>I wonder why most user manuals (especially those for tools manufactured outside of North America (China & Taiwan)are so poorly written. I could understand why tool companies opt to outsource their manufacturing operations but can't they do a better job with the manuals? I have a Canwood dovetail jig but can't use it (it's brand sitting in the shop collecting dust) because the manual takes you no where. I took it to the store where I bought it and the guy who claimed to have used it did as good a job as the manual in trying to explain to me how I could use it! But then poor user manuals are not confined to woodworking tools; ask anyone who has configured a new VCR, DVD players and the likes.
>Yet another weak link in this Globalization / Free Trade thing. Think Tower of Babel - fifty different languages, two major measuring systems and terms that don't translate well into other languages. Just some examples:
- we in the USA call them wrenches, the Brits call them spanners
- we say rabbets, they say rebates
- we call it an eraser, they call it a rubber (imagine sitting in class and asking the girl sitting in front of you if she has a rubber and can you borrow it)
It's not just the "made in China" stuff's manuals. I bought a euro combination machine, a Robland X31, from a reputable source, Laguna Tools. At close to $7K, I expected a lot. The unit is made in Brugge, Belgium. The Robland "manual" is almost exclusively a set of exploded views and parts lists. the "manual" Laguna Tools provided is a joke - how to get it off the pallet, how to install some wheels, how to put the rip/joiner fence together - sort of. I had to go to the phreakin' factory in Brugge and watch them set up six machines, taking lots of digital pictures and copius notes to even be able to begin to make my own set up instructions. With the help of other members of a Robland X31 yahoo group we were able to put together a usable set of instructions which Laguna Tools refers new X31 owners to. Now, every two or three weeks I get questions from X31 owners, from all over the world, some referred to me by LT.
The other extreme is the manual for the LEIGH dovetail jigs. When faced with a 163 page manual my eyes glaze over. If I've got to read a fat book BEFORE I can use a tool . . . I guess getting into a Mac computer rather than a WinDoze computer spoiled me early on. I want something that's intuitive to use - and forgiving if I screw up - so I avoid ANYTHING with MicroSoft even vaguely associated with it (OK - so Excel is the exceptions, which, ironically, became a Killer App because the early version ran on a Mac with an intuitive GUI (graphical user interface) and mouse friendly.
Some woodworking tool manufacturers are smart and design and make great, intuitive to use, tools - Festool and AKEDA are two that I'm very impressed with. Others will follow - or go out of business. Cheap But Useless will always give way to Works Great Right Out Of The Box - No Manual Needed - But Costs More.
>I had a 1958 Lloyd (German, FWD, 2 cyl. air cooled, 38mpg) that had an owners manual that looked like it had been translated from German to English by a Japanese educated in English schools in India. Except for the wiring diagram - all the legends, including wire colors,were still in German. Fortunately I had taken a couple semesters of German shortly before I got that car and could do a fair job of reading the wiring diagram.
I share the frustration occasionally. At one time I did volumes of technical writing, and I hope, did it "write". Wjhen I got into it, I came to appreciate how difficult it is to be clear, concise, and unambiguous within a complex topic. Compound that with translating from one language to another.
To me, its all the more reason to have tech manuals written by people with facility of speech and thought in the language used. God forbid a safety procedure would be expressed incorrectly and result in injury.
>When I used to write operating instructions for a hospital equipment company I worked for, I would get one of the secretaries to try to operate the piece of equipment using what I had written, since the majority of them were not technically inclined. If they could operate the equipment, then the manual went to printing. If they couldn't get it to operate with the instructions the instructions were re-written.
That process did require an in depth knowledge of the piece of equipment and certain level of skill with the language. It was not without cost and in today's world of make it fast and cheaply to maximize profits, I doubt that most consumer products companies ever test their instructions in the real world.
>I work in the TV broadcast world and for years the equipment manuals were translated from Japanese to German to English. Talk about confusion you had to read everything about s dozen times and transpose the words into some kind of correct order to understand what they were saying. I started in this business in the 1970's and it has not got much better.
>Interestingly enough, I use the same process as you did when I write business or accounting procedure guides for my small business clients, except that my wife is the one who reads what I produce and tells me what she doesn't understand, etc. I also use a lot of pictures (screen shots) in my guides (seeing is believing!) as sometimes words alone don't do the job. You're right that it takes lots of resources / manual writing skill / experience to come up with something that is really user-friendly. I was told Microsoft is not thrifty in developing its manuals.
>My sister is a tech writer. The company she worked for before her job was sent off-shore is ensuring that their manuals are unuseable. Some of their tech writing was done in India while she still worked there, and the programmers would ask her to re-write the manuals so they could understand them. She could not do it, as she had other work to do. Now all of their tech writing is being done in India.
>there is a guy on Ebay that sells chisels and planes he is in Japan and if you try to read some of his stuff it makes your eyes cross. He has a sharpening stone for sell that is either 1200 years old or 1200 something. What I have learned over the years taulking to spanish speaking employees is that there are just words that can't be transulated from other languages to english or vise versa, and our grammer and theirs is a_ _backwards.
>who used to go all over the world for the company he worked for, training people and explaining how to install and set up complex manufacturing machines. In South America, he spoke no Spanish, so they provided him with a translator. My friend was explaining that one one bolt had to be inserted by kneeling, reaching behind the machine, and inserting a long bolt from the other side and then putting the nut on this end. Everyone broke up laughing. So, he took the translator aside and asked what was so blanking funny. Turns out, the guy did not have the language or the language skills to explain it, so he explained it was like having sex, doggy style. At least it was a vivid analogy.
It is often difficult for those of us who understand something perfectly to explain it to those who have no idea what we are talking about. Like "open the pull down menu and select the item you are having trouble with and press any key to unclick it" "OK, do I need a screwdriver or a hammer? What's a pull down menu? I'm not having trouble with an item, I can't get the light to come one in the TV thing on my computer. And which one is the "any" key?"
