Introduction

Historically, the notion of simplifying the international dissemination of technical knowledge can be traced as far back as the pre-industrial seventeenth century. Many simplified international languages were developed during the seventeenth century such as Universal Character (1657), Universal Language (1661), Ars Signorum (1661) and Philosophical Language (1668). However, what makes Logopandecteision (1653) different from the other simplified international languages being developed at this time is that its developer, Urquhart, states that it is “most fit for such as would with ease attaine to a most expedite facility of expressing themselves … [concerning] … mechanick trades” ([1653] 1834: 191). Urquhart describes Logopandecteision as having a simplified set of rules and controlled vocabulary “concerning mechanick trades in their tooles or tearmes” ([1653] 1834: 200). Unfortunately, Urquhart does not specify the rules or controlled vocabulary, so there is no way of knowing the applicability of Logopandecteision to the seventeenth-century mechanick trades. Nevertheless, it is clear from the previous chapter that the international dissemination of technical knowledge was still very limited when Urquhart developed Logopandecteision.

From the middle of the eighteenth century, the gradual adoption of British technology across continental Europe did provide an impetus for the emergence of a language for the international dissemination of technical knowledge. This was the English language. The British industrial revolution was then followed by the American industrial revolution which consolidated and expanded this use of English. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth century—commonly referred to by researchers as the period of the second industrial revolution (for example, Misa 2004; Muddiman 2008)—production in Britain, continental Europe and the USA was increasingly being internationalised and technologised. It was against this background that Ogden developed a simplified international language called Basic English which promised “an ideal of technological efficiency” (Russo 1989: 397) in the language sphere.

This chapter first introduces Basic English. It then chronologically introduces a number of controlled languages that have been used by large manufacturing companies since the 1970s for their technical documents. Specifically, it describes why and how each controlled language was developed and used. The chapter ends by looking at the benefits and drawbacks of controlled languages. It should be noted that there are controlled languages based on languages other than English. These include GIFAS Rationalised French, ScaniaSwedish and Siemens Dokumentationsdeutsch. This chapter focuses on English-based controlled languages while recognising that controlled languages based on other languages do exist.

Basic English

In the early twentieth century, the name Ford was synonymous with international uniformity and simplicity. With regard to cars, Ford declared “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black” (1923: 72). With regard to language, Ford declared “Make everybody speak English” (cited by Ogden and Gordon 1994: 229).

One man who set out to achieve the latter was the British linguist Ogden, who in 1930 developed an international language called Basic English with a simplified set of rules and controlled vocabulary. Basic English had three main purposes: to serve as a simple common language for international communication, to allow non-English users to learn English in the shortest time possible and to regularise the English of native English users.

Ogden developed Basic English by reducing all the rules and vocabulary of English to just ten rules and 850 words. For expository and comparison purposes, the rules of Basic English, and the controlled languages introduced in this book, are classified into six broad categories according to their purpose. Fig. 2.1 explains and illustrates these categories. It should be noted from the outset that these categories are not intended to be definitive and some rules may be classified under more than one heading. Bloor and Bloor illustrate the difficulty of classifying language rules in their comment that “linguistic items, being multi-functional, can be looked at from more than one point of view, and hence given more than one label on different occasions even within the same analytical framework … so analysts may disagree on how to classify items without anyone necessarily being wrong or, for that matter, entirely right” (2004: 18).

Fig. 2.1
figure 1

Categories of controlled language rules

Full size image

The Basic English rules can be classified as grammatical (rules 1, 4, 5, 6 and 8), lexical (rules 2, 3, 7 and 10) and syntactic (rule 9). The rules, together with examples of how words can be formed using them, are as follows:

  1. 1.

    Add “s” to make the regular plural form. Apply standard rules for irregular plural forms such as “ies” and “es.”

  2. 2.

    Make compounds by combining two nouns (for example, key + board → keyboard/book + mark → bookmark) or a noun and a directive particle (for example, on + line → online/up + date → update).

  3. 3.

    Add “er” or “ing” to nouns to make the thing or person performing an operation or the operation itself (for example, work → worker and working/start → starter and starting).

