ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English (STE) is an international specification for the preparation of technical documentation in a controlled language. STE as a

controlled language Controlled natural languages (CNLs) are subsets of natural languages that are obtained by restricting the grammar and vocabulary in order to reduce or eliminate ambiguity and complexity. Traditionally, controlled languages fall into two major types ...

was developed in the early 1980s (as AECMA Simplified English) to help second-language speakers of English to unambiguously understand technical manuals written in English. It was initially applicable to civil aircraft maintenance documentation. It then became a requirement for defense projects, including land and sea vehicles. Today, many maintenance and technical manuals are written in STE, in a wide range of other industries.

History

The first attempts towards a form of controlled English were made as early as the 1930s and 1970s with Basic English and Caterpillar Fundamental English. In 1979 aerospace documentation was written in American English (

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and ...

, Douglas, Lockheed, etc.), in British English (

Hawker Siddeley Hawker Siddeley was a group of British manufacturing companies engaged in aircraft production. Hawker Siddeley combined the legacies of several British aircraft manufacturers, emerging through a series of mergers and acquisitions as one of onl ...

British Aircraft Corporation The British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) was a British aircraft manufacturer formed from the government-pressured merger of English Electric Aviation Ltd., Vickers-Armstrongs (Aircraft), the Bristol Aeroplane Company and Hunting Aircraft in 19 ...

, etc.) and by companies whose native language was not English (

Fokker Fokker was a Dutch aircraft manufacturer named after its founder, Anthony Fokker. The company operated under several different names. It was founded in 1912 in Berlin, Germany, and became famous for its fighter aircraft in World War I. In 1919 ...

Aeritalia Aeritalia was an aerospace engineering corporation based in Italy. It was formed out of the merger of two aviation companies, Fiat Aviazione and Aerfer, in 1969. Aeritalia continued several programs of its preceding companies, perhaps most p ...

, Aerospatiale, and some of the companies that formed

Airbus Airbus SE (; ; ; ) is a European multinational aerospace corporation. Airbus designs, manufactures and sells civil and military aerospace products worldwide and manufactures aircraft throughout the world. The company has three divisions: '' ...

at the time). There were also European airlines that had to translate parts of their maintenance documentation into other languages for their local mechanics. This led the European Airline industry to approach AECMA (European Association of Aerospace Industries) to ask manufacturers to investigate the possibility of using a controlled form of English. In 1983, after an investigation into the different types of controlled languages that existed in other industries, AECMA decided to produce its own controlled English. The AIA (Aerospace Industries Association of America) was also invited to participate in this project. The result of this collaborative work was the release of the AECMA Document, PSC-85-16598 (known as the AECMA Simplified English Guide) in 1986. Subsequently, several changes, issues and revisions were released up to the present issue (the current Issue 8 of STE is dated April 2021). After the merger of AECMA with two other associations to form the Aerospace, Security and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD) in 2004, the specification was renamed ''ASD Simplified Technical English, Specification ASD-STE100''. ASD-STE100 is maintained by th
Simplified Technical English Maintenance Group
(STEMG), a working group of ASD, formed in 1983. The Copyright of ASD-STE100 is fully owned by ASD. Starting from Issue 6 in 2013, the Specification became free of charge. Over the years, more than 11,800 official copies of Issues 6 and 7 were distributed. Since Issue 8 was released in April 2021, over 3,200 official copies have been distributed (distribution log updated August 2022). Usually, a new issue is released every three years. A free official copy of the ASD-STE100 Specification can be requested through th
ASD-STE100 website
and throug
ASD-STAN

Benefits

Simplified Technical English can: * reduce

ambiguity Ambiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement ...

by removing linguistic barriers * improve the clarity of technical writing, especially procedural writing * improve comprehension for people whose first language is not English * make human translation easier, faster, and more cost-effective * facilitate

computer-assisted translation Computer-aided translation (CAT), also referred to as computer-assisted translation or computer-aided human translation (CAHT), is the use of software to assist a human translator in the translation Translation is the communication of ...

and

machine translation Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates ...

* improve reliability concerns of maintenance and assembly by reducing their probability to introduce defects or human-factor risks. However, these claims come mostly from those who have invested in developing it, implementing it or supporting it. In the absence of third-party endorsement or published scientific studies, such claims should be considered unconfirmed.

Specification structure

The ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English specification consists of two parts: # The writing rules # The dictionary

Writing rules

The writing rules differentiate between two types of topics: procedural and descriptive writing. The rules also cover aspects of grammar and style. A non-exhaustive list of the writing rules includes the concepts that follow: * Use the approved words and only as the part of speech and meaning given in the dictionary. * Make instructions as clear and specific as possible. * Do not write noun clusters that have more than three words. * Use the approved forms of the verb to make only: ** The infinitive ** The imperative ** The simple present tense ** The simple past tense ** The past participle (only as an adjective) ** The future tense. * Do not use helping verbs to make complex verb structures. * Use the "-ing" form of a verb only as a technical name or as a modifier in a technical name. * Do not use passive voice in procedures. * Use the active voice as much as possible in descriptive texts. * Write short sentences: no more than 20 words in instructions (procedures) and no more than 25 words in descriptive texts. * Do not omit parts of the sentence (e.g. verb, subject, article) to make your text shorter. * Use vertical lists for complex text. * Write one instruction per sentence. * Write only one topic per paragraph. * Do not write more than 6 sentences in each paragraph. * Start safety instructions with a clear command or condition.

