LINGUIST List 15.876

Sun Mar 14 2004

Confs: Applied Ling/Computational Ling/Paris, France

Editor for this issue: Marie Klopfenstein <marielinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. jeff.allen, Society for Technical Communication France Chapter Meeting: Mastering Information through Concise English and Content Management

Society for Technical Communication France Chapter Meeting: Mastering
Information through Concise English and Content Management
Short Title: STC France meeting 

Date: 02-Apr-2004 - 02-Apr-2004
Location: Paris, France
Contact: Caroline Dannoux
Contact Email: Caroline.Dannouxalcatel.fr 
Meeting URL: http://www.stcfrance.org/meeting.htm 

Linguistic Sub-field: Applied Linguistics, Computational Linguistics,
Psycholinguistics, Text/Corpus Linguistics, Translation

Meeting Description:

Using Concise English (Controlled Language), Content Management and
the process around it for overall information management. Society for
Technical Communication France Chapter Meeting: Mastering Information
through Concise English and Content Management

Mastering information and information development costs, making
information clearer and more efficient, organizing for quick retrieval
-- all of these are a challenge for companies today. You have been
asking to know more about Concise English, Content Management and the
process around it all.

The STC France Chapter is pleased to announce that its next meeting on
those subjects that you selected will be held on Friday 2 April 2004
at:

Holiday Inn, 
216 avenue Jean Jaurès 
75019 PARIS 
Tel: +33 (0)1.40.38.04.04

Metro/subway station: Porte de Pantin, near the Cite de la Musique

Parking will be available at half the normal rate (10 euros for the
day) for STC meeting attendees (take a ticket when entering, check out
at the reception desk).

The first half-day focuses on Concise English and we are pleased to
welcome Jeff Allen from Mycom France and Kathleen Barthe from Airbus.

Jeff Allen is a project manager for Mycom France. He also is on the
Editorial Advisory Board for Multilingual Computing and Technology. He
has extensive experience and knowledge in the area of Controlled
Language (CL) and he will tell us what a CL is and focus on the
process required to implement it. Also to be covered are the common
rules across several industrial CLs and the benefits that multilingual
machine-readable CLs for Caterpillar (heavy machinery industry),
General Motors (automotive industry), and Nortel (telecommunications),
and others.

Kathleen Barthe is a specialist in linguistic standardization and she
will tell us why Airbus has chosen to apply a controlled language
methodology and how they have implemented it. She will describe the
rules and process they use, applied to the AECMA standards, and will
give us feedback on the documentation activity in aeronautics.

Jeff and Kathleen will use their complementary experiences to tell us
what the benefits of controlled/concise English are and what it takes
to implement it. This is an excellent opportunity to see collaboration
and share interest among industries.

After lunch, we are pleased to welcome Hans Van Heghe, managing
director of the ICMS-group which develop Tinkwrite, and Eric
Willemse. They will tell us all on how they helped Sony develop their
user modular documentation using the Tinkwrite authoring environment,
thus using an integrated knowledge base, dynamic views, and version
control capabilities. They will show us how object-oriented
developments and appropriate taxonomy help us to write targeted
documents and prevent redundancy. We will see how it serves technical
documentation as well as sales proposals and the benefits of such a
system for technical writers or information developers, for the
end-user and for the company.

In addition to our presentations, our program includes a three-course
sit-down lunch as well as two scheduled breaks so that all of us will
have the opportunity to chat and network.

Places will be limited and reserved on a first come, first served
basis, so please be sure to sign up no later than March 29. Complete
instructions on how to register (including cost) appear on the
Registration Form.

Program for the day

9:00 am - 9:30 am
 Coffee All participants
 
9:30 am - 9:45 am
 Introduction 
 Caroline Dannoux, STC President
 
9:45 am - 11:00 am
Introduction on Controlled Languages
Jeff Allen, Kathleen Barthe

Commonalities across projects focusing on multilingual
machine-readable Controlled Languages (CLs) (ie, Caterpillar, Nortel,
General Motors, etc)
Jeff Allen
 
11:00 am - 11:15 am
 Coffee
 All participants
 
11:15 am - 12:15pm
monolingual focused human-readable CLs: Controlled English at Airbus
and AECMA Simplified English and GIFAS French developments.
Kathleen Barthe
 
12:15 pm - 2:00 pm
Lunch
 
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Content management at Sony, with Tinkwrite authoring environment
Hans Van Heghe/Eric Willemse

Sony delegate
 
3:00 pm - 3:15 pm
Coffee
 
3:15 pm - 4:15 pm
Open discussion on what we have learned, the links between these
different subjects, your reactions/experiences
All participants
 
4:15pm
Wrap-up and chapter news
Caroline Dannoux and other members of the Board

Registration Information

The fees will be: 
50 Euros for members (this is a subsidy of 25 Euros per member) 
75 Euros for non-members
10 Euros for students for 1/2 day (either morning or afternoon.) This
includes the coffee break, but not lunch.