  4. 4.

    Add “ing” or “ed” to nouns to make present-participle and past-participle adjectives (for example, work → working machine/measure → measured amount).

  5. 5.

    Add “more” or “most” to adjectives to express degree (for example, frequent → more frequent or most frequent). Learn the non-standard adjectives that take “er” or “est” (for example, good → better and best).

  6. 6.

    Add “ly” to adjectives to make adverbs of manner (for example, bad → badly). Learn the conjugation of non-standard adjectives.

  7. 7.

    Add “un” to make negative adjectives (for example, necessary → unnecessary/important → unimportant).

  8. 8.

    Apply standard rules for conjugating verbs and pronouns.

  9. 9.

    Change the sentence word order and add “do” to make questions.

  10. 10.

    Use the English form for measurements, numbers, days, months and international words.

The first seven rules are concerned with lexical expansion through word formation techniques such as derivation and composition. Ogden developed Basic English as a multi-purpose simplified international language, as is reflected in the acronym British American Scientific International Commercial. The controlled vocabulary thus needed to have sufficient breadth and flexibility to enable its use for international communication in multiple domains. This was partly achieved through the first seven rules.

With regard to the controlled vocabulary, Ogden’s research on word usage had identified a limited number of words as frequently occurring in dictionary definitions. This suggested the possibility of controlling vocabulary through restricting the number of words that can be used to this limited number of frequently occurring words. The 850 words Ogden identified became the Basic English controlled vocabulary. (For interested readers, these words can be viewed in full online at http://ogden.basic-english.org/words.html.)

Hinson describes Basic English as a “single meaning English lexicon and a simplified grammar” (1988: WE33) and Shubert et al. describe it as a “single meaning English lexicon along with simplified grammar rules” (1995: 348). However, Basic English is not a one-word-one-meaning language. Ogden’s Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930) does not include any word definitions. Ogden did publish a dictionary of the controlled vocabulary titled The Basic Words: A Detailed Account of Their Uses (1932). However, its purpose was “to give an idea of the way in which the 850 words may be used” (Ogden 1932: V).The dictionary entries are thus intended only to be illustrative. In fact, turning to Fries and Traver (1950), one finds that the 850 words have 18,416 different meanings in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Davies suggests that “the purpose of Basic English was to promote mainly technical communication” (1999: 110). Sonntag similarly suggests that Basic English was “meant to serve as an international medium of communication, particularly in technology” (2003: 23). However, Basic English was, as earlier noted, developed for international communication in multiple domains. In fact, Ogden recognised that the Basic English controlled vocabulary was insufficient for the international dissemination of technical knowledge. Basic English thus allows its users to, first, extend the controlled vocabulary by a further 150 specialised technical terms and to, second, use “technical terms … [that] … are introduced into the text with explanatory matter” (Ogden 1940: 74). Nevertheless, the author has not yet found any evidence that manufacturing companies have used Basic English for their technical documents.

Interest in Basic English was considerable during the 1930s with Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar going through eight editions between 1930 and 1940. Churchill was also a prominent supporter of Basic English, and the National Archives reveal that its possible use was discussed at a Cabinet meeting held in 1943. (For interested readers, the record of the Cabinet meeting can be viewed online at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2006/january/january1/english.htm.) However, its popularity started to diminish during the Second World War and never fully recovered thereafter. It did, nonetheless, provide an impetus and framework for the development of Caterpillar Fundamental English (CFE).

Caterpillar Fundamental English

Caterpillar Fundamental English (CFE) is widely agreed to be the first English-based controlled language used by a manufacturing company for its technical documents (for example, Wojcik and Hoard 1997; van der Eijk 1998; Kaji 1999; Hartley and Paris 2001).

Caterpillar Inc. (henceforth Caterpillar) is an American manufacturer of engines and machines. Its successful expansion into international markets between 1950 and 1970 meant that, by 1971, it had 20,000 English language technical documents for maintaining and repairing its engines and machines and 10,000 service staff with 50 different native languages.