Dictionary

The table that follows is an extract from a page of the ASD-STE100 dictionary: Explanation of the four columns: Word (part of speech) -This column has information on the word and its part of speech. Every approved word in STE is only permitted as a specific part of speech. For example, the word "test" is only approved as a noun (the test) but not as a verb (to test). There are very few exceptions to the "One word, one part of speech, one meaning" principle. Approved meaning/ALTERNATIVES - This column gives the approved meaning (or definition) of an approved word in STE. In the example table, "ACCESS" and "ACCIDENT" are approved (they are written in uppercase). The text in these definitions is not written in STE. If a meaning is not given in the dictionary, you cannot use the word in that meaning. Use an alternative word. For words that are not approved (they are written in lowercase, such as "acceptance" and "accessible" in the example table) this column gives approved alternatives that you can use to replace the unapproved words. These alternatives are in uppercase and they are only suggestions. It is possible that the suggested alternative for an unapproved word has a different part of speech. Usually, the first suggested alternative has the same part of speech as the unapproved word. APPROVED EXAMPLE - This column shows how to use the approved word, or how to use the approved alternative (usually a word-for-word replacement). It also shows how to keep the same meaning with a different construction. The wording given in the approved examples is not mandatory. It shows only one method to write the same information with approved words. You can frequently use different constructions with other approved words to say the same thing. Not approved example - This column (text in lowercase) gives examples that show how the unapproved word is frequently used in standard technical writing. The examples also help you to understand how you can use the approved alternatives and/or different constructions to give the same information. For approved words, this column is empty, unless there is a help symbol (lightbulb) related to other meanings or restrictions. The dictionary includes entries of both approved and unapproved words. The approved words can only be used according to their specified meaning. For example, the word "" (v) can only be used in one of two meanings: # To move together, or to move to a position that stops or prevents materials from going in or out # To operate a circuit breaker to make an electrical circuit The verb can express ''to close a door'' or ''to close a circuit'', but it cannot be used with other connotations (for example ''to close the meeting'' or ''to close a business''). The adjective "close" appears in the dictionary as an unapproved word with the suggested approved alternative "NEAR". Thus, STE does not allow ''do not go close to the landing gear'', but it does allow ''do not go near the landing gear''. In addition to the general STE vocabulary listed in the dictionary, Section 1, Words, gives specific guidelines for using technical names and technical verbs that writers need to describe technical information. For example, words, noun clusters, or verbs such as ''grease'', ''discoloration'', ''propeller'', ''aural warning system'', ''overhead panel'', ''to ream'', and ''to drill'' are not listed in the dictionary, but they qualify as approved terms according to Part 1, Section 1 (specifically, writing rules 1.5 and 1.12).

Aerospace and defense standard

''Simplified Technical English'' is sometimes used as a generic term for a

. The aerospace and defense specification started as an industry-regulated writing standard for aerospace maintenance documentation, but it has become a requirement for an increasing number of military land and sea vehicles, and weapons programs as well. Although it was not initially intended for use as a general writing standard, it has been successfully adopted by other industries and for a wide range of document types. The US government's

Plain English Plain English (or layman's terms) are groups of words that are to be clear and easy to know. It usually avoids the use of rare words and uncommon euphemisms to explain the subject. Plain English wording is intended to be suitable for almost anyone, ...

lacks the strict vocabulary restrictions of the aerospace standard, but represents an attempt at a more general writing standard. ASD-STE100 contains a set of restrictions on the grammar and style for procedural and descriptive texts (53 rules). It also contains a dictionary of approximately 860 approved general words. Writers are given guidelines for using technical names and technical verbs in their documentation (only if these terms can be classified in a list of defined categories). Since 1986, STE has been a requirement of the ATA Specification i2200 (formerly ATA100) and ATA104 (Training). STE is also a requirement of the S1000D Specification. The European Defence Standards Reference (EDSTAR) recommends STE as one of the

best practice A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to other known alternatives because it often produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means or because it has become a standard way of doing ...

standards for writing technical documentation to be applied for defense contracting by all EDA (European Defence Agency) participating member states. Today, the success of STE is such that other industries use it beyond its initial purpose for maintenance documentation and outside the aerospace and defense domains. It is successfully applied in the automotive, renewable energies, and offshore logistics sectors and is now further expanding in the field of medical devices and the pharmaceutical sector. STE interest is also increasing within the Academic world (Information Engineering and Applied and

Computational Linguistics Computational linguistics is an interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, computational linguistics ...

Tools

Boeing developed the Boeing Simplified English Checker (BSEC). This linguistic-based checker uses a sophisticated 350-rule English parser, which is augmented with special functions that check for violations of the Simplified Technical English specification. HyperSTE is a plugin tool offered by Etteplan to check content for adherence to the rules and grammar of the specification. Congree offers a Simplified Technical English Checker based on linguistic algorithms. It supports all rules of Simplified Technical English issue 7 that are relevant to the text composition and provides an integrated Simplified Technical English dictionary. The TechScribe term checker for ASD-STE100 helps writers to find text that does not conform to ASD-STE100.

References

{{English dialects by continent English language Technical communication Simplified languages Controlled English English for specific purposes