A couple of days ago, I noticed that a lot of people were looking at my now-famous post on Adobe Framemaker. It is the post that continues to live on in infamy. I noticed that many people were finding the post from a site called tecwriter.com. So, I decided to peruse tecwriter.com, to see exactly what is going on there.

Tecwriter.com appears to be an aggregated site where you can have your blog posts linked. And lo and behold, the very first link is my FrameMaker post. I have no idea how it got there, but I am grateful for the connection. I started looking more closely at the links on the site. It would appear that most of them are related to Madcap Flare – which makes me wonder if Madcap has something to do with the site. Does anyone know?

In any event, I came across a great post that I wanted to share with you. It is called “Ten Best Practices for Preparing a Flare (or RoboHelp) Project for Translation,” and it is by Lorraine Kupka. The post is on the Writers UA site, which is a great place to go for information on user assistance.

What I like about Lorraine’s post is that it is very thorough. It covers most of the various items you should think about when your project is going to be translated. Lorraine focuses not just on the writing, but on all of the additional things you can (and should) do to make your project go smoothly. I strongly suggest you read her entire post.

For crimp notes, here are Lorraine’s 10 best practices:

1. Follow best practices for technical writing
2. Consider how the text will appear after translation
3. Use CSS styles instead of local formatting
4. Use naming conventions
5. Document conventions and processes in a style guide
6. Simplify conditioned text
7. Don’t embed text in images
8. Consider whether to translate sample data used in screen shots
9. Remove extraneous project files (targets, topics, TOCs, etc.)
10. Identify topic content that must match the user interface

If you are not creating online help, you might not need all of these best practices, since a few are specific to online help systems. However, most of these practices should be used religiously if you are sending your content to translation.

A few months ago, Scott Abel wrote a post for eContent Magazine on preparing your content for translation. I would add the following best practices from Scott’s post:

• Avoid being America-centric in your writing
• Make sure your content is findable
• Structure your content consistently
• Use a consistent set of semantic tags
• Install and use a CMS for managing your content

What are some of the other best practices that you would add?

This week, I spent a bunch of time reading. Well, to be honest, I usually spend a bunch of time reading. What caught my eye this week were articles about English and other languages. There is a lot being written lately about the importance of raising Americans to be multi-lingual.

In his New York Times essay about preparing students for the future, former Harvard president Lawrence Summers writes:

English’s emergence as the global language, along with the rapid progress in machine translation and the fragmentation of languages spoken around the world, make it less clear that the substantial investment necessary to speak a foreign tongue is universally worthwhile. While there is no gainsaying the insights that come from mastering a language, it will over time become less essential in doing business in Asia, treating patients in Africa or helping resolve conflicts in the Middle East. 

Talk about a big, bold statement. Much has been written in response to these words. In fact, the New York Times has printed a series of rebuttals to Mr. Summer’s directive. In the “Room for Debate” section of The Times, the article English is Global, So Why Learn Arabic? features six well-qualified individuals debating the pros and cons of teaching Americans a second or third language.

• Stacie Nevadomski Berdan’s says that is it important for people to understand multiple languages so that they can also appreciate cultures, and connect and build relationships around the world.
• Anthony Jackson posits that learning another language correlates closely with academic achievement.
• Michael Erard agrees that English has become an international standard. He, too, cites the importance of understanding multiple cultures and basically says that if you are going to learn a lot about a culture, you should go all the way and learn the language, as well.
• Melanie Ho, who is tri-lingual, says that fluency in multiple languages is not necessarily important, but proficiency is. In fact, she notes that one of her acquaintances in Hong Kong is happy to teach her Chinese, but has no desire to learn English. The Hong Kong native says that if someone wants to communicate with her, that person will have to speak Chinese.
• Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco completely disagrees with the entire premise of Larry Summer’s statement. In fact, he goes so far as to say that people who are economists by trade (such as Larry Summers) should stay out of the conversation entirely.
• Clayton Lewis believes that learning additional languages provides people with the ability to have more meaningful experiences and, in effect, learn more. For Clayton Lewis, being proficient isn’t enough. Fluency, while difficult, is key.

