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*Course fee includes exercises, learning aids, certificate of completion, and 120-day post-training support.

⁺⁺A group discount of up to €500 is applicable when two or more participants sign up for the same event. Send us your questions: enquiry@shufrans-techdocs.com.

🏷️ A €210 fee discount is applicable when you also sign up for 🆕 Certified STE Masterclass | Europe Online.

What’s Included & Incentives

• Inclusions: Course materials, practical exercises, learning aids, a certificate of completion, and 120 days of post-training support.

• Group Discount: Save up to €500 when two or more colleagues register for the same cohort.

• Bundle Offer: Receive a €210 fee discount when you also register for the upcoming Certified STE Masterclass | Europe Online.

• Enquiries: Have questions or need a custom corporate booking? Send us a message at enquiry@asd-ste100.net.

Summary of Simplified Technical English (STE)

Simplified Technical English (ASD-STE100) is the internationally recognised controlled language specification designed to make complex technical manuals clear, unambiguous, and easily understood by a global audience. In today’s enterprise landscape—where automated translation engines and AI-assisted workflows rapidly scale content output but also multiply linguistic errors—upstream standardisation is more critical than ever.

By eliminating ambiguity and enforcing strict syntactic control, STE protects your documentation pipeline, acts as a reliable grounding layer for automated systems, drastically reduces translation costs, and prevents costly operational risks. While often a formal requirement for aerospace and defence maintenance documentation, STE is readily adapted across all high-compliance technical industries. Led by Shumin Chen, this foundational training teaches participants how to correctly and effectively apply STE rules in practice, navigate common writing pitfalls, and correct the frequent misinterpretations of core guidelines that undermine technical quality.

Why select a Simplified Technical English training with Shufrans?

Shumin is a very knowledgeable STE instructor. She kept the course interesting and was always open to our questions/feedback. The introduction to Simplified Technical English has been greatly beneficial for my understanding of what the specification entails. In terms of preferred rules, I cannot pinpoint a specific set of STE writing rules as they are all valuable. This was my favorite part of the course as I enjoyed analyzing how other writers went about using STE to best apply it to their line of work.

The rewriting workshop in Simplified Technical English training Europe was my favorite part of the course as I enjoyed analyzing how other writers went about using STE to best apply it to their line of work. I would highly recommend this course to all technical writers. Shumin Chen takes the time to clearly explain the rules of STE. A very attentive instructor, indeed. If given the chance, I would really enjoy working along side her. Michael Palmieri, Documentation Specialist, AON3D | The Advanced Additive Manufacturing Platform

STE Course Outline*

We’re committed to providing the highest quality learning experience in all our online workshops. Therefore, we’ve made the decision to cap all our online workshop session sizes at just five participants, starting 5 May 2025.

This intimate virtual environment fosters richer discussions, more personalised feedback, and a greater overall impact on your understanding and application of key technical communication standards like Simplified Technical English. Learn better, communicate better, across all our courses. This two-day Online STE Workshop includes interactive training, exercises, and a 120-day post-training consultation.

Day 1: Classroom Training & Foundations

• Practical overview of Simplified Technical English (ASD-STE100) and why strict structural control is essential for modern technical documentation.

• How STE ensures absolute clarity for both native and non-native speakers across global audiences.

• The direct risk-mitigation and cost benefits of adopting the STE international writing standard in high-compliance environments.

• Core writing rules and how to apply them systematically in daily practice.

• Mastering the general vocabulary lexicon: Approved and unapproved words, and the strict structural rationale behind them.

• Eliminating ambiguous phrasing, noun clusters, and syntactic drift that undermine technical accuracy.

• Establishing a rigorous baseline for clear, human-readable documentation that withstands automated review and translation workflows.

Day 2: Practical Application, Review, & Exercises

• How to deal with industry-specific terminology and integrate specialised nouns safely into controlled writing.

• How to apply STE across various documentation types (such as maintenance manuals, service bulletins, and operating procedures).

• How to implement STE frameworks with minimal disruption to ongoing production and existing documentation archives.

