Goals of the Writer

When you create technical documentation for an international audience, you should aim to achieve the following objectives:

  • Ensure technical accuracy and linguistic clarity, so that translated versions retain the technical accuracy of the original language version.

  • Facilitate the work of the translators. Documentation that is wordy or ambiguous creates more work for the translators. You should aim to reduce to a minimum the time and effort that the translator needs to translate your documentation.

  • Ensure that the documentation is suitable for internationalization, localization, and translation. Consider the following factors:

    • Internationalization involves the creation of documentation for use in many different cultures, or documentation that is easy to translate into many languages.
    • Localization involves the conversion of documentation into another language or culture.
    • Translation refers to the process of translating documents into another language. Translation is just one part of localization. The guidelines in this section can help you to create technical documentation that translators can easily translate into different languages.