TR18: Cross-cultural Transformation of Technical Documentation

Translation Issues

1-00 (March 2000)

by Stefan Just

Haiti

TR18: Cross-cultural Transformation of Technical Documentation

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TR20: Comment on "Cross-Cultural Transformation... for the Chinese Market (TR18)

for the Chinese Market

During the last ten years I was responsible for compiling technical documentation for the German, Russian and French markets, as well as for the Peoples Republic of China.

The latter experience particularly drew our attention to the importance of cross-cultural management when designing technical documentation. Here are just one or two factors of the many I encountered.

Technical authors can compile technical documentation of high quality for a foreign market only if they are able to respect and understand the foreign culture. The following cultural aspects are especially important:

The language.
The legal background, and especially product liability laws.
The educational system.
The educational level of the user group.
The special culture-based rules in illustrating objects and procedures.

We have not only to translate, but also to transform the documentation so that it will "fit" the culture where it will be used. Translation is only one step in this transformation. If a writer pays attention only to the pure translation aspects, many components that are important for the acceptance and understanding of the information will be neglected. I will make this clear with an example.

A technical author in Europe knows that, before starting to write, it’s necessary to analyze the user group with regard to the following aspects:

The users’ technical knowledge and experience.
Any risks that may be incurred when using the product.
Who can or is likely to use the product.

(There are other factors that must be considered, but these are the primary ones.)

Generally, in Europe it’s not necessary to analyze the situation to master the native language. In China, however, it’s very important to know the differences that affect how one masters the native language.

Why?

The Chinese language covers 53 768 characters. Depending on the educational level of the individual, there are great differences in how each person comprehends the language. For example:

A worker masters about 2000 characters
An engineer masters about 6000 characters
A highly-qualified engineer masters more than 10 000 characters

If technical authors do not know this fact, and are unaware of its implications, they may be in danger of causing unintelligibility and misunderstanding among their readers. Years ago, we wrote a service manual for a Chinese truck. Our highly-qualified and ambitious Chinese authors used about 8000 characters. The result was that the average drivers of the trucks could not understand the manual because they had only mastered about 2000 characters. The result: we had to compile a new, simpler version of the service manual.

Many companies in Europe and America are unaware of problems such as these. Therefore many are producing documentation that the average customer in China cannot understand. This results not only in customers losing confidence in the documentation being supplied to them, but also in creating situations that damage the equipment or technical systems, or even cause injury to the user. We have a long way to go when considering these and other factors affecting documentation written for use in China.

I would be interested in hearing of similar experiences faced by other technical communicators.

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