Caterpillar developed CFE so that the native English users, non-native English users and non-English users among its international service staff could all understand the English language maintenance and repair documents, thus eliminating the need to translate them into other languages. This kind of controlled language is classified by researchers such as Nyberg et al. (2003), O’Brien (2003) and Reuther (2003) as human-oriented in that its aim is to help make the information in technical documents understandable for human readers.

Caterpillar’s von Glasenapp describes the manufacturing company’s problem, and the impetus for developing CFE, as follows:

To translate all publications into all languages is impossible … 20,000 pieces of literature times 50 languages would give 1 million different versions … [which] … is beyond current printing capabilities and any economical estimate … It is apparent that translation is no longer a feasible answer. (1972: 81)

Turning to van der Eijk (1998), one finds that Caterpillar initially considered using Basic English. However, it was rejected in favour of a new controlled language designed specifically for Caterpillar’s maintenance and repair documents. Nevertheless, Basic English and CFE are similar in that Basic English has ten rules and an 850-word controlled vocabulary and CFE has ten rules and an 800-word controlled vocabulary. The ten CFE rules are as follows:

  1. 1.

    Make positive statements.

  2. 2.

    Avoid long and complicated sentences.

  3. 3.

    Avoid too many subjects in one sentence.

  4. 4.

    Avoid too many successive adjectives and nouns.

  5. 5.

    Use uniform sentence structures.

  6. 6.

    Avoid complicated past and future tenses.

  7. 7.

    Avoid conditional tenses.

  8. 8.

    Avoid abbreviations, contractions and colloquialisms.

  9. 9.

    Use punctuation correctly.

  10. 10.

    Use consistent nomenclature.

The rules can be classified as lexical (rules 8 and 10), syntactic (rules 2, 4 and 5), grammatical (rules 6, 7 and 9), stylistic (rule 1) and as addressing information load (rule 3). This breakdown is similar to that for the Basic English rules. However, the content of the individual rules is different, reflecting their different purpose. The rules control linguistic and organisational features of Caterpillar’s maintenance and repair documents in order to help make the information in them understandable for the native English users, non-native English users and non-English users among Caterpillar’s international service staff. They were developed specifically for Caterpillar’s technical documents, but they do seem to be sufficiently general to have much broader utility. This suggests the potential for different manufacturing companies to have common or similar rules in their controlled languages.

The 800-word CFE controlled vocabulary was developed in a similar way to the 850-word Basic English controlled vocabulary in that it was derived from the most frequently recurring words in a broad sample of Caterpillar’s maintenance and repair documents. In addition, as with Basic English, the controlled vocabulary can be extended by user-approved specialised technical terms. There is, nonetheless, a fundamental difference between CFE and Basic English in that each word in the CFE controlled vocabulary has an approved spelling, part(s) of speech and meaning(s) and cannot be used with any other spelling, grammatical form or sense. For example, drop is approved as a noun that means a small quantity of liquid, decrease as a verb that means to fall, right as an adjective that means the opposite of left and correct as an adjective that means the opposite of wrong. This was done to ensure that words were spelled and used uniformly both in and across Caterpillar’s technical documents. Caterpillar determined these approved spellings, parts of speech and meanings from the most frequently recurring spellings, parts of speech and meanings in the broad sample of its maintenance and repair documents.

Caterpillar produced tens of thousands of pages of maintenance and repair documents using CFE between 1971 and 1982, and it is widely agreed that the information in these technical documents was understandable for the non-native English users and non-English users among Caterpillar’s international service staff after English language courses of between just 30 and 60 hours (for example, Hinson 1988; Dekker and Wijma 2004; Kirkman 2005). In addition, von Glasenapp points out that the native English users among Caterpillar’s international service staff benefitted from having the maintenance and repair documents at “a more universally understandable level” (1972: 84).

Caterpillar nevertheless stopped using CFE in 1982 because, first, the high turnover of service staff made running its English language courses expensive and time-consuming and, second, it began trailing a machine translation system developed by Carnegie Mellon University to translate some of its maintenance and repair documents into French, German and Spanish. This encouraged Caterpillar to develop a new controlled language with the dual aim of helping make the information in its maintenance and repair documents understandable and aiding its machine translation. This new controlled language was named Caterpillar Technical English (CTE) and is, at the time of writing, still in use.

