
Authoring/translation in the life sciences
Richard Chin and Libor Safar review the context in which writers
and translators operate in this highly regulated sector.
Accurate information and communication is of
paramount importance in the life sciences industry,
where incorrect information about drugs and use
of medical devices can lead to fatal accidents — lives
can be lost. That, compounded with the enormous
amount of information exchanged across
international borders, has led life sciences regulatory
agencies to promote the use of standardised
guidelines for how content is authored, managed
and published for approval purposes. One such
standard is the Product Information Management
(PIM) system, an XML-based platform for
exchange of product information in the context of
marketing authorisation applications — the first
step to being able to market a product in Europe.
Introduced by the European Medicines Agency
(EMA) in December of 2005, PIM was designed
to increase the efficiency of the management
and exchange of product information (Summary
of Product Characteristics, package leaflet and
labelling) by all parties involved. This electronic
exchange of information was developed to improve
the quality and consistency of product information,
by re-using common content globally and obviating
the need for paper documents or materials in
Microsoft Word formats — the process used to date.
A similar system — Structured Product
Labeling (SPL) — exists for the United States. The
purpose, as with PIM, is ‘to facilitate the review,
editing, storage, dissemination of, and access to
product labelling document content.’ One major
difference between PIM and SPL is that whereas
SPL is designed to facilitate the provision of
information, PIM was developed primarily to
facilitate the exchange of information.
The PIM system has a very direct bearing on
the translation industry — as its objective is to
ensure that information in all official languages
of the European Union is consistent and accurate.
In particular, PIM makes it easier to carry out the
simultaneous submission and review of the 20+
languages to agencies that are part of the EMA.
This is why PIM is an important part of EMA’s
Centralised Procedure (CP), which is the procedure for
authorisation of medicinal products, characterised by
a single application, a single evaluation and a single
authorisation allowing the marketing of products
in the single market of the European Community.
Corporations looking to gain approval for
marketing of their products into countries
recognised by the EMA must have the information
surrounding SPC, package leaflet and labelling
translated into its local languages. From the outside
this task seems simple enough, however, a more
microscopic view would reveal that this process is
complicated, involves many stakeholders, and allows
only a limited window of time for the content to
be translated. This complexity can be appreciated
even more when we take into consideration that
one simple drug may give rise to over 900 labels
when indications, strengths, and formulation,
among other parameters, are factored in.
One of the key questions to answer when using
PIM systems occurs early on during the authoring
stage. The question faced by corporations is to
determine whether the source document should
be written in the traditional Word format using
the standardised Quality Review of Documents
(QRD) templates or in the XML format which is
more compatible with the XML format of PIM.
Some suggest that authors can generate the
document in Word and later convert to XML prior
to conversion to PIM. As it relates to the translation
process, it is important to note that translators
will need to produce compliant documents for the
review. If XML formatting is used for the authoring,
then translators will need to be properly trained
on the XML editor — a task that can be daunting for
some. If Word is used as the authoring template,
then one must ensure that the translated document
is properly manipulated back into the PIM standard.
Pilots and data migration
At the moment, a PIM pilot phase is underway
and PIM submissions as part of the Centralised
Procedure (CP) are accepted subject to prior
discussion with EMA. This is an approach that
many large pharmaceutical companies have
taken recently and a solid body of practical
experience exists already.
At the same time, a phased migration has
commenced to move all centrally authorised
product information to the XML-based PIM
format. This phased approach is designed to
give organisations sufficient time to set up the
necessary technical and internal procedures
so that, in future, product information
can be maintained in the PIM format. An
implementation of a PIM solution is not a simple
process and may easily take anywhere from a
year and a half to three years.
This pilot phase is expected to be completed
in the third quarter of 2010. Following that, PIM
will move into general production and the PIM
approach will be strongly recommended for all
new marketing authorisation applications, as
well as for all post-authorisation activities for
products that were already migrated to PIM. The
migration of all centrally authorised product
information to the PIM format is then expected
to be completed by the end of 2011 and the PIM
approach will be strongly recommended for all
31
applications and post-authorisation activities.
This general move towards PIM is providing
many organisations with an excellent opportunity
to rethink their existing internal procedures and
workflows. This includes reviews of the tools and
processes used in authoring the English content
and of the way that translations are coordinated.
It may include the adoption of an XML-based
translation management tool. The objective is
always to increase efficiency and to reduce the
time for critical activities in the process and
the costs — now possible thanks to the general
advantages of the structured XML format.
To facilitate the process, EMA has made
available its Light Authoring Tool (LAT), shown
in Figure 1. This tool was developed primarily for
small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), but
can be used just as well by larger companies as
an interim solution before they implement their
own internally-developed or third-party solutions.
The LAT is effectively a web-based submission
tool that facilitates the building of XMLbased product information using an interface
with viewing and editing features, as well as
functions for the complete business process and
life-cycle of product information management.
The life-cycle management options include
advanced capabilities for working with various
linguistic versions of the product information.
The timeline and timetable
Once documents are finalised in the source
language (English), there is a specific process and
timetable that needs to be followed during the
translation and linguistic review life cycle. Different
requirements and timelines exist depending on
whether the ‘submission for approval’ is for a new
submission, variations on an existing application,
or for post marketing approved products. Table
1 shows the timeline for a new submission as
published by the EMA in October of 2008.
It is important to note that, given the short
time window for translation of documents into
20+ languages as described above (beginning on
day 210 and ending on day 215), one can start
to appreciate how having a standardised system
like PIM would help facilitate the review and
dissemination of the product information. With
PIM, there is consistency in terminology usage,
formatting is standardised, and repurposing of
information is possible.
Examining the timelines above, even with PIM,
there are challenges that need to be addressed.
Namely, how can the manual process of coordinating
with translators, updating the translations, and
corresponding with regulatory agencies and
other stakeholders be better managed? To give
some insight into this, let’s take a step back and
evaluate the translation process itself.
In the global scheme of things, the cost of
translating is only a fraction of the total product
or drug development costs, not to mention the
subsequent large marketing expenditures. But
Figure 1. Preparing translations in the LAT tool made available by EMA
to facilitate the use of Product Information Management
the costs of incorrect translations are high and
the risks very real. As outlined above, there is
only a limited window of opportunity in the
overall timeline for submitting translated product
information. Issues during the translation stage
may result in delays and re-work, leading to
unnecessary extra costs. There is a real threat
of product liability lawsuits resulting from
mistranslations, should they lead to adverse
effects on patients. This is all the more so
when the registration process with EMA will be
delayed for all the languages and hence markets,
until the last language is approved. Finally, every
extra day that the developed medicine or product
cannot make it to the market entails a loss, since
the time for patent protection is limited.
Terminology
Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC)
Used by Physicians and Pharmacist to advise patients on drug side
effects, how the drug should or should not be taken, dosage, storage and
whether a prescription is needed or not.
Package Leaflet and Label
Used by Patients, Doctors, and Pharmacists to determine the proper use
of the drug as well as to find information on its name, strength, expiration
date and storage condition.
Quality Review of Documents (QRD)
The Working Group on the QRD was established in 1996 to provide assistance
to the EMA scientific committees and to companies on linguistic aspects of
the product information (SPC, labelling and package leaflet) for medicines.
32 Translation
Table 1. Timeline for a new submission published by the EMA
Days
Activity
Zero
Submit English source document to EMA for review
80-110 EMA reviews source English document
120
EMA send comments and questions regarding English version to
applicant
121
Applicant sends responses to the comments and questions from EMA
155
EMA would have forwarded the revised English version to QRD
members and, if necessary, to representatives of Patients and
Consumer Working Parties (PCWP)
165
EMA will send a compilation of the written QRD comments to the
applicant
165
Meeting between EMA/QRD and applicant may be held. Attending
may be two to three EMA representatives, two QRD representatives
and one to two applicant representatives (optional), plus a
representative from PCWP if necessary.
181
Oral explanation on the submission by the applicant to EMA
210
EMA would render an ‘Opinion’ on the English version as to whether
the process should move forward
Note: There is an accelerated assessment procedure that may shorten
the post-opinion activities. This is done on a case-by-case basis.
215
Applicant has five days to have all product information translated
into all EU languages (including Icelandic and Norwegian) as well
as the QRD Form 1 to EMA
Note: Applicant is advised by EMA to start the translation process
after day 165 to optimise the quality of the translations prior to day
215. Further, applicant should be aware of the risk that there may
be significant changes to the original English version after postopinion. Managing these changes with translators can be difficult.
215–
229
Each member state reviews the corresponding language version
229
QRD members send overall feedback on the quality of the translations
235
Applicant sends final translations with tracked changes,
incorporating the QRD members’ comments in Word format, as
well as in PDF format (clean), electronically to the EMA
237
EMA sends final translations to the Commissioner which will start
the 22-day Standing Committee consultation period to address legal
and public health matters (no more linguistic review in most cases)
261
End of Standing Committee Consultation
277
Final Commission Decision
What matters to deliver life-critical quality?
As always, quality starts at source, and working
with qualified translators is a must. They need
to be qualified and experienced in the life
sciences area and translation; however, the
specific type of material determines the actual
level of qualification required.
Many materials written for the general public
and patients may require ‘only’ a medium level
of knowledge in the subject matter area. This
applies to materials such as Patient Information
Leaflets (PILs) or Instructions For Use (IFUs). On
the other hand, materials written for clinical
trials or regulatory submissions typically call for
a higher level of know-how, and this applies to
Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC) as well.
