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"Food, Colors, Icons" should be considered as issues in translation.
Colour (and spelling <wink>) is apparently especially significant in certain
cultures, and is an issue in online documentation development, and user
interface design.
A case in point: I recently worked with a GUI developer from China, who was
quite stubborn (but dearly so--we're good friends), who had trouble
understanding that she shouldn't make her O.K. buttons bright red. She said,
"But red is good, and means good luck and money and things like that, so they
push the O.K. button to make good things happen..."
There are, of course, many other such stories. The point is: maybe we shouldn't
just be looking at translating words, but other things as well, even as far as
how thought processes differ culturally. We may need to change the the
structure and/or presentation order of ideas in a document to accomodate
cultural differences in cognitive processes.
Has anyone read anything that goes into detail on cultural differences in
cognitive processes, which is, or can be, related to documentation?