The year that CFE was developed, von Glasenapp argued that “the theory of Caterpillar Fundamental English is widely applicable, and all indications are that this language system might soon spread” (1972: 84). Von Glasenapp’s words were to prove prophetic with many manufacturing companies following Caterpillar and starting to use controlled languages for their own technical documents.

Perkins Approved Clear English

Perkins Engines (henceforth Perkins) is an American (formerly British) manufacturer of engines and machines. By the late 1970s, Perkins’ successful expansion into international markets meant that it had service staff and customers in approximately 160 countries. Perkins Technical Publications Department in Britain produced all the English language installation documents for its engines and machines of which only some were translated into the languages of its international service staff and customers.

Perkins Approved Clear English (PACE) was developed by the Technical Publications Department in 1980. Pym, the manager at this time, describes the reason for its development:

Our overall objective is to improve comprehension … particularly for those persons using English instead of their native language, and to aid translation … Technical Publications had been concerned about the quality of written communications for some time … their content was often ambiguous and full of jargon. (1990: 80–82)

PACE was thus developed with the dual aim of helping make the information in Perkins’ technical documents understandable and aiding its translation. In fact, five years later in 1985, Perkins successfully trialed the Weidner MicroCAT machine translation system to translate some of its PACE-compliant English language installation documents. Pym makes clear that the introduction of a machine translation system was “a logical consequence of using controlled English—which is its ideal input” (cited by Brockmann 1990: 113). This kind of controlled language is classified by researchers such as Nyberg et al. (2003), O’Brien (2003) and Reuther (2003) as dual-oriented in that its dual aim is to help make the information in technical documents understandable for human readers and translatable, particularly with machine translation systems.

PACE, like Basic English and CFE, has a simplified set of rules and controlled vocabulary. In the case of PACE, the same rules are used to help make the information in Perkins’ installation documents understandable and aid its translation using the Weidner MicroCAT machine translation system. The ten PACE rules are as follows:

  1. 1.

    Keep sentences short.

  2. 2.

    Omit redundant words.

  3. 3.

    Order the parts of the sentence logically.

  4. 4.

    Don’t change constructions in mid-sentence.

  5. 5.

    Take care with the logic of and and or.

  6. 6.

    Avoid elliptical constructions.

  7. 7.

    Don’t omit conjunctions or relatives.

  8. 8.

    Adhere to the PACE dictionary.

  9. 9.

    Avoid strings of nouns.

  10. 10.

    Do not use -ing unless the word appears thus in the PACE dictionary.

The rules can be classified as lexical (rules 5 and 8), syntactic (rules 1, 3, 4, 6 and 9), grammatical (rules 7 and 10) and stylistic (rule 2). Most of the rules, as with most of the CFE rules, are thus lexical, syntactic and grammatical. In fact, there are similarities between the PACE and CFE rules with regard to the specific linguistic features of the technical documents that they control. By way of illustration, PACE states to “Keep sentences short.” (rule 1) and CFE to “Avoid long and complicated sentences.” (rule 2) and PACE states to “Avoid strings of nouns.” (rule 9) and CFE to “Avoid too many successive adjectives and nouns.” (rule 4).

Perkins developed an in-house dictionary of the controlled vocabulary that was regularly updated and expanded until March 2001. The March 2001 edition of this dictionary has 2750 entries if each part of speech is counted as one entry. Each entry has an approved spelling, approved part of speech and approved meaning (or limited number of meanings) as with CFE. For example, drop is approved as a noun that means “a quantity of fluid that falls in one spherical mass”, decrease as a verb that means “to reduce”, right as an adjective that means “when facing north, right is east” and correct as a verb that means “to remove fault”. Perkins, as with Caterpillar, determined these approved spellings, parts of speech and meanings from the most frequently recurring spellings, parts of speech and meanings in a broad sample of its installation documents.