Such critical life sciences translations are in
practice very ‘personalised’. Frequently, companies
may ask to review profiles of the translators
selected in advance so they can influence the
selection. Similarly, translation providers may be
asked to accompany delivered translations with
a certification stating the specific individual who
provided translation and attesting to the quality
and accuracy of the given translation.
As part of the regulatory audit trail, such
certificates will often require signatures
and attestations from others in the overall
translation process, such as language reviewers,
technical reviewers, DTP specialists and/or
project managers, including those on the
client side. Some life sciences companies may
require such certificates not to be delivered
electronically, but strictly as signed hard copies.
In-country reviews (ICRs)
A step that is often built in the translation process
for these types of materials is access to in-country
medical professionals (doctors, surgeons) practising
in the actual field of expertise, who are made
available for consultancy. Similarly, a third-party
translation QA and in-country reviews (ICRs) are
critical components of the process. The third-party
QA is conducted by independent reviewers with
knowledge of both linguistic and medical aspects
of the subject matter, once the core steps of
translating, proofreading or editing are completed.
This linguistic quality verification ensures the
translation, stylistic and terminological correctness
and consistency of the translated material.
This may be complemented or replaced by
a formal ICR process, conducted by clients’ or
translation providers’ resources, or a combination
thereof. In addition to linguistic review, a separate
type of review is carried out; this is focused on
technical accuracy and factual correctness of
translated content. These reviews are performed
by medical professionals and practitioners,
who have the necessary practical experience in
the subject area and in the given country. The
objective of this technical review is to assess the
accuracy and usability of the text in the local
context and for the specified use. When client
resources are used, they will often come from the
companies’ local in-country offices or distributors.
Back translations and readability tests
Another translation QA/verification step that
exists in the realm of life sciences is back
translations. They serve to check that nothing
‘got lost in translation’; they are translations
of the translated content back to the source
language, which is then compared with the
original source. Sourcing back translators may
be a challenge. They need to be native speakers
of the source language, typically English, have
relevant life sciences subject matter knowledge,
33
and be highly proficient in the target language.
This is not a problem for major languages, but
can be challenging for some emerging or minority
languages. Fortunately, this step is not universally
mandatory, and is reserved typically only for
critical content, often in clinical trials or research.
Finally, let us address readability tests
as required by EMA specifically for Patient
Information Leaflets. The objective as defined in
the EMA guideline is to ‘maximise the number of
people who can use the information, including
older children and adolescents, those with poor
literacy skills and those with some degree of
sight loss.’ It looks at aspects such as:
 Print size and type
 Design and layout of the information
 Headings
 Print colour
 Syntax
 Style
 Paper
 Use of symbols and pictograms
To support implementation of this directive, EMA
has developed templates in all the languages
concerned, which include all the items that must
appear on the labelling and package leaflet. In
addition, the English version of the template
provided is annotated with detailed instructions
and guidelines designed for content authors.
Readability testing (user testing) is one method
of ‘consulting with target patient groups’ to
ensure that leaflets are legible, clear and easy.
This assessment needs to be provided to the
competent authority. Such testing of readability
is conducted with a group of selected test
subjects. It is normally required to undertake
this testing in one language, and the results are
to be presented in English for the centralised,
decentralised and mutual recognition procedures.
Conclusion
Writers as well as translators share certain
common procedures or best practices regardless
of the specific industry in which they operate.
The regulated nature of life sciences presents
one example where much standardisation exists
for writers, and can serve as a potential source
of inspiration for professionals writing or
translating for other industries. In this sense,
the relatively recent arrival of the XML-based
PIM system and process is poised to become a
new driver for increased efficiency in the way
life sciences companies approach marketing of
their products internationally. C
References
European Medicines
Agency (EMA):
www.ema.europa.eu
PIM at EMA:
http://pim.ema.europa.eu
QRD-annotated template
for Product Information:
www.ema.europa.eu/
htms/human/qrd/docs/
Hannotatedtemplate.pdf
Conventions to be
followed for the EMAQRD templates and
the PIM data exchange
standard (DES):
www.ema.europa.eu/
htms/human/qrd/docs/
convention.pdf
Richard Chin is Moravia’s Life Sciences Practice Lead.
He is a life sciences veteran with more than 20 years
of experience in R&D, patient recruitment, clinical
trials and regulatory submission. He holds an MBA
in Marketing and a BA in Biology and is member of
industry associations including DIA, RAPS and ACRP.
W: www.moraviaworldwide.com
Libor Safar is Marketing Manager at Moravia
Worldwide. He has worked at the company and in the
language services industry since 1994 in a range of
positions including translation, localisation, project
management and business development. He holds a
degree in Electrical Engineering from Brno University
of Technology, and an MBA from the Open University.
W: www.moraviaworldwide.com
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34 Translation
Languages of Central and Eastern Europe
Jurek Nedoma explains the similarities and differences within this
group of languages, and offers tips for translation departments.
Review of CEE languages
The classification of Central and Eastern Europe
(CEE) languages is not altogether precise. It is
commonly used as the opposite of Western
European languages. Figure 1 shows the natural
boundary between these two groups of languages.
In general, this boundary is similar to the so‑called
Iron Curtain that divided Europe after the
Second World War. CEE languages are usually the
languages that are used to localise products when
entering the Central and Eastern European market.
Wikipedia states that CEE languages is a collective
term for the group of Central and Eastern European
languages, such as: Belarusian, Bulgarian, Croatian,
Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian,
Moldovan, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak
and Ukrainian. In this definition, three Balkan
languages are omitted: Albanian, Slovenian and
Serbian. Certain sources also distinguish between
Bosnian and Montenegrin, which are sometimes
treated as dialects of Serbo-Croatian.
Figure 1. CEE languages: natural boundary
Language groupings
Table 1 shows the groups into which the major
CEE languages are divided. You can see their
distribution in Europe at www.angelfire.com/mac/
egmatthews/worldinfo/europe/languages.html.
Numerous other ‘minor’ languages (not dialects)
are spoken in this area but do not have ‘official
language’ status. The Slavic languages comprise
the main group of CEE languages. About 300
million people in Europe, including Russia,
have a Slavic native language.
Similarities and differences
The similarities and differences among the Slavic
languages depend on the language combination
involved. For example, Czech and Slovak are very
similar and mutually intelligible. Speakers of Czech
and Slovak usually understand both languages in
their written and spoken form. Only some dialects
or heavily accented speech in either language
might present difficulties to speakers of the other
language (in particular, Czech speakers may find
Eastern Slovak dialects difficult to comprehend).
Polish is more similar to Slovak than Czech.
However, hundreds of words and expressions
differ considerably in Polish and Czech/Slovak,
and there are numerous ‘false friends’ that impede
mutual intelligibility. Over the centuries, Polish
was influenced by many languages: Latin (9th–18th
century), German (13th-15th and 18th-20th century),
Hungarian (14th-16th century), Italian (15th-16th
century) and French (18th-19th century). One can
find many synonyms that are derived from these
languages and, therefore, the understanding of
Polish by Czechs and Slovaks may vary depending
on the vocabulary used by the Polish speaker.
Another group of similar languages are the South
Slavic languages of the western section (Serbian,
Croatian, Bosnian, Slovene and Montenegrin). All
of these languages are based on the Proto-Slavic
language and, therefore, mutual intelligibility is high.
Russian and Belarusian are much more similar
in speech than in writing because of the Belarusian
spelling system. A reform of Belarusian grammar
is currently ongoing.
For historical and geographical reasons, Ukrainian
is naturally similar to Belarusian, and — to a lesser
degree — to Russian. Polish loanwords comprise 14%
of the entire Ukrainian vocabulary. The influence of
Russian was also very strong but many words loaned
from Russian are treated as ‘contaminations’ and
are, therefore, omitted from Ukrainian dictionaries.
In addition, Bulgarian and Macedonian are
mutually intelligible to a high degree. The next
closest languages to Macedonian are Serbian,
Bosnian and Croatian.
In fact, all 13 Slavic languages are so similar
that I — the grandson of a Czech citizen, born and
educated in Poland, and fluent in Russian — can
easily understand the sense of a text written in any
of these languages without the help of a dictionary.
Table 2 shows examples of the similarities.
The next pair of languages, Romanian and
Moldovan, is an extraordinary case. There is no
particular linguistic break at the Prut River, which
is the border between Romania and Moldova.
The language spoken in Moldova is identical to
Romanian, sharing the same literary standard,
but for political reasons both names, Moldovan
and Romanian, are used inside Moldova. In the
early 2000s, a group of Romanian linguists
35
adopted a resolution stating that the promotion
of the notion of the Moldovan language is an
anti-scientific campaign. It is funny that certain
translation agencies offer translations into
Moldovan for rates that are significantly higher
than for translations into Romanian.
It is noteworthy that Romanian (Moldovan) is not
mutually intelligible with Italian, which is the most
similar Western European Romance language. A
Romanian reader will be able to understand a text
written in Italian but an Italian reader will only be
able to understand a text written in Romanian if that
text uses Romance loanwords. The use of ‘pure’Romanian words or Slavic derivatives in a Romanian
text will make it unintelligible for Italian readers.
The languages in the Baltic group (Lithuanian
and Latvian) and the Finno-Ugric group (Hungarian
and Estonian) are not mutually intelligible.
However, Estonian is quite similar to Finnish; this
pair of languages is mutually intelligible to some
extent. Table 3 shows some of the similarities
and differences within these groups.
