Technical Editing

The term "technical editing" comprises all tasks involved in creating and maintaining technical documents. If you have ever come across an instruction manual, that was machine-translated into English - for example from an Asian Country - you will find out first-hand what might go wrong with technical documentation. Careful technical editing avoids such problems.

Who requires technical editing?

Every manufacturing company requires technical editing. Numerous documents have to be created, from the instruction manual for the user to service manuals and data sheets for technical support. Therefore, technical editing must consider numerous requirements. Instruction manuals have to be correct in substance but also easy to understand. Instructions going beyond the required minimum should be avoided. Customers, in particular private end users, might be deterred by instructions with too many details. Finally, it is the responsibility of technical editing that all required information is included in the technical documentation. Many European and national laws, regulations and guidelines often stipulate certain mandatory content, like information on energy consumption.

Technical editing requires specific rules

Compared to other texts, the design of technical documentation follows completely different rules. A simple example would be the use of synonyms to avoid word repetitions. Linguistically, this is certainly beneficial, but out of place in technical documentation. If somebody is searching for "oil" in the PDF version of the instruction manual of his car, he will be disappointed when the search is not showing any results since at the critical point the term "lubricant" was used instead. Without any doubt, the readability of technical documents is greatly enhanced if technical editing pays attention to a uniform terminology. Not anyone who may have learned something about "WLAN" wants to think about whether "wireless network" might refer to the same thing. This is a challenge for technical editing, especially since often several people are working on the creation of extensive technical documentation!

Technical editing with docuglobe

The content management system docuglobe supports technical editing in various ways and ensures workflows that are more efficient. For example, individual documents may be easily grouped as a technical documentation. The management of different versions of documents is also an integral part of docuglobe. Likewise, an integrated authoring support further simplifies technical editing. The authoring support ensures that your technical documentation uses a consistent language despite numerous contributing authors. The search function not only finds occurrences of identical content but also synonyms. The standardisation of formulation is also of major importance for technical editing since documentation is often translated into numerous languages. To top it all, the source document for further translations is sometimes a translation of the original text. With recursive translations, the inaccuracy of formulation may increase significantly. Therefore, technical editing should ensure that the original text always uses the same term for a specific item.

Project management of text creation and translations with docuglobe

Technical editing also requires a project management. For this reason, docuglobe provides relevant functions for effective workflow control. Tasks may be completed object or user-based. As a result, you always have full overview of the current processing status and any delays can be detected immediately. docuglobe also allows control of the translation process of your technical documentation. You can see at a glance what information modules have been translated, the translations that have been assigned already and which information modules still require action.

Technical editing is our core business

You have the choice between optimising your internal technical editing with docuglobe or outsourcing the entire technical editing to us. In any case, the quality of your technical documentation will improve significantly and your documentation cost will be reduced considerably. Please keep in mind that the quality of your technical documentation will have a significant effect on customer satisfaction! This is a good reason to apply the high quality standards of your products also to your technical documentation!