In my experience, businesses and organizations, especially medium-sized businesses, don’t understand why they should pay someone to write documentation for them when they have perfectly good subject matter experts (SMEs) who know the product or service inside out, back-to-front, and upside down.
Other “Yonder Pedant” articles (currently in draft form as of January2016) cover what a technical writer does, and why it pays to hire a technical writer, but I just couldn’t resist posting an example of obvious corner-cutting, writing-wise. I hope that when (if) you read to the end of this article, you will have a better appreciation of the value of a technical writer.
It’s All Greek to Me
Technical Writers can be looked upon as translators—they’re the babel fish that acquire information from the subject matter experts (SMEs) and then translate it into documentation that mere mortals who haven’t worked on the product morning-noon-and-night can understand and follow. In the majority of situations, the writer works in the same language as the SME, but invariably these days, the finished material gets translated into other languages.
For example, in order to get good Spanish documentation about a product that was developed or created by an English-speaking team, there are at least two critical skillsets required—technical writing and English–Spanish translation. If a company “economizes” on either skillset, the usefulness of the resultant documents will be questionable.
I’ve worked on an English translation of French documentation for internal-to-my-employer use, but my French isn’t strong enough to contemplate translating public-facing documentation at this time. And since French is the only other language I’m anywhere near conversant in, I’m not qualified to perform root cause analysis on the packaging below, so I’m going to limit myself to comments and observations.
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Where Was the “Economy” Made?
Before I attempt any kind of detailed commentary, I want you to understand that I’m not criticizing the SMEs or the technical writer or the translator. The criticism is aimed at the body that selected the writing and translation services and exposed the company and/or product to criticism such as this.
Given the almost total annihilation of every rule associated with every facet of the English language in the above sample, it’s difficult to know if the problems occurred at the writing stage or the translation stage. I’ve sat staring at the package on many occasions with disbelief, sympathy, and many other reactions taking their turn at messing with my head before joining the back of the line for another go. The faults are legion. They range from spelling mistakes, through syntax and grammar faults, to total confusion. Some words and phrases elicit an “I can see how they made that mistake” response, but not many.
Where to start? How to categorize? To what levels of fault should I restrict my commentary?
The Lid
First, we have the spelling of “intellectual”—there’s a “t” missing. Secondly, the product contains nine separate components that could be fairly described as a candle, so the word “candle” should have been pluralized. Thirdly, how in the world can a candle (or candles) be described as “intellectual”? Is there a Chinese word that translates to “intellectual” that also translates to other, more appropriate adjectives? Or was the writer trying to bestow an unrealistically high level of sophistication on the product?
The lip of the lid instructs us to “notice explanation cutline”. The same instruction is printed on the base of the package in red with an exclamation mark icon. This actually seems more like an instruction to the packaging manufacturer that should have been removed prior to printing. But I’ve spent many sleepless minutes searching in vain for that elusive “cutline”. Packaging manufacturers—is this a term that you use? If so, what does it refer to?
The Front Panel
“IOPEN” sounds like a new Apple product. A simple typo error, or do the Chinese languages incorporate personal endings into the verb conjugation, like Latin? I wish I knew—there’s so much to learn out there and so little time.
The Back Panel
Here we find the instructions for use. It would likely require a thousand or more words to discuss the faults here, so I won’t deconstruct it fault by fault. Please browse it yourself long enough for you to start scratching your head.
Welcome back.
Do you understand what you’d have to do to enjoy this product? Do you know what you’d have to do to initiate the operation sequence? Are you comfortable being told to “Direct lit products top erect lighter spark rod”?
What did you think of the instructions for stopping the music? Do you think you’d be able to “will the coppe line”, or would you be condemned to an eternity of listening to a very poor rendition of “Happy Birthday”?
The Moral of the Tale
I have to admit that this is the most extreme example of poor documentation that I’ve ever seen. It’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever encounter anything like it in the course of my work because as I’ve already confessed, I know nothing about either mainstream Chinese language, and would never bid for work involving translation from Chinese to English.
Unfortunately for consumers, instruction manuals and user guides are frequently difficult to follow, because the manufacturers have economized on writing and translation services.
Unfortunately for end users, far too many companies create, purchase or purchase and customize software applications that suffered from underfunding in the documentation phase of the project. To get the full value of a computer system, its users need to know about and fully understand all its features. Intuition can only go so far. At some point, the mistakes that the users are learning from start to cost money and/or do damage. The degree of slope on the learning curve and the cost of error correction are the performance measurements that hit a company’s bottom line without the intermediate stage of being quantified in the development project’s budget.
The hidden costs of documentation economization will be the subject of several future posts. In the meantime, take one last look at the packaging above, and then promise yourself that you’ll hire professionals to create your documentation.
Your Turn
Do you have any examples of documentation (instructions, packaging, etc.) that make you wonder why the originators didn’t invest in professional help? English menus in restaurants in non-English-speaking countries are an abundant source of these bloopers, but if you have something more substantial, please share!
Please Help Improve Yonder Pedant’s Ramblings
- Did I miss a typo? (I’ll feel bad when you tell me, but I’d rather you did tell me!)
- Did I write something that makes you want to turn green and burst out of your shirt?
- Do you have any better examples that you would share and allow me to use?
If so, please let me know by leaving a comment.