• Practical hands-on workshop session for applying strict STE rules directly to your own company documents.

• Systematic review, live editorial breakdown, and discussion of participants’ own documents to reinforce learning.

• Collaborative review of common error patterns and alternative phrasing solutions.

• Final classroom presentation of edited documents to establish a repeatable, high-integrity quality standard for your team, directly reducing the cost of creating and maintaining technical publications.

*Shufrans also offers customised ASD-STE100 training solutions tailored to meet your specific requirements. These courses are normally provided at the customer’s premises.

Who should attend this Simplified Technical English training?

• Executive Leadership & Strategy: CIOs, CTOs, COOs, and Compliance Managers

• Documentation & Editorial Leads: Documentation Managers, Editors, and Technical Writers

• Engineering & Technical Specialists: Engineering Managers, SMEs, Software Research Engineers, Service Engineers, and AI Content Engineers

• Operations & Support Teams: Maintenance, ILS, Operation, Product, and Project Managers, plus Customer Support

• Training & Content Creation: Instructional Designers, Translators, Translation Managers, and Technical Illustrators.

What technical writing outcomes to expect?

Our interactive training, exercises, and workshop will equip participants to standardise content and achieve measurable operational outcomes:

• Enhanced Communication & Efficiency: Authors will gain the structural discipline required to create clear, consistent, and easily translatable technical documentation—providing a reliable grounding layer for automated translation engines and AI-assisted workflows, facilitating seamless global communication, and streamlining the authoring process.

• Improved Operational Safety & Reduced Downtime: By mastering STE principles, teams will produce unambiguous documentation that eliminates procedural misunderstandings, directly safeguarding operational safety and driving a measurable reduction in costly AOG/downtime and human error.

• Optimised Lifecycle Support & Cost Reduction: Standardisation enables modular writing, semantic consistency, and efficient content reuse. This optimises product lifecycle support, future-proofs documentation against shifting publishing stacks, and significantly reduces the overall cost of creating and maintaining technical publications.

What customers are saying..

The introduction in Simplified Technical English training Europe was a good and concise way to familiarize yourself with STE basics. I’ve a background in plain language, so for example the rule on noun clusters makes perfect sense. I’m all about simplification, so substituting verbs like “eliminate” for verbs like “remove” or “stop” will be my new quest. The STE exercises were helpful in getting to grasp with STE during the training workshop. I’d very likely recommend this course to anyone planning to introduce STE as it’s got a great practical angle. Jenni Virtaluoto, PhD, Senior Lecturer, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

ASD-STE100 Trainer’s qualifications

Ms. Shumin Chen, principal trainer and consultant at Shufrans TechDocs, received her professional on-the-job training in the field of Simplified Technical English under the tutelage of Dr Frans Wijma, a renowned linguist and documentation expert. Together as an experienced global team, they combined their expertise to benefit enterprise clients worldwide, having delivered training and consultancy services to over 200 companies to date. Shufrans TechDocs stands as an industry leader with unmatched depth of experience in providing certified Simplified Technical English training in Europe.

Shumin has guided numerous organisations through their complex documentation and standardisation needs. Although STE was originally developed for the aerospace industry—specifically for aircraft maintenance manuals—she has successfully demonstrated that its foundational principles provide an essential governance framework across a wide range of technical sectors, including machinery, IT, automotive, energy, and medical equipment.

As enterprises increasingly deploy automated translation engines, LLMs, and AI-assisted content workflows, Shumin’s approach proves that strict linguistic control is more vital than ever. Because structural clarity and syntactic discipline are universally required, few, if any, changes to the specification are necessary to adapt STE as a reliable upstream grounding layer for modern digital and AI-driven publishing stacks.

*Course fee includes exercises, learning aids, certificate of completion, and 120-day post-training support.

⁺⁺A group discount of up to €500 is applicable when two or more participants sign up for the same event. Send us your questions: enquiry@asd-ste100.net.

🏷️ A €210 fee discount is applicable when you also sign up for 🆕 Certified STE Masterclass | US Canada Online.

