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More Than Words
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This month Marilyn Glazier interviews our Director of Translation Services, Dudu Koren. Though Dudu is known around the country for his technical translations, you now have a chance to see his other persona; the musician and performer.
There have been many studies about the personality traits prevalent in successful technical communicators. Despite the image of Tina the Technical Writer (a character from the comic strip Dilbert), the successful technical communicator is not a quiet, anti-social computer geek sitting alone in a corner.
Quite the opposite; we are for the most part extroverts. We wouldn't be able to do our jobs if we weren't outgoing. And since outgoing people often enjoy a bit of attention, it isn't surprising that so many technical communicators, Marcom writers, and technical translators (like Dudu Koren) excel in music and the arts.
This brings me to two points:
- I once had an HR person call looking for a technical writer. In addition to having strong writing skills, knowledge of tools, and a good grasp of technology, she asked that the candidates be "normal." I gave my speech about eccentricity being the secret to their success. I hope that if you are not a technical communicator, you will now understand that we may be quirky, but that is part of our charm!
- If
you are a technical communicator, join us for the next open stage event
of the KFC (Karmiel Folk Club). The event is Thursday, 3 April 2008 at
21:00. Here is your chance to show the us what you've got.
Larry
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WORDS - Up Close and Personal
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Welcome to our
latest feature column, giving you a chance to get up-close and personal with
the folks that make In Other WORDS the place for all your
Technical Communication needs.
 This month we feature Dudu Koren, Director of Translation Services. The proud father of three children (21, 19, and 17), Dudu was born and raised in Tel Aviv. He left for the greener pastures of Moshav Shorashim 22 years ago and has never looked back. Dudu studied agriculture at university and then earned a certificate in computer programming.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Well, like many children who grew up in North Tel Aviv in the sixties, I thought I'd be a doctor or engineer; celebrity, pop star, or top model were not considered to be real options like today. I liked science and mechanical things, and spent hours reading and building models.
How about music? Which band is your favorite?
Mozart and I have one thing in common: we both started paying music at the age of 3.5. He became famous, but I have lived longer! I had a good ear and could learn whole songs just by listening, but when it came to formal musical education, I couldn't bear struggled with the notes and the rules. As a child, I grew up on Israeli classics like Arik Einstein, Yehoram Gaon, and of course the military bands, but I guess what really turned me on was pop music. The Beatles were my favorites, and, as a matter of fact, for some time I almost ignored any other bands!
How did you get to work for WORDS?
This really was by mere chance. My wife, Yael, worked at WORDS as a DTP professional. One day she brought home some scientific educational material in English that WORDS needed translated into Hebrew, and asked me if I knew someone who can do it. I looked at it, and there was everything I liked from science lessons in school! I told her that if WORDS gave me a chance, I would willingly try it myself. That was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Since WORDS specialized in high tech, many of the projects that followed allowed me to use my knowledge, experience, and language skills very successfully.
What do you like best about your job?
As Project Manager, I like to give clients a solution, which is sometimes more than a straightforward translation task. Clients are not always aware of the various aspects that have to do with a translation or localization project. As a translator, I like to learn about the new concepts and innovations. In many cases, I have to deal with technical issues (such as formatting and text conversion) that other translators do not want to (or do not know how to) handle.
What advice would you give people looking for careers in translation?
To be a translator, you need language skills far above the average level. This is a critical starting point. You can't convey clear messages using inaccurate language. . Using the correct terminology is also important, but this is relatively easy , and does not demand too much talent. Additionally, a translator often needs to get the essence out of blurred text, and not to work in GIGO mode (garbage in, garbage out). This doesn't mean you have to be a mind reader, but you do need to be mentally sharp and on-the-ball. People looking for a career in translation should be aware of this.
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Music as a Diversifying Factor of Translation |
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I have been translating technical materials for the last 13 years, and I love it. But my first love is music. I am a semi-professional musician, playing with the Misgav Celto-Balkan ensemble at various gigs, including Kabalat Shabbat at Amirim, casual ceremonies, and private events.
An album that has had a great deal of musical influence on me is Camels' Snow Goose, which is considered to be a milestone in the history of progressive rock. The music was written by Camel (a progressive British rock band in the 70s), and inspired by Paul Gallico's novella, The Snow Goose. The music is delightful by itself, but the fact that it was inspired by this book was really intriguing for me.
I got a used copy of the book from Amazon and started reading with excitement. (I have to confess that I am not a great reader of English books.) The book started with a vivid description of a big marsh in the south of England, featuring landscapes and flora and fauna. I quickly found myself drowning in the richness of the language-language that is a far cry from the world of client-server applications, mobile devices, and user interfaces.
I struggled with the first three pages and almost gave up. I really wanted to read the book, and there was no Hebrew translation available. Then I thought, why shouldn't I do it? Why not try, just for the fun of it? And so I began. I needed to look up every third word in the dictionary, but even so, completed the book in three weeks.