After reading these opinions, I next read Lori Thicke’s blog post Call for Translation in Kenya’s Kibera Slum. Lori’s post speaks of her experience traveling to Kiberia and meeting with a group of young sex slave workers. These young women are “peer educators”. Their job is to teach other women about family planning, nutrition, and the prevention of sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

According to the peer educators, the main challenge they face teaching others life saving facts is that all of the donated printed material is written in English. Most of the people in their village do not speak English. Therefore, this critical information is unavailable to the people who need it most.

I realize that these two sets of articles are really not focused on the same thing. The New York Times articles are all about teaching Americans to be multi-lingual. And Lori’s article is about recognizing that the rest of the world does not necessarily speak English.

What the articles all have in common is the unrealistic notion that English is somehow the only language people need to know. And whether it is teaching Americans other languages or getting Americans to produce information in other languages, the theme is the same.

We need to stop thinking that everyone speaks English. We need to recognize that other languages are equally important – sometimes making the difference between life and death.

All of these things point to one fact: If we are going to write in English, that English needs to be simple enough that it can be translated into all of the other languages that the rest of the world speaks. And it would be even better if the writers of the English content are well-versed in multiple languages so that they avoid the common English-only writing traps that we frequently create for ourselves and our translators.

Today, communities of interest that cut across traditional lines of demarcation are popping up around the world. Enthusiasm for technology and the global reach of the internet is leading the way. While Apple appears to be the most relevant example, it is not just Apple products that are crossing cultural and language barriers. For example, people all over the world are increasingly enthusiastic about their Android phones, as mobile phones are how most of the world accesses the internet.

Recently, I stumbled upon the XDA Developer site, where over 4.2 million registered users go to get help modifying their Android phones. A lot of the site was over my head. However, I noticed that perhaps as many as 25% of the requests for help seemed to come from outside the US and/or from people who did not speak English as their first language. Most were able to make their help requests clear on the site, even in English that read much like Pig Latin.

Having majored in sociology when I was in college, I started to think about the kind of experience people from India or the Middle East would have on this and other sites like it. The information they need to root their Android phone and download a custom ROM is there. Unfortunately, the details are written in a form of English that makes it very hard for someone who doesn’t speak English at a relatively high-level to understand. This is too bad, because this site is one of many communities that attracts a global audience.

Increasingly, I think community managers should see their role not just as moderating content, but also as looking to aid understanding across cultural lines. The single best way to do this is to identify posts that are receiving the most visitors within a community and translate them into simple English. In addition to using simple English, cleaning up the formatting and the grammatical errors, and forcing consistency in terminology would go a long way towards encouraging understanding for all.

The hallmarks of simple English include the following:

• Clarity
• Brevity
• Avoidance of unnecessary technical language

Simple English is not like pornography. The line between pornography and art can be a bit … well blurry … causing a judge to say that he can’t define what pornography is, but “he knows it when he sees it.” You can decide to author content in simple English. And, with a little training and help, you can encourage your community to create content that meets the simple English standard.

Here at Content Rules, we are one of a handful of companies in the field that has a practice area focused on simple English. We offer on-site, customized training to community managers and other content-development professionals on how to create content in simple English using modern editing tools such as Acrolinx IQ. Our software and processes help our customers set up guidelines, standards, and a corporate lexicon.

In fact, we are currently working with Translators without Borders on a pro-bono basis to take 85 complex Wikipedia medical articles and turn them into simple English. In addition to being posted to the Simple Wikipedia site, the simplified articles will better support the translation of the content into over 50 languages. In this way, we have joined the worldwide fight to combat malaria and cholera, two leading killers of children in Africa and other third-world countries.

The benefits of developing your core community site in “simple English” are these:

• Reduced support costs. To the extent that non-native speakers (both abroad and in the US) can understand user-generated content that makes up your community, your company will reduce its overall support costs.
• Reduced translation costs. Starting with simple English will almost always give you content that is quicker and easier to translate than the alternative.
• Reduced content development costs. Well-written user-generated content can be used instead of content generated by your company, cutting the cost and the time it takes to create the content you need to support your community and/or products.

