Tweaking English in manuals and localisation

["Jennifer O'Neill" <jennifer -dot- oneill -at- village -dot- uunet -dot- be>]

We localise into up to 20 languages and one of my tasks to check that
manuals are suitable for localisation. I receive docs from a few companies
and manuals are written by engineers and tech writers. We use Trados for
translation. We need to get the translations reviewed by in-country
reviewers and they have very heavy workloads. So the procedure we're trying
to put in place is to freeze the English once the manual has been
translated. In subsequent updates ideally only changes to the technical
content are made. These changes are marked in the manual so that everyone
can immediately see what's changed. In-country reviewers can then simply
check the translation of the marked text and not have to read th ewhole
manual (most are less than 80 pages). Also, with a manual being translated
into up to 20 languages, changes can have a significant cost consequence.
This has meant that if the English was not written elegantly (for lack of a
better word) for the first translation, then the English remains inelegant
for subsequent updates unless it is causing a comprehension problem. Nearly
all our manuals are for engineers.

Here's the problem. Tweaking and rewritting of the English in manuals with
each update. The tech writers are more prone to this than the engineers.
Aside from the cost consequences, the most serious problem for me is that
in-country reviewers often refuse to review these rewritten docs as for them
the info is the same, it's just written differently. As far as they are
concerned they're wasting their time doing a review. They only want to know
the technical changes.  Release of translated manuals can literally come to
a halt while this problem is dealt with reviewers and a compromise found.

As an example, I recently was nearing the final stages of releasing a manual
in 12 languages. It had been written by an enginer in one of our sister
companies. The English was a bit clunky but conprehensible. The audience was
fellow engineers.  I just tidied up the English a bit and sent it for
translation. The update then suddendly lands on my desk (I never know when
updates are coming). There were some technical changes but the manual has
been completely rewritten by a tech writer. The English is better than in
the original doc but when I showed it the tech support guys (2 anglophones
and 1 francophone who works in English) to get their opinion,  they all
prefered the more clunky original doc as they said it got straight to the
point. The clunky English was no problem. So I just integrated the few
technical changes into the first version and releasd that. Due to the nature
of the changes, no in-country review was necessary. Minimal delay to the
release of the translated manuals.

So where do you draw the line when you want to freeze the language in a
manual and just have technical changes done when updating? How tolerant
should one be of inelegant English? How do you persuade tech writers to
consentrate on what must change (eg, techncial content) and not fiddle with
what can change (eg, language) when updating a manual?

Jennifer




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