Albanian and Maltese are completely different
from other European languages. Some sources treat
Maltese as a dialect of Arabic, because most of its
function words are Semitic, but a large number of
Italian, English and French loanwords differentiate
Maltese from Arabic. As a result, speakers of
Romance languages may be able to understand
complex ideas in Maltese such as ‘Ġeografikament,
l-Ewropa hi parti tas-superkontinent ta’ l-Ewrasja’
(Geographically, Europe is part of the supercontinent
of Eurasia) but be unable to understand a simple
sentence such as ‘Ir-raġel qiegħed fid-dar’ (The man
is in the house), which would be easily understood
by any Arabic speaker (who would write and read
this sentence from the right to the left).
Table 1. Classification of CEE languages
Group
Sub-group
Language
East Slavic
Russian
Ukrainian
Belarusian
RU
UK
BE
145,000,000
47,000,000
9,000,000
West Slavic
Polish
Czech
Slovak
PL
CS
SK
44,000,000
12,000,000
6,000,000
Serbian
Croatian
Bosnian
Slovene
Montenegrin
SR
HR
BS
SL
MN
13,000,000
6,000,000
2,500,000
2,000,000
200,000
South Slavic
(eastern section)
Bulgarian
BG
Macedonian MK
12,000,000
2,000,000
Romance
Romanian
Moldovan
RO
25,000,000
4,300,000
Albanian
Albanian
SQ
6,000,000
Baltic
Lithuanian
Latvian
LT
LV
3,300,000
1,700,000
Finno-Ugric
Hungarian
Estonian
HU
ET
15,000,000
1,100,000
Semitic
Maltese
MT
300,000
South Slavic
Indo-European (western section)
Number speakers
use two alphabets: Latin and Cyrillic. Some
(Serbian, Bosnian, Montenegrin and Macedonian)
use both alphabets, with Montenegrin and modern
Bosnian preferring Latin, while modern Serbian
prefers Cyrillic. Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian,
Belarusian and Macedonian use Cyrillic. Both
alphabets are modified for different languages,
and have additional special characters.
Latin script
The number of Latin-based special characters
in CEE languages is much greater than in other
European languages: for example, A, E and U
each have six different derivatives. Nearly all of
these special characters are derived from the
standard alphabet by using different diacritical
Frequently encountered translation problems
Alphabets and special characters
Figure 2 shows the distribution of the main
alphabets in Europe. All Western European
languages use the Latin alphabet. CEE languages
Table 2. Similarity of Slavic languages
Proto-Slavic
PL
CS
SK
SL
HR
BS
SR (Lat)
RU
BG
SR (Cyr)
BE
UK
ognь (fire)
ogień
oheň
oheň
ogenj
oganj
oganj
oganj
огонь
огън
огањ
агонь
вогонь оган
ryba (fish) ryba
ryba
ryba
riba
riba
riba
riba
рыба
риба
риба
рыба
риба
MK
риба
gnězdo (nest) gniazdo hnízdo hniezdo gnezdo gnijezdo gnijezdo gn(ij)ezdo гнездо гнездо гн(иј)ездо гняздо гнiздо гнездо
oko (eye) oko
oko
oko
oko
oko
oko
oko
око
око
око
вока
око
око
Finno-Ugric
Baltic
Table 3. Similarities and differences among the Baltic and Finno-Ugric languages
English
one
two
three
four
five
water
air
fire
bread
milk
Lithuanian
vienas
du
trys
keturi
penki
vanduo
oras
ugnis
duona
pieno
Latvian
viens
divi
trīs
četri
piece
ūdens
gaiss
uguns
maize
piens
Hungarian
egy
kettõ
három
négy
öt
víz
levegő
tűz
kenyér
tej
Estonian
üks
kaks
kolm
neli
viis
vesi
õhk
tuli
leib
piim
Finnish
yksi
kaksi
kolme
neljä
viisi
veteen
ilmaan
tulipalo
leipä
maito
36 Translation
Table 4. List of the diacritical marks used in CEE languages based on Latin script
Name in English
Local name
apostrophe
acute accent
double acute accent
grave accent
double grave accent
dĺžeň
breve
caron
haček, mäkčeň
cedilla
cédille
circumflex
vokáň
diaeresis
umlaut, tréma,
prehláska
dot
kropka
hook
ogonek, nosinė
ring
kroužek
macron
tilde
Shape
Examples
’
ˊ
˶
˴
˵
˘
ˇ¸
Ť
á
ő
è
ȁ
Ă
Č
ţ
ˆ
¨
˙˛
â
˚
¯
~
å
ä
ż
ą
ā
ñ
marks (a term that comes from the Greek for
‘distinguishing’: διακριτικός [diakritikós]). Table 4
lists the diacritical marks, with local names where
applicable. Although the differences in shape
seem so small, it is essential to distinguish:
Romanian (or Spanish) cedilla and the Polish
(or Lithuanian) hook
Romanian (or French) breve and the Czech
(or Slovak) caron
Latin
Cyrillic
Greek
Latin+Cyrillic
Greek+Latin
Slovak apostrophe above L and the Slovak
acute accent above L
Hungarian (and German) diaeresis and
the Hungarian double acute accent.
On the other hand, these are identical:
the Spanish tilde and the corresponding
Estonian mark
the Polish hook (ogonek) and the
corresponding Lithuanian hook (nosinė).
CEE languages do not contain ligatures, which
occur in many other European languages. For
example, ‘æ’ (French, Danish, Norwegian and
Icelandic) and ‘œ’ (French).
The number of special characters can cause
problems in typesetting. Many fonts do not
have all the characters and so such letters may
disappear in the final version of the target text.
Cyrillic script
The best known Cyrillic script is the Russian
alphabet, which contains 33 characters.
However, not all of these letters are used in the
other Cyrillic-based CEE languages. For example:
‘щ’ is used only in Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian
‘ъ’ is used only in Russian and Bulgarian
‘ы’ and ‘э’ are used only in Russian and Belarusian.
Equally, some special characters are derived from
Cyrillic basic letters in other languages. For example:
‘ґ’, ‘є’ and ‘ї’ are used only in Ukrainian
‘ć’ and ‘з’ are used only in Montenegrin
‘ќ’, ‘ѓ’ and ‘s’ are used only in Macedonian
‘ў’ and ‘i’ are used only in Belarusian
‘ћ’ and ‘ђ’ are used only in Serbian and Montenegrin.
It is important to distinguish between:
Ukrainian ‘ї’ (with two dots) and Belarusian ‘i’
(with one dot),
Russian (and Belarusian) ‘э’ and Ukrainian ‘є’
(mirror equivalents)
Letter ‘ц’ (used in all Cyrillic-script CEE
languages) and ‘џ’ (Serbian).
Some upper case Cyrillic letters are the same as
their Latin equivalents, but the shape of lowercase
letters is different (for example, ‘B’ and ‘в’,
‘M’ and ‘м’, and ‘H’ and ‘н’).
TIP These special characters often become corrupted
when moving files between operating systems and
authoring tools. Always schedule extra time for a
local check of the final target language version before
printing. Otherwise, you risk errors like the one shown
in Figure 3 on page 38, a well-known banner for a
Chinese restaurant named ‘Translate server error’. The
Chinese letters to the left simply mean ‘restaurant’.
Obviously, a final check of the translation by a person
familiar with the target language was omitted.
Grammar problems
Figure 2. Distribution of the main alphabets in Europe and surrounding countries
The rules and structure of Slavic languages
are entirely different from those of English,
French or German. Words and phrases that are
repeated unchanged in different contexts in the
source text may take different forms in Slavic
languages. Thorough proofreading is needed to
ensure the use of correct forms.
37
Example:
EN
1 segment
2 segments
3 segments
4 segments
5 segments
21 segments
22 segments
25 segments
31 segments
POL
1 segment
2 segmenty
3 segmenty
4 segmenty
5 segmentów
21 segmentów
22 segmenty
25 segmentów
31 segmentów
RUS
1 сегмент
2 сегмента
3 сегмента
4 сегмента
5 сегментов
21 сегмент
22 сегмента
25 сегментов
31 сегмент
As a rule, the regular plural form of a noun in
English simply requires the suffix ‘s’.
In Polish, there are two regular plural forms:
The suffix ‘y’ is used for 2-4, 22-24, 32-34, …
The suffix ‘ów’ is used for 5-21, 25-31, 35-41, …
In Russian, there are three plural forms:
The suffix ‘a’ is used for 2-4, 22-24, 32-34, …
The suffix ‘ов’ is used for 5-20, 25-30, 35-40, …
No suffix is used for 21, 31 and so on. This
means that the singular form of the noun is used
in Russian for 21 or 991 segments, for example.
These examples demonstrate that English segments
classified by CAT tools as ‘full repetitions’ may
not necessarily result in exact repetitions of the
translated words or phrases in Polish or Russian.
TIP Never cut ‘full repetitions’ out of the project. Pay your
provider to check them.
In Polish (and in nearly all Slavonic languages), the
order of the words in this expression is different:
‘Igrzyska Olimpijskie’. The CAT tool will give us:
Example:
Segment
Number
1
2
Source Language
(English)
Olympic
Games
Target Language
(Polish)
Igrzyska
Olimpijskie
The segments cannot be aligned in this way
when creating the translation memory, which
needs to contain the alignment:
(EN) Olympic  (PL) Olimpijskie
TIP Be careful when accepting short segments for
translation memories. It is better to exclude
exceptional segments to avoid serious mistakes.
Numbered lists
Technical manuals often contain numbered lists.
