Choosing the English That’s Right for You: Simplified Technical English and Other Controlled...
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Choosing the English That’s Right for You Simplified Technical English and Other Controlled Languages Brenda Huettner * Alison Huettner October 31, 2008
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Presented at Documentation and Training East 2008 (October 29-November 1, 2008) by Brenda Huettner and Alison Huettner.Simplified Technical English (STE) is a success story for the aerospace industry. Will a simplified English work for your industry as well? This session explores the rationale behind simplified languages, their advantages and their perennial challenges. It surveys controlled languages from their beginnings to the offerings in today’s marketplace. The session will also cover the questions you need to ask to determine what’s right for your situation. Do you need to simplify? Can you adapt an existing language or lexicon? Or should you define your own set of rules and phrases? Where should you begin? What effort would be required?
Transcript of Choosing the English That’s Right for You: Simplified Technical English and Other Controlled...
Choosing the English That’s Right for You
Simplified Technical English and Other Controlled Languages
Brenda Huettner * Alison HuettnerOctober 31, 2008
The Big Picture
Controlled Languages
Swedish(Scania)
French (Dassault)
English
German(Siemens)
Plain Language
AttemptoASD- STE
Caterpillar CTE
Sun CE
CLOUT
GM CASL
Avaya ACE
What is a controlled language?
Vocabulary
Grammar
Style
Advantages of Controlled Languages
More precision, less ambiguityEasier to read and understandMore consistent source documentation across an organizationImproved retrievability and reuse of informationMore consistent translationsLess expensive human translationSimpler and more accurate machine translationEasier post-processing in generalMeasurable index of document quality
Disadvantages of Controlled Languages
Time-consuming to createNon-trivial to masterSome loss of nuanceOften less aestheticDifficult to enforce complianceDifficult to evaluate
What considerations go into creating a controlled language?
Who Is Your Audience?
How Elaborate Is Your Process?
Existing softwareSize of organization
WorkflowTraining burden
Number of documentsTranslation component
Human or machine?
What Vocabulary Resources Exist?
CE development tools don’t come with the technical vocabulary for your domainDoes your organization or your field have a termbank or glossary?In most cases you will build up the technical vocabulary by text-mining your existing documents
What Tools Can You Buy?
CE development softwareText-mining toolsSuggested basic vocabularyMay let you choose your grammar rules
CE checker softwareComprehensive check for vocabulary complianceVarious options for grammar checking
Translation memory software
Text Mining Tools
Extract from your documents a candidate list of technical termsAllow you to review and editHelp you identify synonym groups and choose the standard term
E.g., secondary brake, rather than parking brakeor emergency brake
Can create the foundation of authoring or translation glossaries
Translating Technical Terminology
Add translations to your technical glossaryThe one word ↔ one meaning goal is hard to meet hereMulti-noun terms like message server mailbox must be translated as units, as the relationship among the nouns is arbitrary
Specify constructions to be avoidedProhibitions can be introduced graduallyLess training effortChecking tends to be heuristicChecker gives specific feedback
Specify the constructions that are allowedComprehensive system; not easy to modifyRequires more training effortChecking involves a full parseChecker feedback tells you only if it did or didn’t parse
The Two Basic Grammar Approaches
infinitives
Controlled English vs. Software Checkers
Controlled EnglishA subset of English vocabulary, grammar, and style rulesOften industry-specific
Software CheckersCheck for compliance with a set of rulesVary in strictnessNever 100% accurate
There are many variants of controlled English for which no automated checker tool exists.
The Conformance Problem
The CE definition radically underspecifies the form of acceptable text.
It may have passed the checker, but that doesn’t guarantee that your sentence is clear and informative!
The Authoring Problem
It’s hard for an author to determine whether a sentence conforms to the controlled language
Most full-parse grammar checkers are red light/green light
Non-conformance is often hard to fixWorrying about controlled language can be distracting and disruptive for authors
Translation Memory
Input need not be as tightly controlled as for machine translationSimilar savings in human translation costs
That all sounds very difficult! What controlled languages are currently available?
Controlled English is a wheel reinvented many times
Public CE Initiatives
Proprietary CE Initiatives
CE Research Projects
Attempto Controlled English (University of Zurich)Controlled English to Logic Translation (Teknowledge)Common Logic Controlled English (John Sowa)First Order English (Oxford University)ClearTalk (University of Ottawa)Metalog (MIT)Processable English (University of Sydney)PROSPER (Universities of Glasgow, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Karlsruhe, and Tubigen, with IFAD and Prover Technology)KANT (Carnegie Mellon University)
How do you decide what’s right for you?
What are your output requirements?
Clarity? Reusability?Metrics?Consistency across multiple authors?Multiple output formats?
Brevity?Customizability?Quick turnaround?Integration with other departments?Integration with other software?
Choosing software: www.electonline.org
Learn More:
Workshop on Controlled Natural Languagehttp://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/cnl2009/International Standard for Simplified Technical Englishhttp://www.asd-ste100.org/U.S. Plain Language Initiativehttp://www.plainlanguage.gov/
