Technical Documentation with Steve Wiseman

Steve Wiseman, Product Evangelist at Paligo, has over 25 years of experience in the documentation field having run his own documentation company, and providing consultancy and writing services to both small and enterprise customers. His unique outlook covers CX, sales, and support, and where that all fits in the knowledge management world. KEY TAKEAWAYS Technical documentation is crucial for the product roadmap. It increases stickiness and reduces churns. If technical content is integrated well with translation, the process goes smoothly. All parties in this process should understand each other well, otherwise, in the end, you will waste your time and money. BEST MOMENTS “Technical documentation people don’t really understand the translation process. Those who are in the translation process don’t really understand the authoring process. When the one doesn’t understand the other, then you are not going to have an efficient process.” “When you write technical documentation, you are not Shakespeare. You are not trying to write the best prose that people really enjoy the paragraph and how you wrote it and the type of language you wrote. That’s not the case. A customer has a business task they want to achieve. They don’t know how to achieve it as they are lacking informational content to find an answer as quickly as possible. “ “The whole point is to get information as easiest as quickly as we can. And that is also where the localisation and translation comes in.” “The success of the product is related to how well people learn how to use the product. Unless it is a really simple product like Spotify. We don’t need training to use Spotify. But, for example, if you are going to use Photoshop effectively, you gotta learn to use this product properly.” “Technical writers don’t actually write the content. They are curating the content they get from other people.” “A good translation process makes it easier both for authoring tool and translation memory system. They should be easily integrated. They should be passing information on one standard.” ABOUT THE HOST Levent Yildizgoren, the author of 'Good Business in any Language', is an award-winning entrepreneur, localisation professional, and a PRINCE2 qualified project manager. CONTACT METHOD Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/leventyildizgoren/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/yildizgoren IG: https://www.instagram.com/levent.yildizgoren/ ABOUT THE GUEST Steve Wiseman, Product Evangelist at Paligo, has over 25 years of experience in the documentation field having run his own documentation company, and providing consultancy and writing services to both small and enterprise customers. CONTACT METHOD https://paligo.net/  https://paligo.net/blog/  https://www.linkedin.com/company/paligo [email protected] VALUABLE RESOURCES Do you have any questions about translation, localization, or international growth? Visit TTC website: https://ttcwetranslate.com/ Take your business global with the 5-step LINGO modal! Purchase 'Good Business in any Language' on Amazon now: https://cutt.ly/2ORR