A support tool for writing multilingual instructions

The results of a requirement analysis study confirm the view that the most useful tool is not a stand-alone writing tool but rather one that supports technical writers in their task.

Abstract

Multilingual instructions generation has been the object of many studies recently motivated by the increased need to produce multilingual manuals coupled with the cost of technical writing and translating Ihese studies concentrate on the automatic generation of instructions leaviDg technical writers out of the loop In many cases, however it is not possible to dispense with human intervention entirely, for at least two reasons First, the system must be provided with a semantic knowledge base from which the instructions can be generated Second, it is the technical writers who have the expertise necessary for producing instructions appropriate for a specific product or company and it is not necessarily an easy task to make this expertise available to a system The results of a requirement analysis stud} confirm the view that the moat useful tool is not a stand-alone writing tool but rather one that supports technical writers in their task In this paper, we describe Buch a support tool which wc developed based on the results of our user requirement analysis