The numbering often uses alphabetical order for
the sub-items, for example, ‘a, b, c, d, e, ...’. In the
Cyrillic-written CEE languages, such numbering
must reflect Cyrillic alphabetical order: for
example, in Russian – ‘а, б, в, г, д, ...’.
TIP Be careful with lists that are in alphabetical order.
When translated into Russian, such lists should be in
Cyrillic alphabetical order. Any references in the text
should reflect the Cyrillic order; for example, the third
item should be referred to as ‘в’ not ‘c’.
Word order
Hyphenation
Computer-aided translation (CAT) tools segment
phrases automatically. Using such tools to handle
short phrases can give rise to errors because of
the grammatical differences between the source
and target languages.
For example, let’s assume we’re using a CAT tool
to translate the event title ‘Olympic Games’ into
the Polish language. We’re using a large font and
so the words ‘Olympic’ and ‘Games’ will appear on
two lines. The CAT tool will divide the expression
into two segments: (1) Olympic and (2) Games.
Hyphenation rules in CEE languages are different
from those in Western European languages, even
where the spellings of the words are similar or
identical.
Examples:
ENG choc-o-late
ENG he-gem-on-y
ENG park-ing
ENG plu-toc-ra-cy
ENG res-ur-rec-tion
ENG sen-a-tor
POL
POL
POL
POL
POL
POL
cze-ko-la-da
he-ge-mo-nia
par-king
plu-to-kra-cja
re-zu-rek-cja
se-na-tor
38 Translation
Figure 3. Mistranslation of ‘restaurant’
Figure 4. English-Welsh – ‘dde’ means ‘right’
TIP Your system’s automatic hyphenation may cause
significant mistakes when hyphenating texts in CEE
languages. Disable automatic hyphenation, and always
schedule a final review of PDF files by a native speaker
of the target language.
Native language degradation
During the communist period, and after 1989,
there were several waves of immigration from CEE
countries into Western Europe. Many immigrants
now offer translation services. As a rule, however,
immigrants’ fluency in their native language
degrades, until they no longer have a grasp of the
contemporary version of their mother tongue.
TIP Be careful when using translators who have been
away from their native country for several years.
Quality standards
In CEE countries, the level of quality expected
for translation work is generally lower than it
is in developed countries. Good CEE translators
demand higher rates than those offered to
clients by many local agencies.
For example, the quality of the Polish translation
of the European Constitution (published in the
Official Journal of the European Union EU C 310
dated 16 December 2004) was originally rather poor,
and the mistakes were significant. For example, in
Article 271, the word ‘illicit’ was missing in the Polish
equivalent of the sentence: ‘These areas of crime are
the following: terrorism, trafficking in human beings
and sexual exploitation of women and children,
illicit drug trafficking, illicit arms trafficking, money
laundering, corruption, counterfeiting of means of
payment, computer crime and organised crime.’
This resulted in the literal Polish meaning that
all factories working for the Polish Ministry of
Defence and trafficking arms would be banned
as a crime, which is obviously nonsense.
The problem was so significant that a special
amendment has been published in the Official Journal
of the EU (C 112/9 dated 12 May 2005) to eliminate
these errors. It contains a revision of the 42 most
important mistakes. (Source: www.konstytucjaue.
gov.pl/konstue.nsf/dziennik_c_112.pdf)
If the translation of such a unique document
of international significance did not meet quality
expectations, it is unlikely that translations of
lesser texts will be better.
Figure 5. English-Welsh – out-of-office message
TIP When working with CEE agencies, position yourself
as a high-profile client and avoid cheap services.
Cultural differences
Cultural differences can make contact with
freelance translators difficult. Accuracy, deadlines
and responsiveness are not always perceived to
have the same importance. Of course, this problem
is not confined to CEE countries. An amusing
example relates to the Welsh-English translation
of a sign in Cardiff (Figure 4). The sign tells
English-speaking pedestrians to look left, while
Welsh-speaking pedestrians should look right!
TIP Be prepared to accept this situation or work only
with reliable translation agencies.
Shortages of translators and reviewers
The populations of many CEE countries are
relatively small, resulting in fewer good translators
in certain language pairs. Moreover, many good
translators now work full-time in European Union
institutions and are no longer available.
The population of Estonia is about 1.5 million,
Slovenia about 2.0 million, Latvia about 2.3 million
and Lithuania about 3.4 million. The combined
population of these four countries is less than
the number of native speakers of Catalan, which
is not an official language of the European Union.
Welsh has some of the same problems, although
it is an official EU language. It can be difficult to
find a Welsh translator to handle large projects
and sometimes even small jobs are refused. Such
a situation happened in Swansea in October
2008. The council sent an e‑mail to its in-house
translation service to have a road sign translated
into Welsh (as is compulsory). The sign said: ‘No
entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only’
The Welsh translator was absent at the time, and
an automatic reply was generated in Welsh: ‘Nid
wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw
waith i’w gyfieithu’ — ‘I am not in the office at the
moment. Please send any work to be translated’.
As no one in the council could understand these
two simple Welsh sentences, they printed the
message on their bilingual road sign (Figure 5).
The result was some very confused Welsh truck
drivers and a very embarrassed council.
TIP Try to schedule translations in advance to ensure that
you have a team that is available for your projects.
39
Currency fluctuations
Summary
The value of most CEE currencies has been
changing significantly against the euro and other
major currencies for some years. The worldwide
banking crisis also had a significant impact on
the exchange rates for the CEE currencies against
the euro (EUR). Examples for Polish Zloty (PLN)
and Hungarian Forint (HUF) are given below:
2004-02-19 – 4.8979 PLN/EUR
2008-07-30 – 3.2005 PLN/EUR
2009-02-17 – 4.9000 PLN/EUR
2008-07-18 – 228.18 HUF/EUR
2009-03-05 – 316.05 HUF/EUR
The Polish Zloty rose by 53% against the euro
in 2004-2008 and then, within seven to eight
months, fell by 53.1%. There were similar, if
smaller, fluctuations in the Hungarian Forint
(38.5% fall). It is interesting to compare these
rates with those for the British Pound (GBP)
against the euro. Extreme values were:
2008-10-05 – 0.7729 EUR/GBP
2008-12-30 – 0.9770 EUR/GBP
Over about three months, the British Pound fell
by 26.4% against the euro. Knowing the impact
this had on the economy at the end of 2008,
imagine the implications of the Polish Zloty’s
fluctuations — rising and falling twice as much.
TIP Accept the situation as it stands from the onset, and
be prepared to pay higher rates for CEE languages in
the near future.
When handling translations into CEE languages,
which are inevitable because of fast economic
growth in this market, take into account the
factors outlined in this article. Be prepared to
consider all the circumstances and establish
cooperation with a language services provider in
a CEE country. Choose a service provider that is
able to become your one-stop shop for CEE
languages, acting as a reliable consultant for all
possible requests regarding these languages. C
Jurek Nedoma MSc Eng is Chairman of LidoLang Technical Translations in Kraków, Poland. A
co-founder of Lido-Lang (1991) and the European
Language Industry Association, ELIA (2004), he was
secretary of the ELIA Board for two terms. Currently,
he is a member of the Audit Committee of the Polish
Association of Translation Agencies.
W: www.lidolang.com
40 Professional
Who are today’s internal communicators?
Catherine Park discusses how this discipline has changed dramatically
in recent years, bringing new challenges and new opportunities.
Introduction
Most people understand that internal
communication is the process of an organisation
communicating with its employees. However,
they may find it more difficult to appreciate
precisely what this activity involves, not least
because its scope, ideas about best practice and
the way in which it impacts on everyone within an
organisation have changed considerably in recent
decades. One simple way to introduce its various
aspects is to show how it has evolved over the
last 60 years and how this has been mirrored by
developments at the industry body representing
the profession: the British Association of
Communicators in Business (CiB).
Like the ISTC, the British Association of Communicators in Business (CiB)
supports communication professionals, but in internal rather than technical
communication. It has over 1,100 members working across the public and
private sector, in both in-house and agency roles. CiB has just celebrated
its 60th anniversary, and another landmark was reached recently when its
members voted for a change of name and status to the Institute of Internal
Communication, which will take effect from the annual conference in May 2010.
Key strands of activity include:
• Professional development: development of a comprehensive, flexible and
robust framework of accredited qualifications and supporting training
• Advocacy: convincing organisations of the importance of effective internal
communication
• Standards: improving the standard of communication practice and delivery
• Networking: promoting the regular exchange of ideas, insights and
experiences both between members and within the communication industry.
CiB provides seminars and workshops regionally, stages a national conference, runs
the largest competition for internal communication in Europe, offers training and
professional development possibilities, supports a large knowledge bank and has
an active freelance section. Further information is available at www.cib.uk.com
Evolution of internal communication
The founders of the association in 1949 (when the
organisation was called the British Association
of Industrial Editors) were largely editors of
house magazines and newsletters. At that time,
internal communication was all about ‘telling’
staff things about the organisation and simply
conveying decisions made at Board level.
Over time, internal communication practice started
to become more complex and involve a broader
range of activities. There was greater awareness
of the importance of two-way communication,
and employee surveys began to come to the fore.
However, internal communication tended to remain
submerged within a function such as corporate
communication, marketing or human resources. Staff
with internal communication responsibilities were
certainly not on the Board, and often not working
closely with senior management on strategic issues.
