You have caused me to reflect on my past. When I was shooting at the
airplane factory, I had opportunity to work a little with the handbook
people. This was a minor, and not really all that important part of the
engineering department. All the writers were engineers. Few had much if any
writing experience, and fewer were pilots. Fortunately, we had some very
highly skilled and experienced pilots that could offer assistance and check
over the product, but really, why would such an important function, one that
could indeed lead to the death side of life and death situations, be treated
as the red headed stepchild. What were they thinking? No one else wanted to
have a thing to do with certain functions, as they couldn't build an empire
on a good manual.
And yes, Jim, a PRINTED manual is an imperative.
From: Jim Couch [mailto:zuikoholic@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2010 12:17 PM
To: Olympus Camera Discussion
Subject: Re: [OM] How badly do you want a really good user manual?
On 12/28/2010 7:02 AM, Bill Pearce wrote:
>
>
> I'm not a linguist, but perhaps CH can chime in here. Are the structures
of
> Asian languages so different from English that translations are a serious
> challenge? Are good english to Chinese/Japanese/etc. translations also
rare?
> I know that the translation of theplural of shrimp on chinese restaurant
> menus is often incorrect. I also know that the translation of Engineer to
> English is also often impossible.
>
>
>
> Bill Pearce
I am not sure that translation is the real problem. I have run into a
number of manuals for British or American audio or software products
that are as bad as many Asian DSLR manuals. Often times the person
writing the manual appears to be a designer or engineer. Worse that that
is manuals written by someone who just does not seem to care, or are
'warmed over' based on a previous or similar model's manual. I think the
real problem is the perception (most likely quite true) that the manual
does not make the product more valuable or saleable so most firms put
the minimum amount of resources into it.
Personally I really like having a well written PRINTED manual. Most
software these days comes with no real manual - shifting the cost of
printing the manual to the customer. Worse yet, many of the online or
disc based manuals are not well formatted to be printed, AND still not
well formatted to be used on the computer either.
Jim
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