Global Talk

Jeanette Thomas, treasurer of the Instructional Design and Learning SIG, reported on her experience at the STC Annual Conference in the July 2006 IDeaL newsletter.

Jeanette says: “Limiting myself to only four conference sessions a day was difficult, but the easiest one to select was “Cultural and International Perspectives on Adult Learning Activities” by Carolyn Luttrell and others.

“Every year, as our training audiences become more international, it becomes more important to ensure our materials are usable by diverse workforces. I’m passionate about finding new ways to work across cultures, but with so many variations across countries it is difficult to learn about and address every possibility.

“In this session, I expanded my cultural training perspectives to include training dynamics in China, the Middle East, and India. The presenters have been living and training in these regions and brought great insights and examples about how the various learning strategies, such as the Socratic method, would work –- or fail –- in these cultures. They emphasized the role of class and hierarchy in these cultures and the importance of saving face for many learners abroad. An open dialog broadened the discussion to handling conference calls and working with subject matter experts in these regions as well.”

Document Design for International Audiences: Creating Communications that Cross Borders, a presentation by Karen Schriver, is available for download. The presentation was made on May 13, 2004 at the STIC symposium in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. STIC is the Dutch technical communication association.

English is more and more the universal language, especially the simple form used by non-native speakers. Jean-Paul Nerrière has proposed codifying this simple English as Globish, with a limited vocabulary of 1,500 words combined to express more complex ideas. You can read about it in the August 6, 2006 New York Times.

The newsletter of the International Technical Communication SIG of STC is back online, after a hiatus since the end of 2005. Earlier issues are archived on our SIG website. (more…)

Karen Mardahl provided the information in this article assembled by Global Talk. The information is from the 19 June 2006 issue of IST Results (news from the EU Information Society Technologies program) in an article titled “A common approach to accessibility for all.”

The article discusses efforts to harmonize the methodologies for achieving the goal of accessible websites. These efforts include: (more…)

This information was assembled by Global Talk from posts on the International Technical Communication SIG email list in April, 2006 and from additional research.

ASD Simplified Technical English is a specification developed by a committee that has an official website. This is a project of the AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe. There are two specific articles available, explaining the types of software that can be used in writing Simplified Technical English and training to write in STE.  (more…)

This information is summarized by Global Talk from posts on the International Technical Communication SIG email list in April, 2006.

Abbreviations in the Latin language are often found in formal written English, and are required by some style guides. These abbreviations include:

• e.g. (exempla gratia, for example)
• i.e. (id est, that is)
• etc. (et cetera, and so on — literally, “and others”)
• n.b. (nota bene, note well).

The consensus on the International Technical Communication SIG list was that these Latin abbreviations have no place in technical documentation. We can not require readers whose first language is Arabic or Mandarin, for example, to know Latin. In fact the abbreviations i.e. and e.g. are often misused, suggesting native speakers of English do not understand them.

ITC SIG list members provided several references supporting their advice to avoid Latin abbreviations in technical documentation. (more…)

by Dhanya Menon, Technical Writer in Hyderabad, India with additions by Global Talk

The query (on the ITC SIG list) about omission of definite article ‘the’ interested me as I had been reading about the same a couple of days ago. According to High School English Composition and Grammar by Wren and Martin (which is considered an authority in India), in the following situations one must avoid usage of articles: (more…)

Global Talk is publishing this information from an ITC SIG list post in June, 2006.

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online is a British dictionary that specifics US and British spelling for words where the spelling varies.

13-17 November, 2006. LISA Forum Europe. Warsaw.

The LISA Annual European Forum will concentrate on central European markets for offshore globalization services. The program will feature product localization and internationalization quality assurance; implementing open standards to maximize business processes for language services operations; accreditation for localization services companies; the ROI of enterprise globalization; website localization; and much more. Industry segments include legal, finance, life sciences, IT/telcos, government and multimedia.