In recent years, rapid technological developments
have brought new possibilities for internal
communication, for example with intranets, podcasts
and various social networking tools. This has
increased the onus on professionals to update their
knowledge continually. A growing body of evidence
has also shown that effective employee engagement
is linked inextricably to traditional measures of
business success such as healthy profits, highquality products and services, low staff turnover
and high levels of innovation. It also helps
immeasurably in dealing with some of the major
challenges facing today’s organisations, including
the need for constant change and minimising
the damage caused by economic downturn.
The Government-commissioned MacLeod Report,
published in 2009, describes employee engagement
as shown in the panel on the opposite page. Clearly,
true employee engagement is a very specific state,
and making a significant contribution towards
achieving it requires a strategic and precise approach.
Another key consideration stressed by the report was
the importance of line managers to effective internal
communication, and this is borne out by a whole
raft of research. A recent CiB survey revealed that
70% of respondents totally trusted their boss, but it
is a law of diminishing returns after that. Only 40%
trusted their boss’s boss and the figure falls to
33% for the next rung up the ladder. In addition,
GfK NOP research findings show that staff
with an engaged line manager typically have an
engagement score of around 75% while employees
of a disengaged line manager score only 40%. This
effectively means that, even if an organisation has
excellent communication staff doing first-class work,
this could be compromised if line managers in other
departments are not communicating effectively with
their teams. While communication practitioners
cannot take responsibility for the abilities and
motivation of individual managers, they do need
to take the key role of these staff into account
when developing programmes and materials.
The growing complexity and dynamism of
internal communication, coupled with increasing
recognition of the role that it plays in achieving
key business objectives, were instrumental in the
decision of CiB to change its name and status to the
Institute of Internal Communication (IoIC), effective
from May 2010. While CiB has had considerable
involvement in external communication over the
years, internal communication has been its core
area of expertise right from its earliest days. The
decision to become the IoIC reflects the fact that
internal communication is a specialism in its own
right and that practitioners will benefit from a
professional institute providing dedicated support.
41
Responsibilities of today’s practitioners
So what does all this mean in terms of the
demands on today’s practitioners?
One key constant remains the importance
of clear and accurate communication. We all
know only too well the confusion, problems and
sometimes bad feelings that can be created by
ambiguous communications, overly wordy or
sketchy text, errors or omissions. In the context of
internal communication, sloppy communication
can even lead employees to fear that their employer
is concealing important information from them
and to start a highly destructive rumour mill.
So, regardless of the range of a communicator’s
responsibilities and the sophisticated tools at their
disposal, it is vitally important that they maintain
high quality in every communication that goes out.
Practitioners have had a boost in recent years
as a result of employers becoming much more
aware of the important contribution that they can
make towards the achievement of business goals.
However, this also means that the organisation will
view the results of internal communication more
critically, and will want to see quantifiable evidence
of results that are actually moving the organisation
forward, just as they would expect, for example,
from the marketing or sales department. This
means that producing a high-quality publication
is not an end in itself: communicators have to
be able to prove that the selection of specific
strategies and tools is contributing towards the
achievement of pre-defined goals.
Like all communicators, internal communication
practitioners have to think carefully about
messages and the audiences to whom they are
speaking. However, there are some important
differences from, for example, producing
publicity materials aimed at potential customers
or indeed writing an instruction manual. A lot of
communication tools are designed for individuals
who are already pre-disposed to make use of
a particular product, service or explanatory
document. While these obviously have to meet
The MacLeod Report, published in 2009, describes employee engagement as:
‘a workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to
their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational
success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being.
‘Engaged organisations have strong and authentic values, with clear evidence
of trust and fairness based on mutual respect, when two-way promises and
commitments — between employers and staff — are understood, and are fulfilled.’
the needs of their desired target audience, it is
accepted that many people will not need or wish
to make use of them. It would be rare indeed for
internal communication to be only aimed at a small
proportion of the workforce who are immediately
inclined to pay attention and absorb the relevant
information. Internal communication generally
has to reach, gain the attention of and achieve
specific results in relation to the entire workforce,
and do so on an ongoing basis. This involves
dealing with a whole raft of challenges ranging
simply from being registered and absorbed by staff
who are very focused on their day-to-day work
activities, to overcoming apathy and entrenched
positions, to tackling the suspicion, concerns and
resistance arising from significant changes. Internal
communicators also need to understand the
positives and negatives of workplace gossip, and
other forms of highly informal communication.
As internal communication practitioners
progress through their careers they, therefore,
need to develop an in-depth understanding
of workplace dynamics. Some will argue that
internal communication is just an extension of
marketing or external communication in terms of
getting messages out in an appropriate way for
the target audience in question. However, for the
reasons just outlined, CiB believes that it has its
own body of knowledge which, in some respects,
is closer to human resources than external
communication. That is not to say that external
communicators cannot do it, but they need to be
attuned to the differences and willing to learn as
much as possible about theory and practice.
A New Decade For Technical Communication:
2010 And Beyond
Admission free
www.tceurope.org
10th TCeurope Colloquium
Saturday, 17 April 2010, at the FIAP Jean Monnet in Paris
42 Professional
One of the big challenges for practitioners is the
wide variety of channels, including online options,
that are now potentially available to support internal
communication activities. Different tools require
different tone and style: there is a prevailing trend
towards greater informality, even in fairly traditional
communications, although fine judgement is needed
on how far to take this. This can result in quite heated
debates on seemingly small points; for example, the
use of ‘we’ in communications rather than talking
about the organisation in the third person.
In certain roles, practitioners will find themselves
contributing towards decisions about the development
of internal systems or the purchase of new technology.
They need to be able to maintain a clear head as
regards what is the most appropriate way of achieving
specific objectives: they should be aware of all the
latest developments but not be a slave to them.
In addition, they need to understand the issues
arising from the two-way and indeed multi-way
communication that is increasingly an integral part of
organisational practice. These range from strategies
for maximising participation to decisions about
the policies and procedures that need to be in place
to avoid specific abuses when staff are inputting
information to the intranet or other online tools.
Increasingly, internal communicators are finding
themselves in a facilitation as well as a ‘doing’ role.
A key aspect of this is helping leaders and line
managers to communicate as effectively as possibly
with their organisation and teams. This may
involve providing them with written material, but
it could also include providing advice, feedback
and coaching in relation to approaches that work.
As indicated above, monitoring the effectiveness
of particular tools and communication
programmes is a key part of the modern internal
communicator’s role, so evaluation measures also
need to be factored into communication strategies.
Impact of a transformed role
CiB estimates that there are around 20,000 people
working in internal communication roles today.
The changing nature of internal communication
has broadened the type of career opportunities open
to practitioners. These range from fairly traditional
editorial roles to managing the intranet to taking on
a variety of internal communication activities. Some
individuals will find themselves involved in both
external and internal communication activities.
However, there has been an increase in the number of
dedicated internal communication roles and teams, and
a growing number of senior positions within the sector.
There are also agencies that specialise in providing
internal communication consultancy services to clients.
People enter internal communication with a
wide variety of work experience and qualifications.
Journalism, business degrees, copywriting, marketing,
public relations, research and human resources
all feature regularly on CVs. Today’s practitioners
often find themselves involved in a wider variety of
activities than may have been the case a few years
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/RFDOL]DWLRQ3URMHFW0DQDJHPHQW&HUWLÀFDWLRQJune 24-25, 2010
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43
ago and working under much more pressure. With
the emphasis on maximising efficiencies, they may
also be in a very small department or stand-alone
role. This may minimise opportunities for support,
advice or mentoring. One of the drawbacks is that
practitioners at an early stage in their career (or
possibly even later!) may lack some of the core
skills, for example, writing, editing, proofreading,
interviewing, managing approval procedures and
liaising with designers and printers. This can lead to
time-consuming and costly errors, and also damage
the reputation of the professional in question.
CiB, therefore, believes that it is very important
that qualifications and a professional development
framework are in place to give those starting out in
their career a solid foundation for the future and to
enable them to meet today’s challenges. Appropriate
levels of continuing professional development are
needed at all career stages. CiB would like to see
practitioners working more closely with the Board
and senior management so that internal communi
cation activities are inextricably linked to business
strategy and goals. However, for this to be possible,
practitioners must have a complete understanding
of the challenges faced by their colleagues and be
able to develop appropriate solutions, thus gaining
their colleagues’ respect and trust. This will not
happen if practitioners do not have a good, general
appreciation of business principles in addition to
finely honed, technical communications skills.
To support these needs, CiB has placed a growing
Translation provider since 1989
emphasis on the development of professional
qualifications and supporting training. It has already
launched an entry-level Diploma of Proficiency and
an Advanced Diploma. Two further qualifications
at bachelors and masters level are also planned.
Ensuring that an appropriate continuing professional
development framework exists for the sector will
continue to be a cornerstone of the IoIC’s work.
There is still important profile-raising work to be
done to increase general understanding of internal
communication and its importance. Tellingly, in terms
of general perceptions, media coverage tends to focus
on industrial relations and union developments,
or else legal and procedural aspects of issues such
as sick leave and stress, rather than exploring
underlying internal communication considerations.
However, the Government’s current awareness
campaign relating to employee engagement, which was
initiated by the MacLeod Report, and the prevailing
focus on increased levels of professionalism can
only bode well for the future of the sector. For its
part, CiB intends to raise the profile of the sector
through campaigns to improve standards across the
board and by illustrating just how best practice can
make a huge difference to organisational results.
Internal communication has come of age, and
this means huge opportunities for practitioners but
also a range of new challenges and responsibilities.
