There is a great article posted on the Colour Lovers blog about designing with an awareness for color blindness for software interfaces, design, and graphics. http://www.colourlovers.com/web/blog/2010/03/17/be-kind-to-the-color-blind . The article is written by Chris Campbell.
Please review the extensive STC_GATF_report by STC’s Globalization Audit Committee.
From the Executive Summary:
“As one of the largest international associations for technical communicators, STC has a unique opportunity to lead the way toward a more globally aware and culturally considerate workforce. In the past several years, STC has come a long way in this regard, and having a global approach is one of the behaviors we highlight in our strategic plan. However, we have never formally assessed how we are doing in regard to globalization, but rather have reacted to issues as they have arisen. The results of this audit will help us prioritize and become more proactive in our approach to globalization, particularly as it relates to member communication.”
IBM has a new interesting project that is about the visualization of data sets. See what you think.
http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/
MultiLingual’s December edition is out, addressing issues of getting started in translation issues.
http://www.multilingual.com/guides.php
Translators without Borders’ translations helped Doctors Without Borders/Medecins sans frontières raise money from international donors and train international medical staff. In the first days of the earthquake in Haiti, they told the world where help was needed, and have continued to inform the world on the ongoing situation.
Haiti is just one of the regions where Translators without Borders helps NGOs communicate. Since 1993, Translators without Borders has donated more than 2 million U.S. dollars worth of translations for humanitarian needs in countries such as Somalia, Chad, Angola, Afghanistan, and many more.
Translators without Borders’ goal is to increase the amount of humanitarian translations every year. For all the good work done, there is much more content and many words that need to be translated into local languages.
More information can be found here: http://localizationworld.com/lwbar2011/twb.html
For lively discussion and valuable information about localization, join the Localization Professional Linkedin group, http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=44105&trk=anet_ug_hm
Today’s discussion yields extensive information about the meaning of color in various cultures, to build on the chart in “Color Meanings by Culture” posted at http://www.globalization-group.com/edge/resources/color-meanings-by-culture/
The article “Avoiding Ambiguity: Understanding the Need for a Controlled Vocabulary” by Scott Abel reflects some of the conversations of ITC members at the SIG business meeting in May at the 2010 STC Summit.
Link: http://www.enewsbuilder.net/techcommanager/e_article001771573.cfm?x=b11,0,w
Emotional and persuasive perception of fonts
Juni S, Gross JS. New York University, Department of Applied Psychology, NY 10003-6674, USA. sam.juni@nyu.edu
Journal: Percept Mot Skills. 2008 Feb;106(1):35-42.
Abstract:
The aim of this study was to explore the latent affective and persuasive meaning attributed to text when appearing in two commonly used fonts. Two satirical readings were selected from the New York Times. These readings (one addressing government issues, the other education policy) were each printed in Times New Roman and Arial fonts of the same size and presented in randomized order to 102 university students, who ranked the readings on a number of adjective descriptors. Analysis showed that satirical readings in Times New Roman were perceived as more funny and angry than those in Arial, the combination of emotional perception which is congruent with the definition of satire. This apparent interaction of font type with emotional qualities of text has implications for marketing, advertising, and the persuasive literature.
For guidelines on using English effectively worlwide, consult Kohl’s Global English Style Guide, which has been reviewed.
The AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe publishes “ASD Simplified Technical English,” Specification ASD-STE100, European Community Trade Mark No. 004901195, International specification for the preparation of maintenance documentation in a controlled language. A consulting firm has assembled resources on this standard and offers training in many locations.
This is a thesis for a Masters student, Kang Sun, from Bowling Green. The abstract reads, in part: “This thesis identifies Chinese university situations specific to the transfer of technical communication to China, especially the relationship between general socio-economic settings in China and the influences these general settings have on the university disciplinary structure changes. The objective of this research is to reveal openings in translation discipline as a shell for technical communciation to merge with. [clip]. It is concluded that the merger of technical communication with translation can both gain technical communication a pivotal status of being a discipline in Chinese universities and solve some problems of the translation field. More importantly, such a merger offers a future-oriented perspective of development for the merged discipline to ride more successfully the stablly growing Chinese economic growth.
Full text via PDF: http://etd.ohiolink.edu/send-pdf.cgi/SUN%20KANG.pdf?bgsu1122304773
The challenges of selling stories for youth in many parts of the world and successsful techniques are the subject of an April 14, 2010 feature in Publishing Perspectives, “Selling Amanda Abroad.” This is a series of books and an interactive website.
The Handbook of Global User Research is described on the User Centric website at http://www.usercentric.com/handbook-global-user-research. You can view the table of contents at http://www.globaluserresearch.com/book/table-of-contents.
A two-part series covers the book publishing industry in China today. Part one discusses how Chinese books are sold in the Western world and provides insight into writing in China. The second article discusses how books from the Western world fare in the Chinese market.
Read about Lonie Goldsberry’s adventures in “Becoming a Successful Translation Manager,” a two-part article in Galaxy, the newsletter of GALA, in the fourth quarter 2009 and first quarter 2010 issues.
STC’s Notebook