Are you a community manager? Do you need help developing some core content in simple English? If so, drop me a line.

Imagine this:

You are the CEO of a content creation company that has been in business for 18 years. You work with the best writers and editors in technology. You get to work with the most innovative companies around the world. And, just when you think things are going great, you get to host a webinar with the one and only Grammar Girl. Wow!

There you are, sitting at the top of your editorial world, just waiting for the webinar date. And as you wait, thousands (yes, literally thousands) of people register for the big event. Afterall, this is Grammar Girl we’re talking about!! To publicize the event, you send out various messages to your community. You include it in eNewsletters. You tweet about it. You blog about it. And, you decide to send an email to everyone you know.

Everything is going along just swimmingly. Your email goes out to several thousand additional people. You watch the “out of the office” messages come streaming into your inbox from all of your cohorts who are lucky enough to be taking the week off.

And then…

All of a sudden, you start getting other emails. Emails from people who are not very happy with you. These emails inform you that the message you distributed to thousands of people was literally riddled with typos and grammatical mistakes.

Oh yes, my friends, this happened to me just this past week. The email notification that the editing czar of the company (aka me) sent out was completely riddled with errors. What a helpless feeling! I stared at my screen and cringed. I think I turned red. I am sure I shrank in my chair. Just the sheer IRONY that this email was about a conversation with Grammar Girl made the situation a wee bit comical, but I digress.

There are a million things I could say. A million reasons and excuses that I could give you for why that particular version (unedited) of the email managed to get behind the “Click OK to Send” button. But, none of the reasons and excuses can suck that email back from your inbox.

So, what does one do in this situation? Well, there is only one thing I can do. I take full responsibility for the mistakes.

To all of the folks in my community who received this particular email, I apologize. I pride myself on my work and I am much better than that. I hope that you will register to attend the webinar and learn about proper grammar. I know that I’m looking forward to it for more reasons than one.

Hope to see you there!

Date: Friday, January 27
Time: 10:00AM

In this video clip, Leonard Nimoy (the legendary Mr. Spock from Star Trek) interviews Steve Wozniak about the future of machine translation. Steve discusses the use of machine translation apps for the iPhone. You speak into your device in your native language and, based on your selection, the machine translation app translates the words and broadcasts the translated equivalent on the speaker in your device. Jibbigo is a company that is doing just that, albeit in only 9 language pairs.

Revolutionary? Well, no, not really. We’ve been working on various technologies to do this for a long time. What’s interesting is that translation is becoming more and more and more important every day. Whether it is written content, spoken content, or visual graphics (think Word Lens from Quest Visual for example), people everywhere are looking for accurate and immediate machine translation.

In 2009, there was a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called “Darmok“. This episode features the universal translator, a device which instantly translates any language into any language. Even alien languages can be instantly translated with a universal translator. In fact, the first instance of any science fiction tale featuring a universal translator dates all the way back to 1945 in Murray Leinster’s novella, “First Contact.”

We’ve come a long way since simply dreaming of a universal translator. However, our work is far from over.

Envoyez-moi jusqu’à, Scotty?

Last week, I commented on Kare Anderson’s post in the Harvard Business Review about Crafting an Attention-Grabbing Message. In her post, Kare makes many valid points about how to create messages that are truly memorable. Kare lists three different techniques that you can use to craft that attention grabber:

• Use familiar slogans in a fresh new way
• Startle with specifics
• Add a dash of dry humor

As I read her post (full disclosure – I consider Kare a friend and a mentor. She is certainly one of the smartest people I know), I kept thinking about culture, localization, and translation. How do you create a message that grabs attention in every culture an d language (or at least every culture and language that you need)?

Even our own corporate website here at Content Rules uses the banner, “Got Content?” This slogan, a clear take-off on the much-parodied and wildly successful “Got Milk?” campaign  is well-known to almost everyone in America. The original advertisement debuted in 1993 and we are still seeing it today. (Heck, it has its own entry in Wikipedia!)