I have already stated that I am a technical translator and not a literary one, but I sometimes take a poetic license when working on marketing material. This time I had to expand on that skill even more, as a novella is a totally different form of writing. The process was quite interesting, as I had to create the images in my mind in order to actually "see" the scenes. I got some great feedback from my family members, especially from my wife, who reads a lot of literature.
I can't end my story without giving some examples of my translation. I picked two poetic scenes, one from the beginning and the other the final sentence of the book:
Tidal creeks and estuaries and the crooked, meandering arms of many little rivers whose mouths lap at the edge of the ocean cut through the sodden land that seems to rise and fall and breathe with the recurrence of the daily tides.
מפרצוני הגיאות, שפכי הנחלים וזרועותיהם המפותלות והמשורגות של שלל היובלים הפוערים פיהם אל שפת הים, מתחפרים להם באדמה הבצקית, העולה ויורדת כסרעפת, יומם ולילה, בקצב הגיאות והשפל.
That evening when Fritha came, the sea moved in the breached walls and covered it over. Nothing was left to break the utter desolation. No marsh fowl had dared to return. Only the freightless gulls wheeled and soared and mewed their plaint over the place where it had been.
באותו ערב, כאשר חזרה פרית'ה, הים חדר דרך הכתלים המנותצים וכיסה אותם בגליו. מאומה לא נותר ועזובה מוחלטת שלטה בכל. שום עוף ביצה לא הרהיב לחזור. רק השחפים חסרי המורא חגו, נסקו וקראו קינה ונהי על המקום בו קרה הכל
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Wordless Manuals: Replacing
Words with Pictures |
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By Patrick Hoffman
How do you convey an entire set of complex instructions without words, and why would you even bother? Since he first quipped this question, Patrick Hofmann has deleted countless words from the pages of hardware user manuals. Patrick is a technical illustrator and writer who, with the help of his team, creates wordless documentation and visual solutions for his clients. In this session, you will learn what he learned: how to use wordlessness to downsize multi-lingual sets of assembly manuals, and how to illustrate complex instructions with the same concern for usability as we have with writing.
GOING GLOBAL MEANS GOING WORDLESS
Traditionally, we use pictures to augment words; to better explain concepts and procedures that words have trouble conveying. By using pictures, we substantially reduce word-counts and put smiles on the faces of our text-weary users. But what if we elevate the role of pictures: give them prominence over the words; heck, eliminate the words altogether?
Several clients give us the opportunity to test this question. One of them is a computer manufacturer who had a heavy 16-language library of network computer hardware guides. By producing just one wordless guide for their entire global market, we eliminated their translation costs and reduced their printing costs by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But the benefits do not stop at the financial numbers. After a barrage of usability tests, we find that wordlessness boosts the usability and popularity of the guides. By eliminating words, we eliminate the chances of lost meaning that stem from problematic translation, and we cater to certain cultural markets whose alphabets are entirely visual (especially in Japan).
GOING WORDLESS MEANS GETTING SIMPLE
The elimination of words alone do not make wordless guides a success story. You must apply many traditional rules of technical writing to the illustrations to ensure that they meet (and exceed) the userfriendliness of words:
Cut to the chase: be brief! Much like worded manuals, the best illustrations are the ones that are elegantly brief.
In text, users don't want to have to read between the lines to find the message. Likewise in pictures, users don't want to wade through miles of intricate line art. Get rid of unnecessary detail and show only what's vital to the instruction. The benefits of doing so are impressive:
- You convey the product as easy to assemble and repair, and reduce the intimidation level for users.
- You reduce the visual traffic of the picture, making certain parts of a picture easier to locate, navigate through, and remember.
- You eliminate any resizing problems. For example, if you substantially reduce a highly detailed picture, the lines merge and coagulate into a visual blob. Clear, uncluttered pictures prevent this from happening.
Be repetitive. Yes, be repetitive. Well-written instructions have consistent wording through devices like parallelism and similarity. From step to step, writers may use a common boilerplate sentence structure that unifies an entire set of instructions. Illustrations are no different: they shouldn't jump from an exploded view to a frontal view to an angled view in one set of steps. By beginning with a base illustration, and repeating it with simple and gradual changes, you create a set of instructions that show consistency and chronology.
Avoid full frontal crudity. It's surprising how many instructional illustrations are conveyed solely in a frontal view with no diminishing edges or other devices to convey depth. Unless the user can only view an object at its frontal view, you should use a consistent angled view that conveys the depth of the object. In the end, you make the object easier to identify, and you reinforce what the user needs to do to the object and where.
Detonate your exploded views. Use exploded views only if you need to show the complete assembly of an object in one picture, or, if you need to depict the actual explosion of an object. Since both of these cases are rare, it's baffling to see the exploded view remain so popular. Exploded views are difficult to read because they have too much visual traffic, and require too much time for processing and filtering. Break down your steps into logically grouped and ordered parts.