It is important that they have the flexibility,
enthusiasm and thirst for knowledge that will
enable them to tackle these with confidence. C
Certified Investor in People
Catherine Park is
Public Relations and
Marketing Manager for
the British Association
of Communicators in
Business.
W: www.cib.uk.com
ISO 9001:2000
Translation specialists
in your world
�
Reflect the quality of your
products across all languages
�
Reduce your localization costs
�
Improve your time to market
�
Succeed globally
t: +44 (0)1829 730050
e: [email protected]
w: www.lloyd.co.uk
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44 Tools
Single-sourcing with TemplateMapper
Developing single-sourced content for multiple outputs in unstructured
FrameMaker is possible with this plug-in. Andy Lewis demonstrates.
A long, long time ago (probably around 2002),
before terms such as structure, XML, DITA and
content repurposing had entered my workplace
vocabulary, I was faced with the need to take a
suite of legacy FrameMaker books and reproduce
the content in an entirely alternate set of templates
with completely different formatting for paragraph
tags, character tags, conditional tags, table formats,
cross-reference formats… you name it.
The solution to my problems was TemplateMapper.
This is a FrameMaker plug-in that enables you to
convert the formatting of a legacy FrameMaker
book or individual file to the formatting of a
specified set of target files. In 2009, a long-awaited
new version of this versatile plug-in was released,
so this article is a belated look at what it can do.
With TemplateMapper you can use
FrameMaker to create content in one template
or set of templates, then convert all your
content to a separate set of templates with their
own unique formatting. This is particularly
useful in cases where, for example, you need
to create both your own corporate-branded
documentation as well as a separate OEM
partner-branded documentation suite containing
much or all of the same content. Using
TemplateMapper, you can author your content
in one set of templates, then convert that
content to a different set of templates without
having to maintain separate documentation sets.
Other potential efficiencies are available if you
use TemplateMapper to convert multiple legacy
files to new templates after you have updated
your template set.
TemplateMapper is developed by Chris
Despopoulos and sold through CudSpan
(www.cudspan.net). A single licence costs $200
(approximately £120) and prices vary depending on
the number of licences purchased. A free evaluation
version is available for download for FrameMaker
versions 7.x and 8.0. At the time of writing, the latest
released version of TemplateMapper is 1.5, which
is suitable for FrameMaker versions 7.x and 8.0.
Conversion settings can apply to the following
FrameMaker object types:
 Paragraph formats
 Character formats
 Table formats
 Cross-reference formats
 Master pages
 Reference pages
 Condition tags
 Variable names
You can also specify custom plug-ins to perform
specified operations on your legacy content before
TemplateMapper performs the defined format
mapping for that FrameMaker book or file.
TemplateMapper interface
The TemplateMapper user interface consists of a
map file and a job control panel.
The map file contains a set of mapping tables
for all the FrameMaker object types supported
by the plug-in. You define your mapping settings
for each object type in the appropriate table.
The job control panel is where you define legacy
file-to-target template mappings and specify
which of the supported object types you want to
include in the conversion.
Both the map file and the job control panel are
regular FrameMaker documents that use hypertext
markers to achieve their interactive functionality.
Both are delivered in read-only mode.
Performing conversions
Figure 1. Default map file
This section provides a description of a very
simplified sample conversion using a single
paragraph format only. In real production
uses of TemplateMapper, it is assumed that
your conversions will include at least multiple
paragraph and character formats, if not all the
FrameMaker objects in your templates.
Let’s assume that your legacy files contain a
paragraph format called Heading1. You want to
convert all instances of Heading1 in your source
files to a paragraph format in your target files
called 1Head.
Create a new TemplateMapper map file using File >
Utilities > Template Mapper > New Map Document.
The empty default map file is shown in Figure 1.
45
Load your legacy files and target templates
into the map file. It is a requirement of
TemplateMapper that you load your legacy files
inside a book file, rather than as individual
files. Even if you are converting only a single
document, you must still include that document
in a book file and load the book file for mapping.
The same is true for your target templates.
TemplateMapper displays lists of all the
formats that your legacy files contain. Figure
2 shows the section of the map file relevant to
paragraph formats. The full map file contains
separate lists for each supported FrameMaker
object type (paragraph formats, character
formats, table formats, cross-reference formats,
master pages, reference pages, variable names,
condition tags and preprocess plug-ins).
Locate Heading1 in the paragraph format list
and click NO_CHANGE to display a list of all
the paragraph formats present in your target
templates, as shown in Figure 3.
Select 1Head and save the map file. Ordinarily
you would also repeat this procedure for all your
paragraph formats and for all the other FrameMaker
object type formats that you want to convert.
Figure 3. Target template paragraph formats
Now access the TemplateMapper job control panel
from File > Utilities > Template Mapper > Job Control
Panel and load your legacy files and target templates
again, together with the map file, as shown in Figure 4.
Select the FrameMaker object type formats
that you want to convert (paragraph formats
only in our simplified example).
Define the swap action and the template to
associate with each of your legacy files, and click
Run Job. Note that you can also save your job settings
for later reuse by clicking the Save Job option.
TemplateMapper converts the contents of
each file to the target formatting according to
the pairs listed in each mapping table row in
the map file. After performing the conversion,
TemplateMapper leaves each of your newly
formatted files open. At this point none of the
modifications made by TemplateMapper are
saved. You now need to manually save each of
the converted files individually.
To avoid overwriting your original files, define
a new name and/or the location to which you
want to save each of the converted files. All that
remains is to add each of the converted files to a
new book file and save the book. Alternatively, if
Figure 2. Legacy template formats
you have backed up your original files and do not
need to preserve the source files that you have
added to the job control panel, you can simply
save all the converted files, overwrite your
source documents and access your converted
files from the original legacy book file.
You can perform further mapping operations
at a later time using the same job settings you
have defined in the job control panel.
In summary, the recommended workflow is as
follows:
1. Back up all your files.
2. Run TemplateMapper.
3. Inspect the results.
4. Open the book file, if not already open (you
can access your book file directly from the
job control panel).
Note that, as well as protecting your content, backing up
your files removes the need to create a new book file.
Figure 5 illustrates the entire conversion process.
Figure 4. Job Control panel
46 Tools
3. Load
legacy files
1. Save legacy files
2. Create new map file
4. Load
target templates
5. Configure mapping
7. Load
legacy files
6. Open job control panel
10. Define
conversion
settings and
run conversion
8. Load Map file
9. Load
target templates
11. Save target output
Andy Lewis is a long-time
user of TemplateMapper
and of many other
FrameMaker plug-ins
in both structured
and unstructured
environments. He has
presented and written
extensively about his
experiences. He has
recently joined the WAS
Content Development
team at Verint Systems
in Herzlia, Israel where
he is scaring his new
colleagues with his plugin freakishness. Andy is
a Certified Adobe Expert
in FrameMaker. Feel free
to contact him.
W: www.verint.com
www.linkedin.com/in/
andylewis2003
Figure 5. Conversion process overview
Template overrides
Running preprocess plug-ins
If you use an existing map file with a new set of legacy
documents, you may find that there are formats in
the source documents (let’s say a paragraph format
called zBody for simplicity of explanation) that have
not yet been included in the map file. In such cases,
TemplateMapper carries the text that is tagged with
these legacy formats over to the target files and
leaves their formatting unchanged. The target now
includes these formats as template overrides and
displays their format names with an asterisk in the
tag area in the bottom left corner of the FrameMaker
user interface, as shown in Figure 6.
These format overrides are also included in
the appropriate catalog list.
TemplateMapper enables you to activate other
FrameMaker plug-ins before performing a conversion.
To enable this functionality, locate the Cudspan
Preprocess Plugins section of the map file (see
Figure 1) and click ADD PLUGIN. You are prompted
to enter the name of the plug-in and the argument
string that TemplateMapper passes to the plug-in.
TemplateMapper processes each of the legacy files
in turn, first running the preprocess plug-in, and
then performing the template conversion.
Figure 6. Regular paragraph format override
Conclusion
This article has provided an overview of the basic
functionalities available with the TemplateMapper
plug-in for FrameMaker versions 7.x and 8.0. We
have referred to some of the major advantages
of the plug-in when seeking to maximise the
benefits of single-sourcing, and provided a
sample workflow for converting content from
one template set to another. C
47
Editing
Improving consistency
Paul Beverley looks at some of the programs and macros
that are available to help you ensure consistency within a document.
How important to you is consistency
of spelling and hyphenation within
a book/paper/report? If you want to
check yourself, there are tools available,
free of charge, that will help. The first
is a Windows program, called TextStat,
that generates a word-frequency list so
that you can compare the frequency of,
say, ‘non-linear’ and ‘nonlinear’.
However, if the word list contains,
say, 5000 words it can be quite timeconsuming to look through the list
for items of concern. I have, therefore,
written a macro (one of many macros
that I use in my work as a technical
editor) that highlights all the interesting
words, and also warns me about possible
misspellings of proper nouns.
But before I start, I need all the text
of the book in a single file.
Collect the text
When I’m working with someone else’s
PDF files, I have to collect the text, file
by file, with copy and paste-as-text
into a Word file, but to get the text out
of a set of Word files is the work of a
moment using a macro (available free
on my website). You make sure that the
book files — and no others — are held in
a folder. Then you open one of the files
so that the macro knows which files
you’re working on. It then loads up all
the files, one at a time, copies the text
(just the text, no diagrams or pictures)
and put it into a separate Word file.
(When I’m editing, this ‘AllTheText’
file is useful in its own right. I have other
macros that help me find out all sorts of
things about how words have been used.)