Outside of the U.S., though, I’m not so sure that “Got <anything>?” plays out so well. Sure, a phrase that poses the question, “Do you have any milk?” is easily translatable – probably into any language we can think of. The passive verb “got” likely translates just as well. But if you have not grown up in the U.S. seeing the Got Milk? campaign for almost 20 years, it is unlikely that any play on words, especially an unknown advertising campaign, using that catchy phrase will make any sense.

Not understanding the message in your language is actually a very mild problem. How about the situation when your company or product name translates extremely poorly? Take the famous example of the Chinese translation of Coca-Cola’s name. The first translation of Coca-Cola essentially said ”Bite the wax tadpole [蝌蝌啃蜡]” or “Female horse stuffed with wax”, depending on the dialect. Pepsi didn’t do much better with its attention-grabbing, “Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” slogan. In Taiwan, it became “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead.”

There are dozens and dozens of additional examples, but you get the picture.

Similarly, using humor of any kind (dry included) borders on potentially treacherous territory in the localization world. What is absolutely hilarious to people in the U.S. can be (and often is) downright offensive to people in other cultures – even in the U.S.

Crafting an culturally-aware, translatable, attention-grabbing message is a formidable challenge.

So What’s a Marketeer to Do?

Well, I wish I had an easy answer for you, but there is no easy answer. To keep your message attention-grabbing in multiple languages, you will likely have to recreate the message in each language. You may need to change the message all together – which can be very costly if you are creating campaigns, web pages, collateral, and more around the message. Creating a separate campaign per culture/language is an expensive undertaking.

Yet it can be done. I came across an extremely interesting university research paper while searching for examples for this post. It is called, “Between English Humour and National Stereotypes – Translating Stephen Clarke’s Novel Merde Happens into Italian” and was written by Sabrina Fusari from the University of Trento and Ilaria Montagni from the University of Bologna at Forlì. In this paper, the authors use a scientific methodology to analyze the problems associated with translating the humor of the book into Italian.

They divide translation of humor into three distinct areas:

1. Idiomaticity and register
2. Culture-bound terms
3. Diatopic/ diastratic varieties

So you don’t go running for your dictionaries like I did, let me give you the definitions of each of these areas.

Idiomaticity is the noun form of idiomatic. According to Dictionary.com, idiomatic means:

Culture-bound terms is a pretty self-explanatory category. These are terms that are relevant in a particular country. For example, there is no equivalent Italian term for the English word “brunch.”

Diatopic/diastrasic  includes all references to accent, pronunciation, and slang. For example, American slang uses terms of address such as “dude”, “guy” and “bro.”

The gist of this paper is that the authors essentially rewrote the book Merde Happens to make it culturally relevant to Italian readers. This was a huge undertaking and an academic exercise. I don’t think it is a realistic solution to the business world.

The Bottom Line

I have no great solution for this dilemma. It is quite possible to recreate the attention-grabbing message to use familiar phrases in a fresh way for each culture and language. And it is quite possible to recreate the message using humor that is specific to each culture and language.

However, creating an attention-grabbing message that is culturally-aware and translatable is almost impossible to do. Once you “tone down” the word plays, puns, humor, and emotion of a message, the message loses the ability to really grab attention.

I’d love to hear your ideas and experience. Have you been able to craft a culturally-aware, translatable, attention-grabbing message? Do tell!

Social-media consultants will tell you that you are what you tweet … but here at Content Rules, we think your company is defined by its content strategy and in particular the style and word chooses you chose and hopefully use in a consistent manner across your content. So we found it interesting to pick up on this organization: The Global Language Monitor. It’s top word of 2011: Occupy.

You read it here first (hopefully).

Source:
The Global Language Monitor

Simple English Comes to Wikipedia for Translators Without Borders

I know, here I am writing about Translators Without Borders again. I can’t help it. They are doing such important work in the world. As a content-development firm that has been around for 17+ years, we have been impacted by the global recession like many of our peers. Our clients are under pressure to control costs and they in turn put pressure on us to do more with less. Still, to the extent we are in a position to help others, I encourage both my employees and contractors to contribute to the world by volunteering their time and energies to worthwhile pro bono projects, particularly those that impact the Third World.