SUMMARY
The most popular written manuals are those that require the least effort to absorb and learn. Their words are consistent, concise, and brief. Successful wordless manuals follow the same fundamental principle with their illustrations. Surprisingly, being consistent, concise, and brief seems to be the most difficult goal to achieve, because it requires technical illustrators to restrain themselves from drawing everything. Traditionally, technical illustrators illustrate to create an anatomically perfect representation of an object. Now, technical illustrators must learn to draw an object for the sake of the instruction, not for the sake of the object.
As a trained technical writer turned enthusiastic illustrator, Patrick has turned into a man of few words. He helps many clients overcome the anxiety and stress involved in globalization and translation--often by eliminating the text in their online, hardcopy, and interface information. Patrick also lends his visual skills to the Southwestern Ontario Chapter of the STC, where he actively plays the roles of both Newsletter Editor and Webmaster.
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Patrick Hoffman Seminar - 12/13 March 2008
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Take this exceptional
opportunity to work with Patrick Hoffman, an internationally acclaimed
expert on wordless communication. Patrick is a popular speaker at
international technical communication conferences (including appearing
as the keynote speaker at STC Israel's 2007 convention).
Patrick brings his extensive experience and unique perspective to this special seminar.
Places are limited and filling up fast - SIGN UP NOW
For the full syllabus, Click here
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What is XML? |
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XML is a markup language for documents containing
structured information.
Structured
information contains both content (words, pictures, etc.) and some
indication of what role that content plays (for example, content in a
section heading has a different meaning from content in a footnote,
which means something different than content in a figure caption or
content in a database table, etc.). Almost all documents have some
structure.
A markup language is a mechanism to identify structures in a
document. The XML specification defines a standard way to add markup to
documents.
What's a Document?
The number of applications currently being developed that are based
on, or make use of, XML documents is truly amazing (particularly when
you consider that XML is not yet a year old)! For our purposes, the
word "document" refers not only to traditional documents, like this
one, but also to the myriad of other XML "data formats". These include
vector graphics, e-commerce transactions, mathematical equations,
object meta-data, server APIs, and a thousand other kinds of structured
information.Why XML?
In order to appreciate XML, it is important to understand why it was
created. XML was created so that richly structured documents could be
used over the web. The only viable alternatives, HTML and SGML, are not
practical for this purpose.
Read on...
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Why DITA? An Interview with Bob Doyle |
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The Man Who Helped Invent Video Games, Desktop Publishing, and New Tools to Help you Learn Topic-Based AuthoringYou
may not know Bob Doyle by name, but you certainly know some things he
invented. Even if you weren't born yet when he came up with some of his
inventions, they have changed the way you work and play. In 1978 Bob
invented one of the first hand held electronic games, Merlin, featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine
and selling 5.5 million units in 1980, making it the biggest selling
game of the year. In 1984 he invented the first desktop publishing
software, MacPublisher. Later he developed Skybuilders, a web
publishing tool that led to the first podcast in 2003. He founded
Content Management Professionals (CMPros), and a whole network of DITA-related web sites including DITA Users, DITA Tutor, and DITA Infocenter, among others. We
wondered why a guy like Bob Doyle, with a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from
Harvard University, and so many successful innovations, would be so
interested in something like DITA. So we asked him.
DCL News: Bob, few people outside the Content Management world, have
even heard of content management or DITA. How did you get interested? Bob:
I see content management as a web version of 1980's desktop publishing.
Content management really began with Vignette back in 1995, if you can
believe it, when they commercialized the first CMS that CNet had built
for their own website. Though business in a broad sense has only
embraced content management for the past several years, Vignette was
talking about it back then. If you take a look at their 1996 web page
at waybackmachine.org
you'll read about things like dynamic content, that business has only
just begun to talk about. A tag line on the Vignette home page from
1996 says, "Where Web sites deliver on the promise of unlimited,
dynamic content and personalized experiences for every visitor, every
time." |
Upcoming Courses and Seminars
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Introduction to Marketing Communication course in Tel Aviv and Karmiel - starts 4th March 2008 in Tel Aviv, Karmiel course is registering now.
Click here for details
Writing for the Web - Words That Sell a one-day seminar.
6th March 2008, Metropolitan Hotel, Tel Aviv.
Click here for details
Visual Literacy for Technical Communicators - By Patrick Hoffman, 12-13 March 2008, Renaissance Hotel, Tel Aviv.
A must for all technical communicators. Don't miss this one!
Click here for details
MS Word Macro Automation - By Yechiel Lewis
A one-day seminar, 29th April, WORDS training center, 126 Arlozorov, Tel Aviv.
Click here for details
Introduction to Technical Communication
course in Tel Aviv and Karmiel, registering now.
Click
here for details
DITA Workshop - By Joe Gelb and Eli Jacobs
A four-day course, 5 - 6 May and 12 - 13 May 2008, WORDS training center, 126 Ar;ozorov, Tel Aviv.
Click here for details
Full syllabi for all courses and seminars are available here.
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Sincerely,
Larry Rosenfeld
In Other Words
www.wordsisrael.com
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