Final Submission

I posted the latest version of the instructional document last week. It means the first part of the assignment is over. It also means that the instructional designer students, the US and Irish teams, can now rest until the French team's feedback.

Indeed, as it's a document project for translation, even though my duty is over, I still have to keep looking at the French team's work and advice. Also, although the document ready for submission is here, we are still doing proofreading and hunting the smallest mistakes.

The six members work together on the same project, but we can still distinguish two groups: the instructional designer (ID) students and the translator (T) students. Because the distinction is so obvious, during the first part of the project, only the instructional designer students worked on it and the translator students didn't say anything at all.

At the end, a T student asked us a question: must the T team get new screenshots in French?

This question just reminds me that I forgot one of the best quality of the technical writer: a technical writer is the connection between all the staff. A good technical writer goes see how others work before doing their own projects. I was too much into my instructional document and wanted it done, that I forgot to talk and discuss with the T students.

For now, it doesn't seem annoying as the T students told us the instructions look easily translatable. However, while I am myself French, I think I made a big mistake in forgetting the document will be translated after the instructions are written. What if the English instructions were difficult to understand? What if we didn't choose YouTube but a trickier tool?

The T students are now working on the translation and they're using the same forum to discuss their work. I'll definitely keep an eye on it, this way any unclear instruction can be fixed immediately.