A Challenge for technical documentation

Linguistic mistakes, inconsistent terminology, incomprehensible texts and ambiguous operating instructions – these are weak points in technical documentation that occur too often. Such violations of the rules for proper technical documentation have negative effects on the comprehensibility of a text as well as on its translatability and the costs involved. The amount of time required is another cost factor that should not be neglected.

What is CLAT?

CLAT is a tool designed to support technical authors in producing high-quality documentation. This quality level is reached through linguistic correctness and compliance with company-specific requirements.

• spelling and grammar check to verify linguistic correctness
• style and terminology check to verify compliance with company-specific writing guidelines

CLAT checks documents with regard to the control functions mentioned above, reports every rule violation and gives technical authors the opportunity to revise their text and immediately re-check the corrections made.

In addition, error lists can be compiled, thus allowing for a quality assurance process to be efficiently integrated into an existing work flow. 

Advantages arising from the use of CLAT

The application of CLAT provides international companies as well as medium-sized businesses and small providers of technical documentation with a range of advantages.

Significant reduction of time and costs

The application of CLAT leads to a considerable reduction of costs throughout the entire documentation process and to a significant shortening of process times.

Cost reduction achieved with CLAT

Reduction of time and costs:

• document production: writing guidelines, terminlogy check as well as spelling and grammar check are always available
• terminology expansion: determination of term candidates can be directly integrated into the terminology process
• translation process: via a reduced preparation effort and a higher reusability
• quality control: compliance with writing guidelines, terminlogy check as well as spelling and grammar check: positive effects show already at the moment of the text production and relieve editors considerably
• training for authors: as training on the job

Improvement of language quality

The documents checked by CLAT and revised afterwards do not contain any linguistic mistakes, they are consistent in terminology and style as well as easily comprehensible and unambiguous.

To reach this aim, CLAT offers various text controls:

• spelling and grammar check with respect to the DUDEN guidelines
• terminology check with respect to corporate terminology
• style check with respect to company-specific style guides
• consistency check

Simple configuration of CLAT control settings via UMMT

UMMT (Utility for Mandate Management Tasks) provides users with the opportunity to adjust the control settings of CLAT. The linguistic settings of the CLAT control can hence be determined for different documentation projects, according to the requirements of our client.

Click here for more information about UMMT 

Improvement of reusability and translation quality

The consistently high language quality leads to a significant improvement of the reusability of a text or parts of a text in the source language and to a reduction of the time required for the following translation process. The use of translation memory tools further enhances the reusability rate of the texts to be translated. Translation costs and process times are hence reduced.

Continuous authors’ training (training on the job)

By consistently applying CLAT for the production of texts, authors are continuously trained to create documents according to company-specific writing guidelines. They benefit from a learning effect and the number of CLAT controls, which shall guarantee the requested  language quality, is reduced. In addition, training of authors with regard to the determined writing guidelines of a style guide is rarely necessary.

Improvement of terminology work

The reliable and automatic determination of term candidates on the basis of computational linguistic methods allows for texts to be scanned for possible candidates to complete the existing terminology. CLAT can hence directly support terminology work.