As a technical communicator, it’s your job to provide end users with all the information they need to safely, efficiently, and effectively use a product. To achieve this, your technical documentation not only needs to be correct and complete but it also needs to offer good usability. Let us see how a good usability test can help you.
Joining the TCLoc community of instructors is Hilary Marsh, a content strategist with decades of experience and president of Content Company, a content and digital strategy consultancy. She is a leading expert on effective and efficient content creation, organization, and management. Having already created and taught graduate-level courses on content strategy, she is excited to share her experience and insight with TCLoc students and show them the important role content strategy plays in technical communication. In this article, she gives us a sneak peek of her course and shares with us the professional path that led her to where she is now.
According to the MESA Europe Content Localization Council in 2017, the size of the audiovisual translation market suggests that content localization services are worth about 2 billion USD per year and are expected to grow by 8% to 10% annually. The Slator 2018 Media Localization Report paints a similar picture, yet subtitle translation software has not grown to match this assertion. Is it because traditional TM (translation memory) technology has nothing to offer and can’t support this specialized localization process?
From tablets, interactive whiteboards, and MOOCs to educational software and games, digital technology is increasingly taking over European schools. Some people pin great hopes on new educational technology to offer students more personalized learning and improve their cognitive performance. Beside, others are concerned by the effects of too much screen time on children’s brain health and development.
These days, technical communicators are generally aware that translators almost always use computer aided translation (CAT) tools to work more quickly and produce a translation with the highest degree of consistency possible – given the source text and reference material provided.
Machine translation post-editing is the process of improving a machine-generated translation with minimal manual labour. It is a new skill which many translators are not familiar with. However, with a bit of practice, it can speed up the process dramatically.
The term Translation Environment Tool (or TEnT) has become roughly synonymous with the more commonly used Computer Aided Translation Tool (or CAT tool). However, a distinction exists between the two.
If you’re an avid Skype user, then you may have heard of Skype Translator. Despite the fact that Skype often advertises this tool in the middle of ongoing calls, it still promises to be a highly innovative technology.
Every language professional can attest to the fact that their industry is becoming more technical by the day: an evolution that may worry some but is a powerful motivator for others. Firmly seated in the latter group, Six Continents CEO and TCLoc instructor Gaëtan Chrétiennot epitomizes the intersection between linguistics and IT in today’s language services industry.
The European Association for Technical Communication defines it as “the process of defining, creating and delivering information products for the safe, efficient and effective use of products (technical systems, software, services)”. The job of a technical communicator is to make complex information accessible to a unique audience and to help users understand the product information provided in the documentation.
