"offensive" terms

[Chuck Martin <techwriter -at- VNET -dot- IBM -dot- COM>]

I think the comments about connotation hit home on this topic. Certainly
we in the computer industry have used and/or seen words that also have
a less than positive meaning in addition to the intended one.

It occurs to me to think of this in another context as well. One of the
things I learned about technical communication for an international
audience is that, when translating works, we have to be careful about
what we say and how we say it in those translations, because what is
innocuous to us may have sigificant negative impact in another culture.
(this holds true not only for words, but for illustrations.) We attempt
to be sensitive to the cultures we translate for, and provide "neutral"
connotations in the words we choose for those translations.

Perhaps part of the difficulty in the U.S. is that we are such a
mixture of cultures, beliefs, and sensitivities. It is often impossible
to say *anything* without someone, somehow taking offense--even if we
are as careful as possible to try and understand how the members of
our audience will interpret our words. For that is the essential crux
of communication: ideas with a source and a presentation, transmitted
through a medium, received and filtered through a set of life experiences
and translated. We hope the meaning will stay as it was intended, but
that can't be guaranteed.

For example, until the subject was brought up here, I never connected
the "abort" of my "Abort, Retry, Fail" message to mean anything other
that to abruptly stop what I had wanted to do. On a personal level,
as a strong believer in individual freedom and the right for people
to make their own choices, I am distressed to see that another meaning
could be taken in this context. Yet as a professional writer, I also
recognize that this term has in recent times taken on a very emotionally
polarizing issue. In this issue, there seems to be almost no middle
ground, and the emotions involved are strong indeed.

So it is perhaps my job, should the need arise to use the term "abort,"
to realize the societal context it is being issued in. So I would likely
do what I would do if translating the work for another culture: find
an emotion-neutral term that describes the same action, treating the
U.S. audience as I would an audience from another country, culture,
or region.

As an aside, someone mentioned earlier that this is the only country
that is experiencing such turmoil about the abortion issue. But a number
or European countries--Germany has received the most publicity about
it--are experiencing the same societal debate.

Chuck Martin
Information Developer, IBM
techwriter -at- vnet -dot- ibm -dot- com