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Writing Text for Translation

Remember that translators are principally linguists—they may not necessarily be that familiar with either computer concepts, or with the concepts of your application domain. Usually, they will not be native English speakers. For those reasons, it is important that all text is worded as simply and as clearly as possible. There are a few stylistic principles you can follow in order to make your MRI clearer and therefore reduce the chances of a mis-translation.

For example:

• Messages and other displayed phrases should be complete phrases and not be constructed from individual words or other phrases. Consider the following example. You have four different states to report: Terminal operational, Terminal offline, Control unit operational, and Control unit offline. One way of doing this would be to hold four short phrases (Terminal, Control unit, Operational, Offline) and to permutate them as required to build up messages. However, in French, this would not work because operational is declined (for example, takes a different suffix) according to gender—and control units are feminine. Thus, you need separate messages for Terminal operational and Unit de control operationelle.
• Avoid abbreviations. For example, do not use Cust nm for customer name. Abbreviations generally do not appear in a dictionary and are hard for a non-native speaker to decipher. Avoid telegraphic style as it is hard to understand.
• Avoid compound phrases. It can be very difficult to tell when the adjective stops and the verb starts, especially for a non-native speaker. For example, does Record error mean an error has occurred on a record (for example, adjective+verb) or does it mean Log the error somewhere? (for example, verb+noun). Likewise, would Program definition mean a definition of a program or definition by a program? It is better to be as explicit as possible even if it takes slightly more space.
• Avoid negative questions. It is often not clear what the answer means or even what the question is; for example, ‘Do you not want to delete QSYS?’
• Avoid slang, jargon, idiom and humor. It may be hard for the translator to find the terms in a dictionary, and the humor may be culture-specific.