Summary

Simplified Technical English (ASD-STE100) is a controlled language designed to make technical manuals clear, unambiguous, and easily understood by a global audience. Mandated or recommended by key military and commercial specifications, STE reduces translation costs and serves as a vital upstream grounding layer for automated translation engines and AI workflows.

Led by Ms. Shumin Chen (Shufrans TechDocs), this training guides participants through the correct and effective practical application of STE, addressing common writing errors and the frequent misapplication of core rules across all technical industries.

For enquiries and registration: enquiry@asd-ste100.net

Course outline*

We are committed to providing the highest quality learning experience across all our online workshops. To ensure richer discussions, deeper document reviews, and maximum individual impact, all online workshop sessions are strictly capped at just five participants.

This intimate virtual environment fosters precise feedback and mastery of key technical communication standards like Simplified Technical English. Each three-day online workshop includes interactive training, hands-on exercises, and a dedicated 120-day post-training consultation period.

Day 1: Classroom Training & Foundations

• Practical overview of Simplified Technical English (ASD-STE100)

• How STE ensures absolute clarity for both native and non-native speakers across global networks

• Strategic risk-mitigation and cost benefits of adopting the STE standard

• Core writing rules and systematic daily application

Day 2: Application & Vocabulary

• Navigating the general vocabulary dictionary

• Approved versus unapproved words and the structural rationale behind them

• Handling industry-specific terminology and specialised nouns safely

• Applying STE across diverse manuals, service bulletins, and operating procedures

Day 3: Review, Implementation, & Exercises

• Hands-on workshop session applying strict rules to your own corporate materials

• Live editorial review, breakdown, and discussion of participant texts

• Implementing frameworks with minimal disruption to ongoing production and legacy documentation

• Classroom presentation and restructuring of participant documents to reinforce mastery

*Shufrans also offers customised ASD-STE100 training solutions tailored to meet your specific corporate requirements, normally delivered on-site at customer premises.

What customers are saying..

I was looking forward to the training and was not disappointed. I think that the training was valuable and would recommend that my colleagues take the training either on line or in person. Being able to send a sample document and then working on it together using my new STE skills was very helpful and valuable. Shumin was extremely knowledgeable and gave many practical examples. I hope to be able to make use of the support period post-training. Deborah Tonkin, Technical Information Engineer, Komatsu

Why select a Simplified Technical English training with Shufrans?

The introduction to ASD-STE100 was good and informative for someone like me with zero knowledge of the STE standard before. Rule 6.3 in STE writing summarizes the best of what I can take with me. There was quite a lot from the STE exercises to consume regarding grammar. Nevertheless, the worksheets were very good and helpful. I gained quite a lot of knowledge from them and they were the best part of this training workshop. Shumin was very professional and sharp as a razor. The best takeaway for me from her workshop is to give more thought to how I build my sentences rather than focussing on specific ‘allowed’ or ‘approved’ words. Jeppe Friis, Technical Inspector, Maersk Drilling Maintenance Support

Who should attend this ASD-STE100 workshop?

What ASD-STE100 workshop training outcomes to expect?

Our interactive training, exercises and workshop, will teach participants to standardise content to:

• Enhanced Communication & Efficiency: Authors will gain the skills to create clear, consistent, and easily translatable technical documentation, facilitating effective communication with a global audience and streamlining the writing process.
• Improved Operational Safety & Reduced Downtime: By mastering STE principles, teams will produce unambiguous documentation that minimises misunderstandings, directly contributing to improved operational safety and a reduction in costly AOG/downtime.
• Optimised Lifecycle Support & Cost Reduction: Training will enable modular writing and content reuse, leading to maximised consistency, optimised product lifecycle support, and a significant reduction in the overall cost of creating and maintaining technical publications.