The PACE controlled vocabulary is notably larger than the Basic English and CFE controlled vocabularies. This is because, unlike Basic English and CFE, the PACE controlled vocabulary cannot be extended by user-approved specialised technical terms. All approved terms are included in the dictionary.

Before going further, it might be useful for readers to look at an example of a controlled language in use. The following shows an extract from a Perkins’ installation document before and after compliance with PACE:

Reference to renewing joints and cleaning of joint faces has to a great extent been omitted from the text, it being understood that this will be carried out where applicable.

Normally the text does not include instructions to clean joint faces or to renew joints. Where they are relevant, these operations must be done. (Pym 1990: 88)

The original 30-word sentence has been broken up into two short sentences in compliance with the rule “Keep sentences short.” (rule 1). The redundant words “it being understood that” have been removed in compliance with the rule “Omit redundant words.” (rule 2). The phrase “renewing joints and cleaning of joint faces” has been rewritten as “to clean joint faces or to renew joints” to make clear that it refers to two distinct operations rather than one operation and one type of joint called a renewing joint. This is in compliance with the rule “Take care with the logic of and and or.” (rule 5). Finally, the verb “carried out” is not in the PACE dictionary. It has been replaced with “done” in compliance with the rule “Adhere to the PACE dictionary.” (rule 8) and the PACE dictionary entry for done: “(vb) To bring to pass”.

Pym (1990) reveals that using PACE helped make the information in Perkins’ installation documents understandable and aided its translation. However, Caterpillar purchased Perkins in 1997 and the Technical Publications Department changed to using Caterpillar Technical English (CTE) six years later.

The nature of the discussion thus far might leave readers with the impression that controlled languages are only used by manufacturing companies headquartered in countries with English as the native and/or official language. However, this is not the case.

Ericsson English

Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (henceforth Ericsson) is a Swedish manufacturer of industrial telecommunications equipment and machines. In the late 1970s, Ericsson approached the Communication Studies Unit of the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology (now Cardiff University) to develop a controlled language for its English language service and maintenance documents. The result was Ericsson English (EE). The nature of Ericsson’s problem at this time is described in the introduction to the Ericsson English Writer’s Guide (1983):

Ericsson English (EE) was created for use in basic technical instructions and descriptions. It was created to help make those basic documents comprehensive to readers who have a poor command of English. (Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson 1983: 3)

EE—like CFE and PACE—has a simplified set of rules and controlled vocabulary. In the case of EE, there are 23 rules. This is more than CFE and PACE. The rules are thus often more specific and detailed. The 23 EE rules are as follows:

  1. 1.

    Do not use synonyms.

  2. 2.

    Do not make long strings of nouns or adjectives before a noun.

  3. 3.

    Do not add prefixes or suffixes to EE words to make new words.

  4. 4.

    Do not use conversational expressions (idioms, contractions, slang).

  5. 5.

    Do not use unnecessary abbreviations.

  6. 6.

    Do not add new words to the Word List unnecessarily.

  7. 7.

    Write clearly and simply.

  8. 8.

    Use only the active voice of verbs.

  9. 9.

    Use only the simple past, simple present and simple future tenses. Always use the present tense when possible.

  10. 10.

    EE has only four auxiliary verbs: “must,” “can,” “will” and “do.”

  11. 11.

    Avoid unnecessary negatives.

  12. 12.

    Form questions as in ordinary English.

  13. 13.

    Try not to use too many adverbial clauses in one sentence. If you start a sentence with an adverbial clause, use a comma to mark the end of the clause.

  14. 14.

    Use “which” only as an interrogative adjective. You cannot use “which” to introduce an adverbial clause. You must use “that” instead.

  15. 15.

    Write short sentences dealing with just one idea.

  16. 16.

    “-ing” words are nouns that describe activities.

    “-ed” words are adjectives. Do not use them to form the passive voice or the perfect tense.

  17. 17.

    Use correct and consistent punctuation.

  18. 18.

    Always use a comma between a condition and an instruction or statement.

  19. 19.

