What is ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English?

Language for all industries

ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English (STE) is the international standard for accurate and efficient documentation. STE helps to make technical documentation easy to understand by standardising vocabulary, grammar and style, while letting users control their specific terminology. It includes a set of approximately 53 technical writing rules and a basic general vocabulary dictionary of approximately 900 approved words for writing technical documentation.

Although Simplified Technical English originates from the aerospace and defence industries, it can easily be customised and applied to any other industry, including machinery, automotive, electronics, IT and medical equipment. Today, 60% of STE users come from outside of the aerospace and defence sector.

STE lets you write clear and translatable documentation for a global audience

Using guidelines from the ASD-STE100 specification, writers and editors can take document clarity and consistency to the next level. Text written in Simplified Technical English shows improved readability and translatability. These benefits should not be overlooked as products and their accompanying documentation are increasingly shipped to many countries worldwide where English is not the main language used.

Consequently, whether the majority of your audience is made up of native or non-native speakers of the English language, getting your message across clearly becomes faster and easier. Text based on Simplified Technical English is also cheaper and faster to translate. Users of your documentation will benefit from higher translation quality, and mistranslations become a thing of the past.

Aircraft programmes that require the use of ASD-STE100 include:

Airbus A400M turboprop military transport aircraft
Airbus passenger aircraft, associated equipment & engines
Beriev Be-200 multi-purpose amphibious aircraft
Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter
Boeing passenger aircraft, associated equipment & engines
Eurofighter Typhoon
Eurocopter (now Airbus Helicopters) EC120 Colibri
NHIndustries NH 90 military helicopter

Save costs using established standards like STE for your documentation processes

Injuries, losses and costly legal liabilities can occur as a result of unclear documentation and ambiguous translations. Simplified Technical English is based on standardised terminology and simple grammar rules.

Consistent terminology facilitates your task of indexing and helps users to find pertinent information faster by eliminating unnecessary synonyms and spelling variants. Grammar rules for instance, promote the use of the active voice and simple present tense to clearly identify the doer of a particular action so as to avoid miscommunication and ambiguous translations during the localisation process.

Master STE in just under two days

Achieve consistency across all documentation types by aligning people and documentation strategies on a global scale. Live up to your customers’ expectations while achieving your business objectives. Our customised STE training solutions that range from one to three training days will help you expand your knowledge of the fundamental principles of documentation management, as well as highlight the importance of Simplified Technical English writing rules and terminology management to help you capitalise on your existing legacy documentation and translation memory databases.