ASD-STE100 Trainer’s qualifications

Ms. Shumin Chen, principal trainer & consultant at Shufrans TechDocs received her professional on-the-job training in the field of STE under the tutelage of Dr Frans Wijma, a linguist and documentation expert. Together as an experienced global team, they provided their combined knowledge and dedication to benefit customers worldwide. To date, they have provided training and consultancy services to over 180 companies. Shufrans TechDocs is the only company with such vast experience in providing certified STE training.

Shumin has supported various companies with their STE and other documentation needs, based on standards where possible. Although STE was developed for the aerospace industry, more specifically for aircraft maintenance documentation, Shumin found that it made a lot of sense to apply the same principles to other industries and types of documents as well. Few -if any- changes to the specification are necessary to adapt STE to industries ranging from machinery to IT, automotive to medical equipment.

Course fee includes exercises, learning aids, certificate of completion, and 120 days of post-training support.

Group discounts of up to €500 are available when two or more participants register from the same company. An additional €210 fee discount applies when your team also registers for the 🆕 Certified STE Masterclass | Asia Pacific (APAC) Online..

For enquiries and registration, contact us at enquiry@asd-ste100.net.

Simplified Technical English (ASD-STE100) is a controlled language designed to make technical manuals clear, unambiguous, and easily understood by a global audience. Mandated or recommended by specifications like MIL-STD-3048, S1000D, and ATA iSpec 2200, STE makes translations cheaper and more accurate while ensuring structural completeness.

In today’s digital landscape, STE also serves as the essential upstream grounding layer for automated translation engines, LLMs, and RAG pipelines, preventing syntactic drift and hallucinations. While a formal requirement for aerospace and defence maintenance, its rigorous principles are easily adapted across all technical industries. Led by Shumin Chen, this training teaches participants how to apply STE rules correctly in practice, avoid common writing pitfalls, and eliminate hidden operational risks.

The ASD-STE100 workshop conducted by Shufrans TechDocs made for a very good introduction to STE for new as well as intermediate users of the STE writing standard. The presentation on rules was very clear and I liked the emphasis on the fact that the rules are weighted and how one can use them flexibly. The exercises completed during this training were good and provided real world examples in technical writing in a practical way. I’d very likely recommend this course to someone else. This course is a must for any new technical writers or technical publication employees. Neil Winson, Technical Writer, Airbus Helicopters

MEA Online STE Workshop Course Outline*

We are committed to providing the highest quality learning experience across all our online workshops. To ensure richer discussions, deeper document reviews, and maximum individual impact, all online workshop sessions are strictly capped at just five participants.

This intimate virtual environment fosters precise feedback and mastery of key technical communication standards like Simplified Technical English. Each two-day online workshop includes interactive training, hands-on exercises, and a dedicated 120-day post-training consultation period.

Day 1: Classroom Training & Foundations

• Practical overview of Simplified Technical English (ASD-STE100)

• How STE ensures absolute clarity for both native and non-native speakers across global networks

• Strategic risk-mitigation and cost benefits of adopting the STE standard

• Core writing rules and systematic daily application

• Navigating the general vocabulary dictionary

• Approved versus unapproved words and the structural rationale behind them

Day 2: Practical Application, Review, & Exercises

• Handling industry-specific terminology and specialised nouns safely

• Applying STE across diverse manuals, service bulletins, and operating procedures

• Implementing frameworks with minimal disruption to ongoing production and legacy documentation

• Hands-on workshop session applying strict rules to your own corporate materials

• Live editorial review, breakdown, and discussion of participant texts

• Classroom presentation and restructuring of participant documents to reinforce mastery

*Shufrans also offers customised ASD-STE100 training solutions tailored to meet your specific corporate requirements, normally delivered on-site at customer premises.

Who should attend this Simplified Technical English training?

• Executive & Strategy: CIOs, CTOs, COOs, Compliance and Quality Managers

• Documentation & Editorial: Documentation Managers, Editors, Technical Writers, Technical Illustrators, and Graphics Specialists

• Engineering & Technical: Engineering Managers, SMEs, Software Research Engineers, and Engineers who create documentation

• Operations & Support: Maintenance, ILS, Operation, Product, and Project Managers, plus Customer Support Managers

• Training, Translation & Content: Translation Managers, Translators.