    Use a colon between two parts of a sentence when the second part is an example, list or explanation of the first part.

  20. 20.

    Use a hyphen between two words if it makes the meaning clearer.

  21. 21.

    Use dashes to mark a list of ideas after a colon. Do not use dashes in other ways.

  22. 22.

    Use an exclamation mark to stress the importance of a warning.

  23. 23.

    Use an oblique mark (/) to mean and/or, not from/to.

The rules can, however, still be similarly classified as lexical (rules 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 14 and 20), syntactic (rules 12, 13, 19, 21 and 23), grammatical (rules 8, 9, 10, 16, 17 and 18), stylistic (rules 7, 11 and 22) and as addressing information load (rule 15). They control linguistic and organisational features of Ericsson’s service and maintenance documents with the aim of making the information in them understandable for those of Ericsson’s staff with limited English language skills.

The Ericsson English Writer’s Guide (1983) includes a dictionary of the controlled vocabulary. This has 2100 entries if each part of speech is counted as one entry. Each entry has an approved spelling, approved part of speech and approved meaning (or limited number of meanings) as with CFE and PACE. For example, drop is approved as a noun that means “a quantity of fluid that falls in one spherical mass”, decrease as a verb that means “to reduce, to fall in value”, right as an adjective and noun that means “when facing north, right is east” and correct as a verb that means “to take out mistakes from, to restore to proper state”. However, in a departure from CFE and PACE, this dictionary was not developed from scratch. Rather, the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology purchased a commercially available controlled language called International Language for Service and Maintenance (ILSAM) from M. and E. White Consultants and modified its controlled vocabulary to create the controlled vocabulary in the Ericsson English Writer’s Guide (Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson 1983: introduction). It is, however, interesting to note that researchers agree that ILSAM was itself developed from CFE (for example, Kirkman et al. 1980; Schreurs and Adriaens 1992; Newton 1992; Shubert et al. 1995; Kirkman 2005).

The Ericsson English Writer’s Guide cautions technical communicators that they “must conform to the rules strictly … otherwise the claims we make for the readability of EE will not be justifiable” (Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson 1983: introduction). One of these claims is that “Ericsson English is so easy … that other languages should not be necessary” (Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson 1983: introduction).

Ericsson thus departed from Caterpillar and Perkins in not developing its controlled vocabulary from scratch. However, it has not been the only manufacturing company to have done this.

Nortel Standard English

Nortel Networks Corporation (henceforth Nortel) is a Canadian manufacturer of industrial telecommunications equipment and machines. In 1993, Calistro from Nortel’s Global Publishing Technology unit stated that “The increase in the number of products with accompanying documentation sold around the world has shown the need to develop some form of controlled English” (1993: 158). The following year Calistro approached Smart Communications Inc. (henceforth Smart Communications) to develop a controlled language to make the information in Nortel’s technical documents understandable and aid its translation. The result was Nortel Standard English (NSE).

NSE—like CFE, PACE and EE—has a simplified set of rules and controlled vocabulary. In the case of NSE, there are 15 rules, which are as follows:

  1. 1.

    Write positive statements. Use positive statements instead of negative statements when possible. Exception: Use negative statements in warnings and cautions.

  2. 2.

    Write short sentences. Write sentences that have less than 22 words.

  3. 3.

    Write simple sentences that have one thought per sentence. Write sentences with simple sentence structure. Try to have one thought per sentence.

  4. 4.

    List events in sequence. Write events in the order in which they occur.

  5. 5.

    Use parallel structure. Use parallel grammatical structure for a series of items in both sentences and bulleted lists.

  6. 6.

    Use the active voice. Use the active voice instead of the passive voice.

  7. 7.

    Do not use a gerund at the beginning of a sentence or in an ambiguous construction.

  8. 8.

    Do not use could, should, would, might and may. Avoid the ambiguous helping verbs could, should, would, might and may.

  9. 9.

    Use the present tense instead of the future tense. Exception: Use the future tense if the action is a true future action.

  10. 10.

    Avoid noun strings of more than three words. Do not use noun strings that have more than three words.

  11. 11.