Create the word list
For the word-frequency list, I use an
old Acorn (RISC OS) program — better
the devil you know. However, there is
a Windows word-frequency generator
called TextStat available from http://neon.
niederlandistik.fu-berlin.de/en/textstat.
Full instructions for setting it up are
available on my website.
I gather that Mac users can run
TextStat through Python, or you can use
Concorder Pro, available from http://
homepage.mac.com/fahrenba/programs/
concorderPro/concorderPro.html
TextStat (and Concorder Pro, I assume)
generates a word-frequency list that
looks something like this:
A-coefficient
1
abbreviated
1
ABCD
6
aberration
3
aberrations
1
ability
6
and so on
Analyse the text
To make it quicker and easier to find
all the words that I need to look at, I
run a macro that I’ve called ‘TextAlyse’
(text analyse). This first highlights all
of the words in the word-frequency list
that begin with a set of prefixes that I
specify (you can change the list):
anti
coo
co-o
eigen
inter
multi
non
quasi
semi
sub
super
The macro also highlights other words
of interest, in various different highlight
colours: -is or -iz; -ling or -lling;
focus(s)ed/es/ing; and -rnt or -rned (for
example, learnt or learned) and so on.
Finally, it spell checks all the words
and creates a separate list of all the
words it finds that are incorrectly spelt.
This list can be quite revealing in itself,
but a lot of the ‘spelling mistakes’ will
be proper nouns, so the macro creates
two separate alphabetic lists: with and
without an initial capital. The initial
capitals may have been sentence-start
words, but most will be proper nouns,
so it gives some really useful pointers
such as the following (all from one
book I was editing):
Rusbrooke
1
Rushbrook
15
Rushbrooke
7
...
Shirioshi
4
Shiroishi
2
...
Zhang
1
Zheng
5
I then had to find out whether these were
separate people, or just spelling errors,
but the point is that TextAlyse flagged
up the possible problems for me.
There’s more
After running TextAlyse. I also run a macro
called DocAlyse which works on the actual
Word files of the book. It tells me various
things about the use of punctuation,
italicising (such as et al. or et al.), and
various other potentially troublesome
word usages, including the use of the serial
(Oxford) comma. It doesn’t actually edit
the text but, like, TextAlyse, it highlights
potential difficulties and then it’s up to
me to do the editing ...
... though I do also have one or two
quite powerful macros to help with
actually doing the editing.
The macros
All the macros, with instructions, are
available in a free book downloadable
from my (advert-free!) website (www.
archivepub.co.uk/TheBook). Because I
update the macros and instructions
reasonably often, the book has a version
number and a date, and I try to remember
to date the macros as I improve them so
that you can see if you have the latest
version. I hope you find them helpful. C
Paul Beverley (Archive Publications)
After 20 years self-publishing in science
and engineering, Paul started doing editing
for other people. He thinks that reading
interesting books and getting paid to do so
is a truly excellent way to earn a living. He has
recently started running workshops on the
use of Word macros for writers and editors.
W: www.archivepub.co.uk/TheBook
48 Book review
Technical Communication
English Skills for Engineers
By Meenakshi Raman and Sangeeta Sharma
ISBN: 978-0195695748, OUP India (2008), £11.99, 530 pages. Reviewed by Jean Rollinson FISTC.
This is a textbook with four parts, each
of which can be read independently.
The first part is called Language and
Communication, and has chapters on
grammar and technical communication.
The second part is Language Skills for
Communication. This has chapters on
listening and speaking, reading, writing
and more grammar. Part 3 is Interviews
and Group Communication; and Part 4 is
Advanced Forms of Communication with
chapters on letters, memos and e‑mails,
reports and advanced writing. Each chapter
ends with exercises that test what has been
covered. The book concludes with a series
of appendices and test questions.
I had several concerns with the first
chapter. The main one being that it
goes into far too much detail and uses
unnecessarily difficult language for the
intended audience. For example, the
first page has the sentence ‘To hone
these skills, the training pertaining
to listening, speaking, reading, and
writing (LSRW) has become necessary.’
Personally, I found the section on
word formation interesting, but I did
wonder whether all the examples are
necessary or relevant.
This first chapter also has a section
on synonyms and antonyms which
seemed to contradict what I have been
taught. For example, it encourages the
use of synonyms, saying ‘If you use the
same word several times, it becomes
monotonous.’ Whereas I have always
been told to use the same words when
referring to a particular idea, however
repetitive it may appear, as using
different words can cause confusion.
The second chapter, Basics of Technical
Communication, actually has very little
information about technical communication.
It is more concerned with the processes
of general communication. It talks about
how we communicate, the different
levels of communication and barriers to
communication. All of which, of course,
need to be considered in technical communi
cation, but are not the central tenet.
Interestingly, the second part considers
why it is important to ‘Know Your Audience’,
so the writers are obviously aware of the
need to target their writing, but don’t
seem to have followed their own advice.
Part 2 begins with an interesting chapter
on listening and speaking, parts of which I
think would be useful to everyone. I found
the section on Implications of Effective
Listening very enlightening. However,
again I found that some of the sections
and exercises seemed irrelevant to the
overall aim of the book. For example,
there are several pages devoted to writing
dialogue, which seems to me to be more
relevant to a creative writing class than
a book on technical communication.
In the following chapter on writing
there is some good advice, but it seems
to contradict what was said earlier in the
book. I particularly liked the following
notes: ‘avoid stiff and difficult words
as far as possible’ and ‘Never, ever
patronize your audience!’ The chapter
then goes on to state that ‘Concrete and
specific words are always preferable to
abstract words.’ I couldn’t agree more.
There also some useful comparison
tables showing the differences between
the passive and active voice; examples
of redundancy; direct sentences versus
roundabout sentences; and examples of
ambiguous sentences. They also have
many examples of original text with a
revised (better) version. I don’t agree with
all of the changes made, but generally
these examples demonstrate a good,
clear writing style that you can emulate.
In Part 3, the authors concentrate on verbal
communication, specifically in the form
of interviews and group communication.
Although it begins by saying that there
are many interview situations, the chapter
then only looks at job interviews.
The chapter on Group Communication
is, I think, more useful in that it looks
at meetings that are likely to occur in
a business context and describes some
techniques such as brainstorming and
the Delphi Technique that you may be
asked to participate in without knowing
what is expected.
Part 4 is also generally useful, but
came across to me as more than a little
patronising: this may not be true for
non-native English speakers. Although
the part is entitled ‘Advanced Forms
of Communication’, it begins with very
basic information about writing letters,
memos and e‑mails. However, as in
previous chapters, it goes on to give
helpful examples and comparison tables
of good and bad forms of writing.
The Reports chapter is probably more
useful for most engineers as it gives a
good explanation of how to structure a
report and also includes many examples
of different types of report that you can
use as the basis for your own work.
Finally, on page 468, there is some
information about technical writing. It
begins ‘One of the most common and
most important uses of technical writing
is instructions’. Hurrah! This is what I
had expected the book to be about, but
unfortunately this section is only ten
pages long in a book of 530 pages.
I found parts of this book absolutely
fascinating and I also learned a few things.
That said, however, it does not appear
to me to be the book that it claims to be.
From the title, I had assumed that the
intended audience was engineers, possibly
non-native English speaking engineers,
who wanted to improve their written and
possibly spoken English so that they could
communicate their ideas more clearly.
I feel that such people would be sorely
disappointed by this book, and probably
not progress beyond the first few pages.
It is possible that this textbook was
written to accompany a specific course,
and the authors know their students better
than I do, but while I was reading it my
feeling was that is a good idea for a book
that has been poorly executed and could
have done with a good copy-editor. It is
unfortunate that it has not been very well
thought through and there is too much
unnecessary information obscuring the
useful stuff. I certainly don’t think that it
is essential reading for any engineers that I
know. Having said that, there are certainly
some gems of wisdom, and I will be going
back to it to re‑read the sections on word
formations and word derivations, as I
find words and language fascinating. C
About the book’s authors
Meenakshi Raman is Associate Professor and
Languages Group Chief in the Publications
and Media Relations Unit, BITS, Pilani.
Sangeeta Sharma is Assistant Professor and
Group Leader in the Languages Group, BITS,
Pilani.
49
International standards
Taking a broader view
Richard Hodgkinson reports on the latest developments in
standards on topics that may interest technical communicators.
Following my previous articles on specific
areas of standardisation, I’m now taking
the opportunity to provide a broader
view of international developments in
standards that are potentially of interest
to technical communicators. To save
space and keep it simple, I’ve excluded the
names of the standards committees and
kept acronyms to a minimum. If you’d
like more information, or to contribute
to these standards, please contact me.
Note: A year after the number of
a standard signifies that it has been
published. No year signifies that it is
currently under development.
PDF standards
I’ve reported on the development of ISO
14289 – Electronic document file format
enhancement for accessibility (PDF/UA).
However, there are other PDF standards
in development or published:
ISO 19005-1:2005 – Document
management – Electronic document
file format for long-term preservation
– Part 1: Use of PDF 1.4 (PDF/A-1)
ISO 19005-2 – Document management
– Electronic document file format
for long-term preservation – Part 2:
Use of ISO 32000-1 (PDF/A) [at Draft
International Standard (DIS) stage]
ISO 19005-3 [in planning, this will
address electronic documents
containing dynamic media such as
movies, sounds and 3D]
ISO32000-1:2008 – Document
management – Portable document
format – Part 1: PDF 1.7
ISO 24517-1:2008 – Document
management – Engineering document
format using PDF – Part 1: Use of PDF
1.6 (PDF/E-1)
ISO 16612-1:2005 – Graphic
technology – Variable printing data
exchange – Part 1: Using PPML 2.1
and PDF 1.4 (PPML/VDX-2005)
ISO 15930 – Graphic technology
– Prepress digital data exchange
using PDF series.