What training outcomes to expect?

Enhanced Communication & Efficiency: Authors will gain the structural discipline required to create clear, consistent, and easily translatable technical documentation—providing a reliable grounding layer for automated translation engines and AI-assisted workflows, facilitating seamless global communication, and streamlining the authoring process.

Improved Operational Safety & Reduced Downtime: By mastering STE principles, teams will produce unambiguous documentation that eliminates procedural misunderstandings, directly safeguarding operational safety and driving a measurable reduction in costly AOG/downtime and human error.

Optimised Lifecycle Support & Cost Reduction: Standardisation enables modular writing, semantic consistency, and efficient content reuse. This optimises product lifecycle support, future-proofs documentation against shifting publishing stacks, and significantly reduces the overall cost of creating and maintaining technical publications.

ASD-STE100 Trainer’s qualifications

Ms. Shumin Chen, Principal Trainer and Consultant at Shufrans TechDocs, received her professional on-the-job training in Simplified Technical English under the tutelage of Dr Frans Wijma, a renowned linguist and documentation expert. Together as an experienced global team, they have delivered training and consultancy services to over 200 companies worldwide. Shufrans TechDocs stands as an industry leader with unmatched depth of experience in providing certified STE training.

Shumin has guided numerous organisations through their complex documentation and standardisation needs. Although STE was originally developed for the aerospace industry—specifically for aircraft maintenance manuals—she has successfully demonstrated that its foundational principles provide an essential governance framework across a wide range of technical sectors, including machinery, IT, automotive, energy, and medical equipment.

As enterprises increasingly deploy automated translation engines, LLMs, and AI-assisted workflows, strict linguistic control is more vital than ever. Because structural clarity and syntactic discipline are universally required, few, if any, changes to the specification are necessary to adapt STE as a reliable upstream grounding layer for modern digital and AI-driven publishing stacks.

Introduction

Clear, unambiguous, and consistent technical documentation is paramount in the complex and safety-critical world of urban mobility. This case study highlights a successful engagement with Schindler Group, a global leader in elevators, escalators, and related services, focused on achieving their technical communication through comprehensive Simplified Technical English (STE) implementation.

Client Background

Schindler Group, headquartered in Ebikon, Switzerland, is renowned for its innovative and sustainable mobility solutions. With a vast international presence and a diverse workforce, ensuring that technical manuals, maintenance procedures, and product documentation are universally understood is a strategic imperative, particularly for safety and operational efficiency.

The Challenge

Prior to the engagement, Schindler, like many multinational corporations, faced the inherent challenges of technical documentation:

• Ambiguity: Standard English, with its rich vocabulary and complex grammatical structures, can lead to misinterpretations, especially among non-native English speakers.
• Inconsistency: Multiple authors and external vendors, potentially across different regions, could result in varied writing styles and terminology, hindering clarity and increasing translation costs.
• Translation Efficiency: Complex source texts often led to higher translation costs and potential errors in localised versions, impacting global operations.
• Safety Criticality: In the elevator and escalator industry, any misunderstanding in technical instructions can have severe safety implications.

Schindler recognised the need for a standardised approach to technical English to mitigate these risks and improve the overall quality and efficiency of their documentation.

Phase 2: Document Rewriting and Refinement Following the initial training, a direct engagement commenced with key personnel to apply STE principles to existing documentation. This involved close collaboration with:

• Principal Corporate Technical Author: To ensure the practical application of STE rules and to establish internal champions for the standard.
• Head of Corporate Technical Documentation: To oversee the strategic implementation and integration of STE into Schindler’s documentation workflows.

This hands-on rewriting process ensured that the theoretical knowledge gained during training was immediately put into practice, demonstrating tangible improvements in clarity and consistency.

Phase 3: Global Expansion of Training Recognising the success and the need for global consistency, the training was extended to other critical regions. A dedicated online training session was conducted for:

• Corporate Technical Documentation colleagues in Shanghai, China: This expanded the reach of STE adoption, ensuring that documentation produced in a key international hub also conformed to the new global standard.

