There are many bad manuals written by native English speakers. Personally I
think a translated manual should be written by two people - a native speaker in
the original language and in the destination language. It is actually a very
difficult thing to do well - VERY. You have to put yourself in the position of
the user.
Translators are often poor at technical translation outside their general area
though they won't admit it. And if you have spent years mastering a foreign
language, you don't want some upstart salesman telling you that you translation
doesn't make sense.
I once worked on translating some horticultural materials from English into
French, working with a French friend - I have some detailed knowledge of
Australian vegetation and hort. practice. We did a good job but the client
wrecked it by insisting on a literal translation. I can still remember my
friend protesting, "but we don't call it that" but he could not be moved.
The internet will make it worse - manual require precise language and
organisation, with some understanding of how things can be misinterpreted. The
internet seems to promote the opposite - loose and imprecise language. Most
people don't know the difference between a font and a typeface, for instance
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 29/12/2010, at 1:28 PM, C.H.Ling wrote:
> I also don't understand, there are many Chinese and Japanese has very good
> English level, user manual shouldn't be anything difficult. One of the
> possible cause may be the user manual for electronic stuffs are written by
> technical people, most of the Chinese electronics engineers I have seen are
> not good in English. The guys major in language or business are usually much
> better but due to lack of connection to the outside world, their
> interpretation and use of words are sometimes a little unusual. With the
> popular of Internet, I think the situation will improve very fast.
--
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