ISO 15930 is a collection of standards
that defines a number of conformance
levels, all of them targeted at ensuring
predictable and consistent printing in a
professional print environment:
 Part 1:2001 – Complete exchange using
CMYK data (PDF/X-1 and PDF/X-1a)
[Part 2 is not currently listed]
 Part 3:2002 – Part 3: Complete
exchange suitable for colour-managed
workflows (PDF/X-3)
 Part 4:2003 – Complete exchange of
CMYK and spot colour printing data
using PDF 1.4 (PDF/X-1a)
 Part 5:2003 – Partial exchange of
printing data using PDF 1.4 (PDF/X-2)
printing data suitable for colour-managed
workflows using PDF 1.4 (PDF/X-3)
printing data (PDF/X-4) and partial
exchange of printing data with external
profile reference (PDF/X-4p) using PDF 1.6
 Part 8:2008 – Partial exchange of
printing data using PDF 1.6 (PDF/X-5).
Icon standards
ISO/IEC 115811 – Information
technology – Icon symbols and functions
was originally developed in the 1990s
as a five-part standard as follows:
Part 1:2000 – Icons – General
Part 2:2000 – Object icons
Part 3:2000 – Pointer icons
[Part 4 – Control icons was not published]
Part 5:2004 – Tool icons
Part 6:1999 – Action (toolbar) icons.
Work is now underway to revise and
restructure this standard, add new parts
and include an icon database, as follows:
Part 10 – Framework and general
guidance
Part 20 – Guidance on icon families
Part 30 – Developing and evaluating
icons
Part 40 – Icon registration and icon
libraries
Part 41 – Data structure to be used for
the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 35 Icon database.
In addition, several other icon standards
will be incorporated into the series,
including:
ISO/IEC 24738:2006 – Icon symbols and
functions for multimedia link attributes
ISO/IEC 18035:2003 – Icon symbols
and functions for controlling
multimedia software applications
ISO/IEC TR 19765:2007 – Survey of
icons and symbols that provide access to
functions and facilities to improve the use
of information technology products by
the elderly and persons with disabilities
ISO/IEC TR 19766:2007 – Guidelines
for the design of icons and symbols
accessible to all users, including the
elderly and persons with disabilities.
Online help
ISO 9241-13:1998 – Ergonomic
requirements for office work with visual
display terminals (VDTs) – Part 13:
User guidance is due for revision and
discussions are underway to address
online help in the new version.
Simplified English
A proposal is being developed to prepare
a new ISO standard for ‘Simplified natural
language’. The proposal describes the
scope of this standard as follows:
Basic concepts and general principles
concerning simplified natural languages
facilitate:
 Reducing ambiguity,
 Speeding up reading,
 Improving comprehension for people
whose first language is not the
language of the document at hand,
 Improving comprehension for people
with different domain or application
background,
 Making human translation and
localization easier, faster and more
cost effective;
 Computer-assisted translation and
machine translation.
In addition, these general rules and
principles constitute a systematic approach
that can make cross-language and
cross-domain applications of simplified
natural languages more effective.
I’ll report future developments on
this standard as they happen.
Need a standard?
Published standards (those with a year)
can be purchased from the BSI in London
(www.bsigroup.com/GlobalHomepage.
aspx?id=23637) or direct from ISO in
Geneva (www.iso.org/iso/home.htm). C
Richard Hodgkinson FISTC has participated
in the development of ISO, ISO/IEC and
European standards addressing icons, symbols,
software documentation, pen gestures and ICT
accessibility since 1990. He is also an Associate
Lecturer for the MA Technical Communication
course at the University of Portsmouth.
50 A day in the life
Mark Swaine explains
the role of porridge
in the life of a tech
comms manager.
Let me introduce myself first, before I
describe one of my days back in January.
I am the Technical Communications
Manager at the Schlumberger® technology
centre in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire,
and I have been at the company for five
years. Schlumberger is a global oilfield
services company, and the documents
my team produces are for operating and
maintaining rotary steerable drilling tools.
As a technical author with over 12
years’ experience in software companies,
coming to Schlumberger was quite a
change, in terms of the products and the
culture. Assembly procedures, operating
guidelines, and detailed technical theories
of tool functions are now commonplace,
instead of software user guides and
installation guides. I even encountered
my first experience of wearing protective
clothing and a hard hat when going into
the manufacturing workshop to see how
a tool was assembled! I soon learned that
safety was a critical part of everyday life
at the company, and that is also reflected
in the documentation we produce.
As I am sure many documentation
managers will say, my duties are very
varied, from managing resources,
planning schedules and reviewing
content to updating information on the
web and digital signage. But first, let me
begin with my passion for porridge…
It all starts at 6am, when I get up
and start getting ready for work. I
can’t leave the house without having
my porridge — this is something I
discovered many years ago, and have
not looked back (at the cornflakes)
since. I am ready for anything after that.
I get into the office and turn on my
laptop. While that starts, I usually grab a
coffee from the vending machine in the
restaurant, and manage to resist (thanks
to my porridge!) the full English breakfast
that’s always on offer before heading back
to my desk. E‑mail is my first priority. I
check for any urgent requests or tickets
that have come in from end users.
Our manuals are published on the
Schlumberger support and online
knowledge repository, called InTouch.
This system acts as a user support
centre with a knowledge repository and a
ticketing system. Users can enter tickets
to report suggestions or problems with
the documentation. We also enter tickets
ourselves to record the work we need to do.
Members of my team manage the tickets for
their products on our helpdesk on a daily
basis to make sure we respond to tickets
and deal with them in an agreed timeframe.
I like to chat with the other authors to
see how things are going, and to make sure
they have everything they need. It’s been
a few days since we were all in the office
because of the snow, so it’s good to catch
up. There are four authors in the team and
they are assigned to different projects, from
new product development, to sustaining
product documentation. We embed each
author into a project team, and make sure
they sit as close as possible to the team
members. This makes the authors visible
to the project teams, so they will hopefully
catch all the discussions that go on,
and learn about important changes.
To aid the communication efforts,
we have started to use SharePoint to
collaborate, and we have been promoting
the benefits of this to other project teams.
Collaboratively reviewing documents
has been very beneficial to us.
One of the varied responsibilities I
have is to also keep the website and
digital signs up-to-date, so I often get
requests to add news stories to the
homepage, or add new information to
the digital signs in each building. As I
said before, health and safety is very
important to Schlumberger, so we can
quickly pass on messages or advice
using the web or screens.
Today, there is panic about a
project, and how quickly can it be
commercialised. Of course, the usual
question comes: ‘Can the documentation
be ready in time?’ My usual position is
that I know very little at that point about
what is changing, being added, what
needs documenting and so on. I try to
find out more information and talk to the
project leader to assess the impact on the
documentation. This time, it seems there
will be fairly major changes required to
an existing documentation set.
Our documentation is stored in an
XML content management system in
data modules. Many of our products
use similar operating procedures, so we
have focused on writing topics that we
can reuse. We need to have a very good
understanding of the source structure
of our content so that, if we update a
data module, we know the change is
also applicable in the other manuals it
appears in. However, this also means
that content can be updated relatively
quickly, and we can be sure it will
appear in all the necessary deliverables.
Back to the project: I keep being asked
how long will it take? We organise a
meeting to assess the current manuals,
highlighting the main areas that will
need updating, or where new content
might be needed.
I also need to review and approve
documents before they are released. I
receive the documents or individual data
modules after the author and subject
matter experts have completed them,
so my role is to check for consistency
across the group, check that appropriate
styles are used, and generally do a final
review. If there are no changes to make,
I can promote the workflow of the data
modules, and the document is then
ready to be released.
I have a couple of assembly procedures
to review today. These can be simple
assemblies of 10 to 20 steps or complex
assemblies of up to 60 steps. As a result
of feedback from the users, we’re trying
to use more visual aids and we’re finding
3D exploded line art to be very effective.
Related to this, we’re working on
piloting the creation and use of 3D
animated assembly procedures. Today,
I need to test a new version, and so
I perform some usability testing and
validation on a 3D animated assembly
procedure in PDF and HTML formats.
Our end users are typically maintenance
technicians all over the world, and the
feedback we often get is that they want
the procedures to be more visual. For
many of them, English is not their first
(or even second) language.
Before the day ends, I check our
helpdesk to monitor the status of our
tickets and check to see if any tickets
are coming close to their deadline date.
Finally, before logging off, I check my
calendar for the next day. It’s staff
evaluation time, so tomorrow I’ll start
preparing my team’s appraisals. C
translation
localisation
authoring
illustration
publishing
Don’t just translate. Communicate.
For us, translation is far more than just the conversion of words from one language
to another. We consider the meaning of the words to uncover and communicate
the concepts and messages behind them.
We replicate your production environment and work in your document’s native
format so that we can create documents that communicate as effectively as your
original.
Contact us to discover how we can help you.
Imprimatur Limited
22 Church Street, Godalming
Surrey GU7 1EW, England
Tel: 01483 791400
Email: [email protected]
www.imprimatur.co.uk

Minding your language Setting procedures in stone

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