Globalise the docs¶
Description
Your docs are looking good, the demand is there, and you’re thinking it’s time to open up your content to a non-English speaking market. Unfortunately, pushing out localised content isn’t always a plug-in-and-play exercise. Whilst going global is a fascinating process, it can force you to crank your instinctive writer pedantry up a notch. In this session, I will:
- Explain some best practices for optimising technical content for translation.
- Look at how translating and localising docs might impact your planning and release cycles.
- Take you on a deep-dive into human versus machine translation, and deciding what’s best for your business need.
- Examine some approaches for working around monolingual UIs and other assets when there’s demand for bilingual docs.
- Highlight important things to check in quality control - even when you can’t read the finished product.
To be a good global content roadie, there’s a lot more to consider than just waving the words off to a translator and hoping for the best. Plunge in without the right pre-work, and the end result can quickly end up as more of a warped tour than triumphant international smash. Get it right, and all your team can benefit from the insights you’ll uncover along the way. You’ll learn new ways of thinking about UI. You’ll find out things about your target market that could influence your whole product strategy. You’ll get to form really strong opinions about AI-based translation. Most importantly, you’ll uncover new and thrilling depths of content geekery.
- Conference: Write the Docs Portland
- Year: 2020
