OT- Proofreading instructions and manuals

crossthread · Feb 12, 2019

Good morning. This is not meant to be a mindless rant so please bear with me. I feel sure that a good many of us have struggled with instructions and manuals that are very poorly translated from foreign countries that don't make a lot of sense. I also feel sure that the manufacturers of any product would want their documentation to make sense. How much trouble would it be to have someone proof read the documentation before it is printed? Are there any firms that a manufacturer could email their documentation to and have it proof read for a small fee?

DDoug · Feb 12, 2019

You want cheap goods, you get cheap manuals.

Price trumps e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g

crossthread · Feb 12, 2019

These are not always "cheap" goods that I am referring to. I have purchased items from many countries in Europe that were by no means cheap. These are the manufacturers I would assume would like to have the quality of their documentation in line with the quality of their products. I totally agree that if someone is turning out parts in an alley somewhere using their toes as a vice, they are not going to spend a lot of time or effort on documentation.

Guest · Feb 12, 2019

I always wonder why large Chinese companies that were trying to court business from English speakers have websites written in Chinglish. We are talking companies that either have millions and millions of dollars of equipment or trying to fake it. I am sure a good Chinese to English translator is neither hard to find or expensive. Decades ago I worked at a place that had many immigrants from China that could speak and write English pretty well.

DDoug · Feb 12, 2019

crossthread said:
These are not always "cheap" goods that I am referring to. I have purchased items from many countries in Europe that were by no means cheap. These are the manufacturers I would assume would like to have the quality of their documentation in line with the quality of their products. I totally agree that if someone is turning out parts in an alley somewhere using their toes as a vice, they are not going to spend a lot of time or effort on documentation.

Now your changing your story to match your rant.

goombye

guest · Feb 12, 2019

Dualkit said:
I always wonder why large Chinese companies that were trying to court business from English speakers have websites written in Chinglish.

There was a recent thread about a Syil drilling/tapping center. The manufacturers website was one of the worst I've ever seen.

I used to get a kick out of some of the manuals and placards on machines. I had a Yang Iron radial drill that had a sign: Attention! If there are oil and will rotate!

The motor on a Supermax mill had an ID plate with the name on it. It was made by The Great Big Electric Company.

My favorite was from an '80's era Okuma mill:

Operators must wear suitable dresses. During times of abnormal stop do not touch the machine recklessly, while for touching the machine, confirm the state well.

edwin dirnbeck · Feb 12, 2019

My favorite is shooting the trouble from May Zack manual

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Georgineer · Feb 12, 2019

A large part of the trouble is that technical publications like handbooks and instructions are regarded by manufacturers as an unwelcome expense, so the pay for technical authors is very poor, so they don't get the people who would make the best authors. I speak from experience, having worked for a tech pubs firm in the eighties. Eventually I gave up trying to edit the unreadable gibberish produced by native English speakers, for very little pay, and moved on to pastures new. The same must be true of translation English, compounded by the fact that it was probably unreadable gibberish in its original language.

George

Bob-J-H · Feb 12, 2019

I bought a crane weight scale. I could not understand the calibration instructions. I worked on it for hours trying to make it work. I contacted the company, they referred me to a video. The video was in Chinese. I sent the scale back.

John Garner · Feb 12, 2019

My experience is consistent with crossthread's. Even high-end equipment can come with manuals that appear to be translated from the maker's native language to Supposedly English by someone who didn't grow up using either language.

What's more, the processes that are most awkwardly described often contain simple-minded technical errors. One example that comes to mind was in the instructions provided by a highly-regarded Swiss manufacturer of precision measurement equipment. For confidentiality reasons, I can't cite specifics . . . but a fair illustration of at particular technical error, in normally-structured American English would be "To measure the height of a bedroom ceiling that exceeds the length of the tape measure, make a small mark on the bedroom wall approximately midway between the floor and ceiling. Use the tape measure to first measure from the floor up to the mark, and then from the ceiling down to the mark. The height of the ceiling above the floor can then be calculated as the difference of the two measurements."

John

gustafson · Feb 12, 2019

Hell, for how many years have we had google translate?

Just write it translate it, then have google translate it back, repeat until you get something back that makes sense.

I do this when sending emails in English to ensure I am probably going to be understood.

Idiom can make the obvious unreadable.

I do wonder if having a non alpha based language makes the translation more difficult.

