Technical documentation for international audience

A wealth of online resources exists to help technical documentation teams adapt their output for international customers, focusing on the planning, tools, and steps needed to successfully translate and localize content.

However, while getting this process right is critical to global customer success, it’s part of a larger content cycle – one that starts with the original ‘source’ content and the language in which it is created.

For many international companies, a disconnect exists between document creation by technical authors and designers and the subsequent adaptation of this content – a potential misalignment of communication, workflows, tools, and budget.

This disconnect can lead, among other things, to duplication of effort, inefficient workflows, missed deadlines, plenty of late nights and headache, and – critically – inflated costs. To help global businesses close the gap, we’ve prepared this guide to share some best practices for creating localization-ready technical documentation for an international customer base. We’ll look at how to design, manage and execute a document internationalization strategy that helps content flow seamlessly through the subsequent adaptation steps. Building product technical documentation for a global audience?

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Internationalization (often abbreviated to ‘i18n’ to save on the 18 characters between the ‘i’ and the ‘n’) refers to the process of creating products and content that can be adapted to new regions and languages without significant redesign or restructuring of the original. It involves tracing the localization journey downstream from the creation point and anticipating any obstacles or complications that will be encountered when translating or adapting the content for new locales. Then, from this base, working back upstream to create new processes or implement new technology and practices in the creation process which will simplify and accelerate the workflow later down the line.

In the world of technical product design (especially software and digital products), internationalization has many technical components relating to the way products are built – the code which produces a slick original web application, for example, may not bend itself easily to being adapted into other languages. In this arena, internationalization is a vital part of the product cycle from the outset, and the adoption of ‘localization friendly’ design practices has been widespread across global tech companies in recent years. But internationalization isn’t just for software or apps. It applies to documentation and user instructions too, and adopting an approach to technical content creation that keeps later language adaptation in the view from the beginning has an upside for all involved.

When compared with physical or digital product adaptation, the opinion can prevail within companies that document localization is a straightforward process. Instead of needing to ensure that every window, button, dropdown, and screen of a digital program works across a range of languages, when it comes to user help, technical manuals and other support documents, the translation for international users can seem significantly less complex. As a result, less time and energy get dedicated to the ‘localization readiness’ phase, and source-language documentation is generated with little or no thought as to how it will be converted into an end format that looks and feels native to the target user markets. This absence of an effective internationalization strategy can have a huge impact, both on the cost and speed of product rollout or release.

Among the potential complications of overlooking internationalization considerations are:

Documentation teams becoming bogged down in postdelivery conversations with localization teams, creating last-minute workarounds to translation obstacles or design complications. This can distract authoring teams from new projects, cause deadline slippage and make it almost impossible to know when original content creation can be considered truly ‘finished’.
Localization teams missing vital international rollout targets, unable to create and approve final versions of foreign-language documentation within defined time-frames.
Budgets failing to cover the additional time and resources needed to fix glitches caused by a poor ‘handover’ process from document creation teams and their adaptation counterparts.
Disparate, global teams (often remote) unable to collaborate effectively due to vague un-defined workflows, conventions or missing information not shared between teams.

A lot of stress, cost, and late-night shifts can be avoided by adopting a more structured approach to technical document creation.

A solid internationalization strategy helps everyone involved in the content cycle - from authoring and design teams to marketing, product management, and both in-house and third-party language specialists – working as a single production unit. As well as keeping teams and individuals happy, there are also major advantages for the business in terms of final products and the financial results they generate. Supported by a wealth of experience in terms of translation projects in the field of technical documentation, we have put together some of the key wins (for people and companies) of a robust document internationalization process:

Faster, cheaper localization

The most significant upshot of effective internationalization is that content can be adapted faster and more cost-effectively for other language groups. Internationalized source content that has anticipated and accommodated translation needs flows smoothly into the localization workflow, providing language teams not only with formats that are readily adaptable for foreign-language content but with accompanying information and context that pre-empts likely questions or queries. A focus on easy-to-localize content creation often results in a lower overall word count and reduced variation in vocabulary – both factors which create efficiencies and savings in the translation process. Put together, this results in less time spent translating fewer words with less back and forth, reducing both the time and cost of localization efforts.

Accelerated product rollout and version release

Technical writers already have challenging and complex roles, even before localization needs are added to the mix. Most documentation they create has to meet the contrasting needs of a wide group of stakeholders, often including product, sales, marketing and legal teams – each demanding something slightly different from the content. Add to that the potential slowdown when documentation goes through the translation process, and hold-ups can quickly affect business-critical targets to ship products and release version updates. With technical documentation playing such a central role in product rollout, the acceleration of the source creation and localization cycle helps companies meet ambitious growth objectives and deliver to international markets on time.

Brand consistency & tone of voice

Adherence to a codified set of language guidelines, such as technical glossaries or style guides, are standard best practices in document creation with or without localization – especially where multiple authors are contributing to a large content base. But an emphasis on keeping original (‘source’) content linguistically consistent with translation in mind has a cyclical effect - the more documentation teams focus on creating simple, homogenous content that can be readily translated, the stronger the tone and brand consistency will be in both source and translated versions.

