24/11/2021

As a permanent DIN member, oneword has been actively contributing towards shaping new norms and standards in the translation industry since 2019. We are currently focusing on an important standard for translation-oriented writing. Experts and future users now have the opportunity to comment on the standard in its draft status. We warmly invite you to do this.

In November 2019, the DIN working committees “Translation services” and “Technical documentation” joined forces to work together on a new project: DIN 8579, translation-oriented writing – text creation and text evaluation. A new working group was set up specifically for this purpose.

Already a committed DIN member in the subcommittee for translation services, oneword also considers this project to be extremely useful and purposeful. That is why we have delegated Eva-Maria Tillmann, Head of Quality Management, to the working group. It is made up of representatives from industry (technical editing), translation service providers and translators’ associations, tekom, tool manufacturers (author support) and representatives from education and research (including terminology).

Our motivation for participating in this joint project is that the quality of source texts intended for translation varies enormously and we want to help to improve this. Currently, there are already recognised rules for translation-oriented writing, which are intended to increase the comprehensibility of texts and avoid ambiguities, but these are not always followed in practice. A standard for translation-oriented writing that is consistent with the rules can help with this.

The new standard is completely aimed at practical scenarios: when creating technical documentation and producing the text, if the creators take into account that it is going to be used internationally and the translation and translation technologies themselves are considered accordingly, the translators’ queries can be minimised, translation errors avoided and translation costs reduced.

The standard is aimed at authors or editors of German-language technical texts, but it is not an editorial guide. Rather, all stakeholders involved in the translation process – authors, editors, translators, tool manufacturers and also operators of machine translation systems – should benefit from the standard or from source texts that have been created or optimised according to the standard.

After intensive work, the draft standard E DIN 8579 was completed. Now those whose work the standard aims to facilitate in the future can give it an initial check: the draft standard can be commented on in the DIN Draft Standard Portal until 12 January 2022. All experts who would like to help shape the content can make comments and suggestions of changes section by section.

Registration and access to the online portal are free of charge. How this works is clearly explained in an article (only available in German) or in the user guide (only available in German).