18/10/2022

The new, revised and significantly expanded edition of the handbook “Standards for Terminology Work, Technical Writing and Translation” was published in September. It contains a large number of German-language standards across almost 600 pages, including eight new documents. The standards included are relevant to creating specialised texts, their translation and other aspects of the translation process. The handbook is recommended for a large group of experts in the fields of translation, terminology and technical communication. We explain why.

Collections of standards are compiled by experts and contain the original text of all standards relevant to a specific subject or field of application. These DIN pocketbooks not only give easy access to DIN standards, but are also attractively priced.
This applies in particular to the new handbook “Standards for Terminology Work, Technical Writing and Translation”: here is the publisher’s link with an extensive reading sample.

Since the publication of the previous manual “Standards for Translators and Technical Writers” (2017), some standards have been completely revised (including the basic terminology standards DIN 2330, DIN 2331, DIN 2340 and DIN 2342 and the documentation standard DIN EN IEC/IEEE 82079-1) and some completely new standards have appeared (such as DIN ISO 18587 on post-editing machine translation and DIN 8579 on translation-oriented writing). Therefore, there was sufficient reason to release a new edition and change the name.

The current DIN manual bundles essential standards for the following topics and areas:

• The basics of terminology work
• Translation services
• Translation-oriented authoring
• Terminology resource management
• Writing and design rules for text and information processing
• Creation of usage information

Therefore, the latest version of the standard reflected in this pocketbook is a valuable work tool and is divided into the areas “Terminology work and termbases”, “Technical editing and writing” and “Translation”.

A total of four standards support technical writers in creating technical texts. DIN EN IEC/IEEE 82079-1 defines requirements and recommendations for preparing user instructions. These and other technical texts intended for translation can in turn be optimised – by the editors themselves or by translators as a service provider – with the help of DIN 8579 for translation-oriented writing in order to prevent translation errors.
DIN 5008 with general rules for writing and layout in text and information processing systems and DIN 16511 with information on symbols for revising round off the package.

The standards DIN EN ISO 17100 and DIN ISO 18587 define requirements for translation processes – one for human translations, the other for the post-editing machine translations – so they are of interest not only to translation service providers (freelancers and agencies), but also to clients. Both standards are also suitable as a basis for documented translation processes, such as those prescribed by the documentation standard DIN EN IEC/IEEE 82079-1.

The most important terminology relating to translation can be found in the DIN ISO 20539 standard.

The DIN ISO 5060 standard for evaluating translations is currently still in the draft stage. As it is an essential addition to the relevant standards, acquiring this very useful standard in addition to the collection of standards is recommended once it is published.

Terminology work is immensely important for creating technical documentation and translating it. Therefore, it is also a requirement or recommendation in the standards about technical writing and translation. Creating sensibly structured terminology database and using specialised terminology consistently and correctly reduces queries, translation errors and misunderstandings as well as risks for users.
For this important activity, the collection of standards provides eight basic standards, some of which have just been revised, on terminology theory and terminology work (DIN 2342, DIN 2330, DIN 2331, DIN 2340, DIN 2335 and DIN EN ISO 3166) as well as on the structure of terminology databases (DIN ISO 26162 Parts 1 and 2; Part 3 is still in the draft stage and can be purchased separately once they are published).

As the title promises, the new and updated handbook offers all the essential “standards for terminology work, technical writing and translation” in a single and thus very helpful work. Only those standards that are still in the draft stage are still missing, and understandably so, in our opinion.

As an e-book, the complete work costs less than some of the standards it contains would cost individually. Therefore, we really recommend purchasing it and using it. To be clear: we do not receive any commission or the like from the publisher, but buy the manual ourselves because it helps with maintaining the highest standards and ensuring translation quality.