Global Talk

November 2-3 2006. Center for Information Development Management, TriSoft, OASIS. DITA Europe Conference. Frankfurt, Germany. http://www.infomanagementcenter.com/DITAeurope/index.htm

by Tina Hoffman; Reprinted from the September 2006 issue of the UK chapter newsletter 

Don’t ask me how, but a couple of years ago I ended up on the mailing list for the annual Australian Online Documentation and Content Conference, AODC for short. Interesting reading, but of very little practical benefit to a tech author living and working in Reading, Berkshire. Needless to say, I never made it past the stage of viewing the conference agenda on the web site.

Until this year, that is. The date of the conference fitted perfectly with a planned trip to New Zealand, the agenda looked interesting and the conference fees – thanks to a very favourable exchange rate – were very reasonable. And what’s more, the 2006 conference was being held in Cairns. Great Barrier Reef here I come!

So off I went in early May and joined a sizeable crowd of mainly Australian and New Zealand tech communicators for the ninth annual conference at a beachfront hotel in Cairns. Three days of learning about the latest trends in online documentation in an air-conditioned conference room in tropical Queensland might not be everyone’s dream holiday, but it was well worth it. It was a fantastic conference with around 20 sessions covering tools, technologies and techniques. Topics ranged from DITA, structured authoring, XML, and usability to the latest updates on Microsoft Vista and Madcap Flare. Add to this sessions on good old basics such as editing, indexing and working with flowcharts, and you end up with three information packed days. (more…)

GALA, the Globalization and Localization Association, has a monthly email newsletter in HTML form. You can view the latest issue and past issues and subscribe at http://www.gala-global.org/index.php?action=view_newsletter

ITC SIG Localization Lead Aki Ito is the GALA Board chair. This month Aki reports on how GALA has met goals for growth and activities.

The professional organization for technical communicators in Germany, tekom, recently published a book on the status of technical communication in many countries. The title is Technical communication–international.

ITC SIG manager Kit Brown reviewed the book, and you can read the review on the tekom website. Visit http://www.tekom.de and in the search box, enter “Kit Brown” without the quotes. You can order a copy of the book; the URL for the order form is http://www.tekom.de/upload/alg/Orderingform.pdf

The new members of the STC Board want to hear from you. They have sent introductions to us, posted in a PDF document on Hyperviews Online.

By Becky Lash, Member Huntsville/North Alabama chapter, CIC and IDL SIGs

I work with customers from several different countries.  Usually these customers arrive by personal reference. I have found my perception of a country’s cultural values might or might not be accurate. I’ve found certain approaches work whatever my preconceived ideas of the cultural values of a nationality–or gender, for that matter. These approaches seem to work with customers from any country, including the USA. (more…)

by Michael Whitman, Senior Member Northern New England chapter and ITC SIG

Translation should no longer be an afterthought… ever. Companies gain a competitive advantage when all writers employ a clear, simple, “global” style of English.

As manager of translation projects, I used to spend a lot of time “editing for translation” instruction manuals and marketing brochures whose English had been created without sensitivity for the needs of the translation process.

After I began working “upstream” with document writers, teaching what was difficult for our translators in our English documents, I needed to edit less and less.

In any company, however, there are always new folks who need to learn, so I have developed two pages of the most frequently needed changes. Often writers only need be made aware of these points, to improve their text so it is more “world-ready.”

These suggestions may also be helpful for some newer technical writers, since clear, unambiguous text serves well as a communication medium, whether or not it will be translated.

Here are the tips I developed: (more…)

By Susan Ng, Senior Member Long Island Chapter and ITC SIG

Susan provided this summary of a discussion on the ITC SIG email list on August 8. 2006. It is published here by permission of the author.

In close to 15 responses, the overwhelming majority of list members suggested having the translations done in Universal Spanish, that is, a form of Latin American Spanish that has been genericized to accommodate the variations in the language spoken in that part of the world. (more…)

TCeurope has published “Professional education and training of Technical Communicators in Europe.”

The publication includes sections on the state of the field and competencies of technical writers. The publication is available for download.

November 27 2006. CM Professionals Summit, “Content Management and the World Enterprise.” co-located with the Gilbane Conference on Content Technologies, Boston, MA, USA.