This year, I’m delighted to put the considerable energies of Content Rules, Inc. behind a pro bono content development project we will be doing in conjunction with Translators Without Borders. Lori Thicke, CEO of Translators without Borders, contacted me to ask if Content Rules could help simplify about 85 Wikipedia files using our know-how in global readiness and pivot languages, working on a pro bono basis. The simplified files will be posted on Simple English Wikipedia, which in turn will enable the pages to be translated into many languages for people around the world (mainly in Africa). Simple English Wikipedia is a Wikipedia site that is focused on providing information to people using simple English words, structures, and grammar.

Of course, I told Lori that we’d be delighted to help Translators without Borders with this project on a pro bono basis, and would get both our employees and contractors involved. (This type of project is right up our power alley … as it draws upon our skills in creating content that is global-ready, to reduce the cost and complexity of localizing that content into multiple languages.)

I am of the opinion that ALL of Wikipedia should be written using simple English words, structures and grammar. But, that’s just me. Many writers on Wikipedia do not subscribe to simple English. That’s another story for another day. I am happy to see a Wikipedia site that is conscientious about their English usage.

I have put out word to a group of editors and writer who have expressed an interest in simple English. I have heard back from a number who are eager to help. We are now waiting for the first batch of files to be uploaded so that we can work on them.

I will keep you updated on our progress with this project over time. Thanks to everyone who volunteers for Translators Without Borders. Together we can make a difference in the world through contributing to this and other pro bono projects.

Recently, my friend and colleague, Jennifer Beaupre Glynn, wrote an interesting article on four things that you can do to make your content “king.” They are:

• Make your content easy to understand.
• Put some effort into it.
• Be proactive.
• Market your content.

I definitely agree that making sure your content is easy to understand is a critical aspect of great content. You can put boatloads of time and energy into your writing. However, if you don’t focus on readability, you will lose most of your readers early on. I know people who feel the need to show off their amazing Ivy League vocabularies whenever they write. These vocabularies might look impressive on the outside, but to the average reader, they do nothing for understandability of the content itself.

Putting effort, forethought, and research into your content is also very important. I like reading posts where people have done due diligence and have enough background to form an opinion worthy of attention. Jennifer is one of these people. She knows a lot about understandability and the value of quality content.

Being proactive will get your content out there – but I’m not so sure it will be “king” if you haven’t done steps one and two. There is so much content on the internet these days, if I waste my time trying to read a post that is poorly researched and difficult to read, it is highly unlikely that I will spend time looking at the author’s content again in the future. By the way, don’t waste a lot of time making crummy content searchable.

And for step 4, again, don’t market crummy content. How do you know if your content is any good? Well, it is certainly a subjective opinion. You might think that all of your content is perfect. After all, you know who wrote it. However, I would suggest that you have a few people read over your content before you market it far and wide. This is particularly true if you are in the beginning of your content creation career and/or if you are at all unsure of the value of what you’ve created. Also, make sure you’ve done step 2 – put effort into it – before you ask anyone to read it.

Beware: if you undertake these steps in the reverse order, you will not be king. You will be the court jester.

Yesterday, GALA posted a blog article about a new project that is being undertaken by Translators Without Borders (TWB) and the Common Sense Advisory (CSA). The purpose of the project is to study the  relationship between the lack of available translations and the disparities in available information in Africa.

This lack of information shows up in critical areas. For example, health information is not reaching people effectively. This means people are unable to get accurate information about HIV, other STDs, and a whole host of additional health-related issues. Also, people are not able to fully participate in their political process because they cannot understand content that is being given to them.

Clearly, the fact that there are over 1,000 languages in Africa creates a huge challenge to translation efforts. And clearly, without having information in their native language, it is almost impossible for the people in Africa to understand information that is provided.

As I’ve written before, TWB is an organization doing very important work all over the world. I am happy to see them teaming up with the CSA to create this study. The CSA conducts research about translation issues all over the world. I am also impressed that the CSA is doing this work in kind and will be publishing the results free of charge on their website. I look forward to seeing the results and finding out what I can do to help. How ’bout you?