Simple maintenance

A structured internationalization process doesn’t just make it easier and faster to produce new global content, it lays the foundations for quicker and simpler updating or maintenance of existing content bases. By applying the same principles that smooth the transition from source creation to translation, authoring teams create a framework which makes it easier to update previous content versions, add new authors to the creation process, or accelerate the release of any new content which recycles sections from existing archives.

1.Style

‘Writing for translation’ is an approach to content creation that visualizes the international user base at all times. This means making hundreds of stylistic decisions throughout a document with awareness of how they will impact the teams of linguists who will work on the content at a later phase to prepare it for new-language audiences. These decisions can include word choice, syntax, use of symbols, references, structure and presentation of information, and even paragraph titles or section headings. There are a range of techniques (some discussed below) which can help authors to write directly and precisely, minimising the possibility of ambiguity or mistranslation by linguists. Once a consistent, ‘universal’ style has been developed, it should be hard-coded into a style guide for use across the business – making sure that any contributors to documentation abide by the same rules and create content with a similar level of translation readiness.

2.Design

Most technical documentation is a combination of text and visual elements. As documents are adapted for new languages, translators and graphic designers work to create localized versions which mirror the original as closely as possible – but this can involve some considerable work. Languages do not all take up the same space on the page to say the same thing, some read from left to right, some from right to left. Symbolic imagery or use of colour may not have equivalent meaning in international markets. Graphics with embedded text (such as screen captures) may not be replicable in target languages without significant extra work and cost. When approaching design, teams should focus on creating flexible basic layouts that can be easily adjusted to accommodate the reshaping necessary when converting between languages.

3.Technology

Specialized software can play an extremely valuable role in structuring attempts to create translation-ready documentation. In addition to tools purpose-built for technical document creation (authoring platforms such as MadCap, Quark or Adobe RoboHelp, WYSIWYG editors and content management systems including Opentext, Alfresco, IBM and Box), writers can leverage a range of systems to better facilitate the translation of their source content. Digital Asset Management platforms (DAM, such as Adobe Experience Manager, Aprimo and Nuxeo Studio) can help localization teams find and contextualize files and graphics, while glossaries and terminology bases allow global content teams to build up highly structured guides to content language.

Consolidating the benefits of these tools are Translation Memory (TM, including memoQ, Memsource, and Trados) systems, used by translators to identify words or sections of previously translated content. Since translation services are priced around the translation of new or previously untranslated content, by reducing vocabulary variance, re-using content segments and aligning the whole process with a powerful TM platform, costs for overall localization can be radically reduced – to say nothing of the time savings gained. By way of example, when one of the largest global music and pro audio companies in the world prepared to engage a translation agency to localize their content, their first move was to purchase a Trados Studio license involved in the translation process and equip every technical writer with the latest version of InDesign. The result? A standardized authoring process built on two compatible, localization-friendly tools.

1.Create a standard workflow

Producing technical documentation ready for rapid, efficient localization usually requires co-ordinated contribution from different teams and departments. Authors need to be in synch regarding usage and updating of resource documents to ensure language and stylistic consistency. Designers need to adhere to parameters and best practices affecting their role in the cycle. Revision and sign-off processes need to be mapped out and deadlines set against key project milestones.

3. Provide translation context

One of the crucial disconnects that occurs between writing and translation teams is that vital product or contextual information is lacking when translators come to adapt the source text. Including product information, diagrams (even when they have no translatable context) and even marketing collateral can help translators understand the documents they’re working with, enabling them to make better decisions with potentially ambiguous or unclear translation scenarios.

4. Flag country-specific information

If documentation contains content unique to the country of origin, this should be clearly demarcated for localization teams, with instructions on how to handle it. Product warranties, legal disclaimers, support contact information or regulatory content may not be suitable for simple translation into other languages and may require more complex adaptation. Ensuring any content which falls into this category is visibly noted helps localization teams plan accordingly.

7. Plan for text expansion

Most languages take up more space on the page than English, with some requiring 30-50% more space (including common European languages). Asian languages, on the other hand, can be more concise. Document layout, including tables, columns and other features should have built-in flexibility to expand or contract, without overflowing page margins, page breaks or pushing other content out of design parameters. The same should be considered for captions and instructions for diagrams, screenshots and other visuals.

12. Choose precise verbs

Most languages have general-purpose verbs which can be very vague in isolation. In English, words like “get” are the primary culprits, capable of meaning hundreds of different things. In Spanish, verbs like “echar” have a similar role to play. Replacing “get to the end” with “finish”, for example, helps keep meaning and translation simpler. The same is true of phrasal verbs – “back up”, “come apart” and “get started” all have single-verb equivalents that can minimise confusion and error.

What is ‘internationalization’?

Why is internationalizing
documentation important?