CE Safety Symbols/Verbage vs US Cautions/Warnings?

Subject: CE Safety Symbols/Verbage vs US Cautions/Warnings?
From: Alexander Von_obert <avobert -at- TWH -dot- MSN -dot- SUB -dot- ORG>
Date: Mon, 25 Dec 1995 12:36:00 +0100

Hello John,


* Antwort auf eine Nachricht von John Gabbert an All am 21.12.95

JG> From: John Gabbert <jgabbert -at- luminet -dot- net>

JG> In shifting our US-made product user documentation toward CE
JG> approval for
JG> European markets, we're sensing an apparent conflict between
JG> the CE symbol,
JG> the exclamation-point-in-a-triangle (defined in some places as
JG> "Caution,"
JG> and in others as "Warning") with the traditional bi-level
JG> Caution/Warning
JG> statements, with their precedence in US tort law.

From my point of view you cannot see a conflict between the two. Simply
because there definitely are NO consistant warning levels defined in European
standards. One author here in Germany even offers your ANSI standard as a
model
for manuals written over here.

But be warned about another effect: Generally you can expect to have a better
educated reader over here who quite likely has a much better social security
net than you are used to.

At least here in Germany about everyone has a health ensurance which would pay
any hospital stay outside of the job. On the job, the employer has to look out
for risks. To get a driver licence, you have to visit a special kind of
school and so on.

The bottom line: If you simply translate a typical American end user manual,
nobody will dare to use the product. Looking at all your warnings they would
consider your product extremely dangerous.

Some years ago I talked to a technical writer from Volkswagen. At that time
they did two versions of their end-user car manuals: One international version
that was translated into all other languages. And a north-american version.


Greetings from Germany
Alexander

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