Implementing corporate style guides: Shufra becomes authorised reseller for acrolinx™ IQ Suite

Dr. Frans Wijma, managing director of Shufra (www.shufra.com.sg) announced today a partnership with acrolinx GmbH from Germany. As part of the agreement, Shufra now offers its customers worldwide acrolinx™ IQ Suite, a powerful linguistic quality assurance application that helps companies to implement corporate style guides and their specific writing rules. The software can check for correct spelling, grammar, style and terminology, thus improving readability, translatability and overall consistency.

IQ stands for Information Quality. Key benefits of Information Quality are:

• Optimum leverage of translation memory software (TM)
• Better communication between customers and sales, support and product development teams
• Consistent branding across corporate communications
• Certified quality of product information

One of the unique features of acrolinx™ IQ is acrolinx™ Intelligent Reuse, which will flag different sentences that provide the same information in order to improve consistency. In addition, the software allows users to create and manage their own specific sets of rules.

Dr. Frans Wijma added, “Our team at Shufra has been working with customers in the aerospace and defence industries at the international level for years, applying international standards for documentation quality and compliance. This new partnership with acrolinx GmbH will allow us to share our knowledge and expertise in controlled authoring with an even more diverse customer base.”

For more information on acrolinx™ IQ Suite and relevant implementation services, please contact us at: info@shufra.com.sg.

Beyond Standard English: Shufra becomes authorized reseller for the Boeing Simplified English Checker (BSEC)

Shufra (www.shufra.com.sg) announced its latest business venture with the Boeing Company, offering a unique software product that helps technical writers check for compliance with the international standard ASD-STE100, also known as Simplified Technical English (STE), or Simplified English (SE).

STE as opposed to Standard English is a form of controlled language that only uses specific grammatical structures and unambiguous, consistent technical terms. On the contrary, the large repository of words and grammar rules in Standard English can pose many limitations in its usage for technical documentation purposes. Confusing word meanings and complex grammar rules in Standard English only add to the frustrations of technical writers whose primary aim is to facilitate communication between product manufacturers and end-users.

Dr. Frans Wijma, managing director and linguist at Shufra explained, “To help writers achieve this goal, we need a specialised language that is highly accurate and consistent. ASD-STE100 meets these requirements. This specification consists of a set of writing rules and guidelines for technical terms that can be used to convey instructions in a direct manner. The benefits of STE are manifold: lower word counts, fewer mistranslations and cost savings.”

In recognition of the importance of creating clear and unambiguous content in the field of technical writing, the BSEC package is comprehensively designed to include the following: BSEC Vocabulary Management System allows users add new technical terms and modify dictionary entries, BSEC Vocabulary Profiler provides writers and editors with text mining tools such as a word frequency profiler and concordance generator, BSEC STE Tutor coaches users on the correct writing rules of STE and the ASD-STE100 specification.

Jointly developed by Dr. Richard Wojcik and Dr. Philip Harrison together with their team at the Boeing Research & Technology Division (formerly Phantom Works), BSEC was originally used to provide technical documentation support for Boeing commercial airplanes. Since 2000, BSEC has been sold to customers outside of Boeing and the usage of BSEC can be adapted for other industries.

For more information on BSEC and STE implementation services, please contact us at: info@shufra.com.sg.