    Use only NSE approved abbreviations and acronyms. Use only abbreviations and acronyms that are in the NSE dictionaries. If you need to create an abbreviation or acronym, see your NSE committee representative.

  12. 12.

    Use specific terms or words. Make sure that every pronoun has a clear reference. Do not use this or that as a pronoun.

  13. 13.

    Do not use jargon and idiomatic expressions. Use only terms that are in the NSE dictionaries.

  14. 14.

    Use appropriate language. Avoid the following types of words:

    1. a.

      Gender-specific, racial or religious words

    2. b.

      Words specific to a region or dialect

    3. c.

      Subjective, emotive or negative words

    4. d.

      Words that are not clear

  15. 15.

    Use a determiner with nouns and noun phrases when possible.

The rules can be classified as lexical (rules 10, 11, 12, 13 and 14), syntactic (rules 2 and 5), grammatical (rules 6, 7, 8, 9 and 15), stylistic (rule 1) and as addressing information load (rule 3) and information structure (rule 4). The third rule can, in fact, be broken down into two sub-rules of which the first “Write sentences with simple sentence structure.” is syntactic and the second “Try to have one thought per sentence.” addresses information load. The rules control linguistic and organisational features of Nortel’s technical documents to make the information in them understandable and aid its translation. Most of these rules are lexical, syntactic and grammatical as with most of the CFE, PACE and EE rules.

The NSE controlled vocabulary is identical to the CFE, PACE and EE controlled vocabularies in that words have an approved spelling, approved part of speech (or limited number of parts of speech) and approved meaning (or limited number of meanings). As with Ericsson, however, Nortel did not develop the NSE controlled vocabulary from scratch. Rather, Nortel purchased the commercially available controlled language checker MAXit from Smart Communications and created NSE’s controlled vocabulary from the customisable MAXit dictionaries.

According to Smart from Smart Communications, the use of NSE and MAXit “made complex telecommunications documentation easier to read and understand” (2006: 3). However, Nortel declared bankruptcy in 2009 and NSE is no longer used.

It was suggested earlier in this chapter that different manufacturing companies may share common or similar controlled language rules. This is explored in more detail in the next section.

Bull Controlled English

The final controlled language introduced in this chapter is Bull Controlled English (BCE). Groupe Bull (henceforth Bull) is a French manufacturer of computers and consumer electronics. In the early 1990s, Bull decided to develop the technical documents for the setup, operation and maintenance of its key goods first in English and then in other languages in order to reduce the launch time of these goods to international markets. This decision was, in the words of Joscelyne, “an implicit recognition of the pre-eminence of English in the computing sector” (1992: 4).

At the same time, Bull’s ILO group (l’Internationalisation et Localisation de l’Offre Bull) introduced BCE for its English language technical documents and the SYSTRAN machine translation system to translate them into Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish. The primary aim of BCE was to help make the information in Bull’s English language technical documents understandable for, first, native English users and, second, non-native English users with languages other than Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish. The nature of Bull’s problem is described by Lee, a Bull manager at this time:

In an international market place, many users of documentation have English as their second, or even third, language. Technical documentation should therefore use simple grammatical structures … [Additionally] … particularly in the field of computers, technology has become available to a wider public. The end user is not necessarily a … highly literate person and requires a simplified English. (1993: 35–36)

BCE, like the other controlled languages introduced in this chapter, has a simplified set of rules and controlled vocabulary. The ten BCE rules are as follows:

  1. 1.

    Make positive statements: avoid the passive voice; avoid the future tense.

  2. 2.

    Keep sentence length to a maximum of 25 words.

  3. 3.

    Use valid technology; do not invent it. Use the Controlled English vocabulary.

  4. 4.

    One thought per sentence.

  5. 5.

    Use simple sentence structures.

  6. 6.

    Use parallel construction.

  7. 7.

    Avoid conditional tenses.

  8. 8.

    Avoid abbreviations and colloquialisms.

  9. 9.

    Use correct punctuation.

  10. 10.

    Use the tools available (Max. Grammar Checker, Spelling Checker).