One would think it would be a pretty nice business for Chinese/Americans. Tehc writer via email

Funny thing about German manuals, I find them very well written, but they do not necessarily tell you what you need to know.

Frequently the bad Asian manuals will tell you what you need, but the process of deciphering is brutal.

Mtndew · Feb 12, 2019

guest said:
The manufacturers website was one of the worst I've ever seen.

For me, the worst website I've ever seen is Maryland Metrics.
MARYLAND METRICS -- THREAD DATA CHARTS (7)

guest · Feb 12, 2019

Mtndew said:
For me, the worst website I've ever seen is Maryland Metrics.
MARYLAND METRICS -- THREAD DATA CHARTS (7)

Lol.

I looked at their "USA-Unified Coarse" page. The numbers are all in metric. 1/4"-20 calls for a 5.35mm drill... :crazy:

EPAIII · Feb 12, 2019

I have to say that this is NOT just a function of price. Some decades ago I worked as a TV engineer. They purchased some Japanese made equipment which cost somewhere in the tens of thousands of dollars range each. NOT INEXPENSIVE. In fact, it was considered by many as the best of it's kind on the market at that time. They came with both operational and maintenance manuals. To illustrate just how bad the translation was, the title on the cover of the maintenance manual, which was several hundred pages long, read "Color Handy Lookie System". From that, can you even guess what that item was?

Every step of every maintenance procedure in that manual was equally difficult to understand, some were even a lot worse. We had groups of my fellow engineers discussing just how to perform the procedures that were described. Guess and try. Repeat until it works.

What was it? A Hand Held, Color, Camera.

Does Google do any better with a technical translation? I wonder.

digger doug said:
You want cheap goods, you get cheap manuals.

Price trumps e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g

garychipmaker · Feb 12, 2019

I found this recently Travers Tool catalog for Techniks ER collets. Dead Nuts Accurate Collets
best used for 1/8" (6mm) and smaller Their conversion is a bit off 1/8" is close to 3mm not 6mm

TheOldCar · Feb 12, 2019

If I remember right, thermite mentioned he used to write instruction/manuals/etc or something like that.

crossthread · Feb 13, 2019

My point is, in this day and age, how hard would it be to email the documents to someone who is capable of proofreading the material and then email it back.

Shawnrs · Feb 13, 2019

crossthread said:
My point is, in this day and age, how hard would it be to email the documents to someone who is capable of proofreading the material and then email it back.

I feel your pain sometimes with manuals but it is difficult to make a manual where everyone understands it with out any issues. Perhaps you need a kid to translate the manual for you like I have my kid do the upgrades on my wife's cell phone.

Chip Chester · Feb 13, 2019

EPAIII said:
I have to say that this is NOT just a function of price. Some decades ago I worked as a TV engineer. They purchased some Japanese made equipment which cost somewhere in the tens of thousands of dollars range each. NOT INEXPENSIVE. In fact, it was considered by many as the best of it's kind on the market at that time. They came with both operational and maintenance manuals. To illustrate just how bad the translation was, the title on the cover of the maintenance manual, which was several hundred pages long, read "Color Handy Lookie System". From that, can you even guess what that item was?

Every step of every maintenance procedure in that manual was equally difficult to understand, some were even a lot worse. We had groups of my fellow engineers discussing just how to perform the procedures that were described. Guess and try. Repeat until it works.

What was it? A Hand Held, Color, Camera.

Does Google do any better with a technical translation? I wonder.

Ahh, the infamous (and quite good) Ikegami HL-79. We had a tech fresh from the Navy who was learning about one, and he pronounced it I-keg-me.

The HT communications radios are "Handy-Talkie".

PeteM · Feb 13, 2019

Be interesting to know what the Chinese language version of, say, a Caterpillar manual looks like or maybe a Haas manual in German -- if there is such a thing?

China is now said to be the world's largest English-speaking country. Seriously:

Jon Huntsman says more English speakers in China than United States | PolitiFact

I'd assume that many of those 300 million+ overestimate their ability when applying for a manual-writing job? Kind of like they guy hiring on here who says he's a machinist, but can't do fractions or figure SFPM??

As Digger noted, lots of Chinese companies are looking to do things on the cheap. It's only when you get to a now-Chinese company like Lenovo that the manuals are any good. Not sure US companies do any better in the Chinese, Spanish, German, French etc. speaking markets? Maybe, given they're aimed at the higher end?

OT- Proofreading instructions and manuals

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