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Depending on your industry and requirements, it normally is a great step forward to implement DITA or S1000D to standardise on your information structure and facilitate re-use from a technical point of view. Now, learn how ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English can help you take things to the next level, thus preparing your content for optimum re-use, readability and translatability.

Simplified Technical English (STE) deconstructed – a textual analysis

In the textual analysis that follows, we will underline unapproved words (according to the ASD-STE100 specification) in the Standard English text and then provide the corresponding approved words in STE underlined where possible.

A general misconception might be that STE rewriting is mostly a word for word replacement. However, this is clearly not the case as illustrated in the examples here:

1a) Standard English: The main idea of Exchange clusters is to provide high database availability with fast failover and no data loss.

1b) STE: Exchange clusters have high database availability with fast failover and no data loss.

Analysis: In this above sentence pair, we removed redundant words that do not add meaning to the sentence. The result is a concise, more direct sentence.

2a) Standard English: Usually, it is achieved by having one or more copies of databases or storage groups on the members of the cluster (cluster nodes).

2b) STE: There normally are one or more copies of databases or storage groups on the cluster nodes.

Analysis: ‘Achieved by’ is a passive verb form that is not approved in STE since it hides the doer of the action. By simply stating that ‘there are one or more copies of databases or storage groups ..’ already supports the first sentence.

In the ASD-STE100 specification, Issue 6, January 2013, rule 1.12, writers are advised not to use different technical names for the same thing. In Standard English, ‘members of the cluster’ was presented synonymously alongside ‘cluster nodes’. This is a clear violation of the rule 1.12 that can cause potential readability issues.

In this case, a good technical writing professional must already decide at the outset which technical term to use and then consistently apply the same term when describing the same thing.

3a) Standard English: If the cluster node hosting the active database copy or the active database copy itself fails, the other node hosting the passive copy automatically takes over the operations of the failed node and provides access to Exchange services with minimal downtime.

3b) STE: If there is a problem with the active database copy or its cluster node, a different node with a passive copy automatically replaces the unavailable node and gives access to Exchange services after a short time.

Analysis: ‘Host’ qualifies as an approved technical verb based on the nature of this text. However, in STE, only a limited group of verb tenses is allowed. The –ing form or present participle verb form is not used in STE unless it is part of a technical name. For instance: lighting, missing, servicing. From the STE example, notice that the verb ‘hosting’ is not necessary since we used the possessive determiner ‘its’ to indicate the association between the active database and the cluster node.

It is also not common to use phrasal verbs in STE as each individual verb could hold a different meaning from the phrasal verb itself. We substituted ‘takes over’ with ‘replaces’ and that adds to one less word count – a win-win. ‘Provides’ as an unapproved STE verb is replaced with ‘gives’, a verb with a more direct and clear definition.

4a) Standard English: Thus, the clusters are already serving as a disaster recovery solution themselves.

4b) STE: –

Analysis: The last sentence is a summary of all that has been described and is considered repetitive in STE.

The case for STE – concluding points

From the brief analysis provided, it is clear by now that STE when implemented properly lets you have:

• Higher documentation quality due to increased comprehensibility and readability
• Standardised, concise and meaningful content
• Reduced translation costs thanks to better source texts.

STE allows technical writers to achieve their professional goals in a timely manner with mastery of this specification in less than three training days. When correctly applied, STE writing rules help the technical author present complex information in a well-thought-out and developed style.

Safety starts with quality. The best product is only as good as its documentation and technical data made available to the customer.

Case study

Our customer, the Finn-Power Group, established in 1969, is a multinational group of companies specialising in sheet metal working technology with 2 manufacturing sites in Italy, 1 in the US and 1 in Finland.

Industry concerns

Customer documentation is a vital and integral part of Finn-Power’s comprehensive range of machinery. Most crucially, the documentation needs to do its part to ensure the safe and correct use of the product by providing complete, accurate and effective information.

Additionally, with the EU machinery directive in place and the EU now comprising of 28 countries, there is a regulatory need for clear and accurate translation into many different languages as well as specific, safety-related content.

Using Simplified Technical English ASD-STE100 to create user content 

To make content easier to understand as well as faster and cheaper to translate, Dr Frans Wijma gave training to Finn-Power’s team of technical translators, writers and documentation manager in the rules and practical application of this international standard. Course participants did a complete rewrite of selected sample documents in Simplified Technical English.

Finn-Power has successfully implemented ASD-STE100 since 2010 with the continuous support from the team at Shufra.

ASD-STE100 standardises vocabulary, grammar and style, while letting companies control their specific terminology (Technical Names). The ASD-STE100 standard is widely used in industries ranging from aerospace to IT, consumer electronics, automotive and machinery.

The next step – formulating/designing a useful information structure

Taking on the other important aspect of documentation is the structural reuse of content and optimizing technical means for reuse. With all their business requirements in mind, Finn-Power was looking for a highly intuitive, low-threshold content management solution (CMS).

We tapped into our partner network and found Author-it to be the perfect fit with the customer’s requirements as it includes a translation management module that allows users to efficiently and effectively manage multilingual content. Author-it allows you to reuse content with a high level of granularity. While most CMS systems just let you reuse whole blocks of text, Author-it allows for text reuse on the sentence level, doing away with the need to define portions of text intended for reuse.

Said Ms Hanna Korpinen, Manager of R&D and Documentation:

”Now that we have also taken on this other important aspect of documentation, we are better positioned to provide quality documentation to our customers on-time and within budget!”

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