The first rule “Make positive statements: avoid the passive voice; avoid the future tense.” can be broken down into three sub-rules of which the first is stylistic and the second and third are grammatical. The second to ninth rules can be classified as lexical (rules 4 and 8), syntactic (rules 2, 3 and 6), grammatical (rules 7 and 9) and as addressing information load (rule 5). These nine rules control linguistic and organisational features of Bull’s technical documents to help make the information in them understandable. The final rule “Use the tools available (Max. Grammar Checker, Spelling Checker).” refers to software tools that were developed to support Bull’s technical communicators. Most of the rules, as with most of the rules from the other controlled languages introduced in this chapter, are lexical, syntactic and grammatical. In addition, their content seems similar to the other controlled languages introduced in this chapter. In order to check this, Fig. 2.2 provides a comparison of the BCE and CFE rules.

Fig. 2.2
figure 2

Comparison of the BCE and CFE rules

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This reveals that there is a very high degree of similarity between the BCE and CFE rules with only one unique BCE rule and two unique CFE rules. Furthermore, the one unique BCE rule “Use the tools available (Max. Grammar Checker, Spelling Checker).” (rule 10) is not applicable to CFE as there were no software tools developed for it.

The Bull technical communicators were provided with three dictionaries: a general dictionary which provided the controlled vocabulary, a technical dictionary which provided additional Bull-approved technical terms and a synonym dictionary which provided Bull-approved synonyms from a list of commonly used synonyms in English language technical documents for computers and consumer electronics. Spelling, part of speech and meaning were all controlled as with the other controlled languages. In the case of BCE, the general and synonym dictionaries were purchased from Smart Communications, which, readers will recall, is the same organisation that Nortel purchased the commercially available controlled language checker MAXit from.

Bull was partially privatised in 1996 with ownership divided between the French government and companies from France (France Telecom), Japan (NEC and Dai Nippon Printing) and the USA (Motorola). As a result of the privatisation, BSE stopped being used.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Controlled Languages

There is a widespread and strong agreement in the literature that the use of controlled languages can help make the information in technical documents understandable and aid its machine translation.

In terms of understandability, it is agreed that they help make the information in technical documents understandable for both native and non-native English users (for example, Brockmann 1990; Arnold et al. 1994; Brockmann 1997; Reuther 1998; Haller and Schütz 2001; Markantonatou et al. 2002; Nyberg et al. 2003; Rychtyckyj 2006). However, it should be pointed out that some of this agreement is based on generalisations such as “it goes without saying that controlled language makes it easier … to understand a text” (Brockmann 1997: 10) or “it is a well known and indisputable fact within the CL community that the use of a Controlled Language (CL) in technical documentation leads to quality improvement with respect to readability” (Reuther 1998: 174).

In terms of translatability, it is agreed that they aid translation, particularly with machine translation systems (for example, Lee 1993; Arnold et al. 1994; Murphy et al. 1998; Kaji 1999; Esselink 2000; Weiss 2005).

It should also be noted in conclusion that there is some argument in the literature that it can be difficult for technical communicators to use controlled languages because of the restrictions imposed (for example, Hoard et al. 1992; Thomas et al. 1992; Douglas and Hurst 1996). However, this argument is not universally accepted, with Joshi (2006) and Smart (2006) counter-arguing that it is not difficult to use controlled languages.

Summary

The main objective of this chapter has been to chronologically introduce controlled languages that have been used by large manufacturing companies for their English language technical documents since the 1970s. Specifically, it has looked at why and how each controlled language was developed and used. In doing this, it will have become clear to readers that controlled languages restrict certain linguistic and organisational features of technical documents to help make the information in them understandable and, in many cases, simultaneously aid its machine translation.

While controlled languages have been developed for manufacturing companies, knowledge of the specific linguistic and organisational features of modern technical documents that help make the information in them understandable has been greatly enhanced by the publication of an extensive range of government, academic and professional literature. A complete understanding of controlled languages thus necessitates an understanding of these linguistic and organisational features of technical documents, which are explored in the next chapter of this book.