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Key Stakeholders and Organisational Impact

The success of this initiative was a testament to the collaborative effort across various departments and external partners, demonstrating how STE benefits different parts of the organisation:

• Leadership and Management: Gained strategic alignment and understanding of STE’s business value in achieving safety, efficiency, and global reach.
• Engineering and Product Development Teams (including Subject Matter Experts): Benefited from improved clarity in technical specifications, design documents, and maintenance requirements, ensuring precise input and reduced ambiguity from the source.
• Technical Documentation Teams (in-house and external partners): Acquired practical skills in applying STE rules, leading to more consistent, unambiguous, and efficient content creation for manuals, procedures, and other technical assets.
• Terminology and Language Specialists: Enhanced their ability to manage and control technical vocabulary, ensuring consistency across all documentation and facilitating improved translation quality.
• Translation Teams: Experienced streamlined translation processes due to the reduced ambiguity and increased consistency of STE-compliant source texts.

Results and Impact

The implementation of STE at Schindler Group yielded significant benefits:

• Achieved Clarity and Readability: Documents became easier to understand for a global audience, including non-native English speakers, reducing the risk of misinterpretation.
• Improved Consistency: A unified writing style and controlled vocabulary ensured consistency across all technical documentation, regardless of the author or origin.
• Increased Efficiency: Streamlined writing processes and clearer source texts led to more efficient documentation creation and review cycles.
• Reduced Translation Costs: The unambiguous nature of STE significantly lowered translation costs and improved the quality of translated materials.
• Strengthened Safety: By eliminating ambiguity in critical instructions, the overall safety of operations and maintenance procedures was achieved.

Testimonials

This impact was echoed by participants:

Roland Kiser, Terminology Coordinator at Schindler, noted: “This course shares a good overview of structure, purpose, history, and contextual information about STE. The limited vocabulary and restricted list of words, short sentence constructions, active voice, and imperative verb usage are valuable takeaways messages to act upon in Simplified English. The examples used in this training are quite realistic and it is very likely that I will recommend this STE training to someone else.”

Cécile Roos, Corporate Translation Manager, added: “Entertaining, short, and clear presentation of the STE specification and rule sets. Overall, a good mix of rules, examples, and exercises. The course was very much on point and encouraged me to write in a more structured way. This will help the readers to properly understand my message even in business writing. Shumin had a very calm way of leading all of us through the training. Her style of teaching is rather empathetic and she keeps the group working effectively with timely breaks in between. Thanks Shumin for an enjoyable course with the perfect score of 10/10 in terms of trainer evaluation.”

Marco Valtangoli, Senior Corporate Technical Author at Schindler, also provided valuable feedback: “A very important and highlighted point during the introduction is that STE is an English language specification that is not only applicable for companies in the aerospace & defence industry. Rule 5.2 where you only have one instruction per sentence is important to us. Not being able to use the verb “CHECK’ that is only used as an approved STE noun poses a challenge to me all the time. I really appreciate the STE writing rules that give us the possibility to improve the consistency of our documents. The workshop exercises were of high interest value and drive home the point that it is important to learn by doing. Although a time-consuming process, the writing workshop impressed on me that the need to prioritise the analysis of our internal documents. Shumin is a competent trainer who does not only focus on explaining and enforcing the “writing rules”, but is always available to understand and empathise with the training needs of the class.”

Conclusion

The comprehensive STE training and document rewriting initiative with Schindler Group stands as a strong example of how strategic investment in technical communication can drive operational excellence, improve safety, and foster global consistency within a leading industrial enterprise. By empowering their diverse teams with the tools and knowledge of Simplified Technical English, Schindler reinforced its commitment to delivering clear, reliable, and high-quality documentation worldwide.

If your organisation faces similar challenges in achieving uncompromising clarity and operational readiness through precise communication, discover how Shufrans TechDocs can help. Learn more about our ASD-STE100 training and consulting services:

🗓️ View our training calendar.