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Jason Czekalski wondered about the $315 cost of the simplified
English support materials: <<Given how well most of us can do with
"complex" English, why should we pay $315 to learn a so-called
simplified version. I think most of us do a pretty good job of
simplifying without the written standard.>>
It's important to make a distinction here: "simplified English" is
not about making our standard English writing less complex, which is
something any reasonably good writer can do. It's about controlling
vocabulary and grammar so tightly that when it's impossible to
translate and localize documentation, you can produce something that
any reader who has been trained to understand this subset of standard
English will be able to understand--no matter what their native
language and skill as a reader.
A good writer can go a long way in this direction without any
training in simplified English, but the standard developed by AECMA
goes much, much farther and has been proven in real-world
applications (with a focus on aerospace). It's clearly a suboptimal
solution (i.e., full translation and localization is better in an
ideal situation), but often simplified English is the only feasible
solution.
As a _writer_, I hate simplified English and everything it stands
for. But as a _technical_ writer, I recognize that it fills an
important need and accomplishes something it would be difficult to
accomplish in any other way.
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Geoff Hart ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
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