Manual creation
The advancement in technology has made aircraft, automobiles, electrical/electronic equipment and other industrial products ever more sophisticated, but their functionalities can only be fully utilized and their safety ensured when they are correctly used, installed, adjusted and maintained. To ensure safe operation and high performance, it is vital that the users and technicians read detailed manuals for operating and servicing the products before they start working.
At Honyaku Shuppan-sha, we use technical writers who specialize in relevant fields (aviation, automotive, electrical/electronic, etc.), understand the products and are able to write text from the user's point of view. This ensures that our manuals are easy to read and understand.
Specializations
Aircraft, automobiles, construction vehicles, communications equipment, machine tools, precision machinery, electrical/electronic equipment and other industrial products
We can provide any services related to texts and illustrations, including collecting information on design data and drawings, writing the text for user's manuals, service manuals and other manuals, adaptation and rewriting of drafts, updating and revising of existing content, production of text for parts catalogs, drafting of lists and illustrations (single-view) and more.
Languages
English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Greek, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Malay, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Arabic, and more…
What we do
For private sector
Operation, servicing, overhaul, training content, user's manuals, repair manuals （workshop manuals）, training content, options fitting guides, body builder's guides, electrical wiring diagrams
For maritime SDF
Operation manuals, operation and maintenance manuals, illustrated parts breakdowns (IPBs), provisioning materials (source materials for cataloging), AEC content
For air SDF
Technical order (J.T.O.) operating orders (-1), technical order (J.T.O.) maintenance orders (-2), technical order (J.T.O.) parts catalogs (-4), technical order (J.T.O.) inspection guides (-6), source materials for cataloging
For ground SDF
Handling instructions, operation manuals, maintenance materials, maintenance procedures, supply catalogs, reference materials for cataloging
Our expertise
Technical writing
Our technical writers offer a wealth of experience in writing aircraft manuals (airframes/engines), manuals for electronic products, automotive workshop manuals (cars, trucks and motorcycles), user's manuals, parts catalogs, and e-Learning and other training materials. Our automotive technical writers are qualified auto mechanics, whose practical knowledge ensures accuracy and clarity. Engines, transmissions, chassis, automotive electronics... we cover them all. We also have a wealth of experience in technical writing for industrial products such as construction machinery. We can help even with highly specialized machines - just ask.
Technical illustration
Our technical illustrators understand products and can produce clear and intuitive illustrations from drawings, 2D/3D CAD data, product samples, photos and rough sketches.
Our illustrators' skills go beyond illustrations; they are knowledgeable in the technical aspects of industrial products from aircraft and automobiles to electrical/electronic equipment, which means they can produce highly accurate technical illustrations from the user's perspective. Just like our technical writers, their focus is on creating illustrations that convey the key points of information in a clear and uncluttered style.
DTP
Since the company's foundation in 1957, we have always handled typesetting and pasting up in-house to produce camera-ready copies. The technology may have moved on to the digital era with the emergence of desktop publishing, but our philosophy of producing accurate and easy-to-use documents remains unchanged.
Our DTP department is unique in that it has in-depth knowledge of multilingual document production. We have a long history of producing many different language versions of documents concurrently, which is one of our specialties.
We can produce and edit documents not only in Word, Excel and PowerPoint but also using FrameMaker, InDesign, Illustrator and other DTP and design applications.
We also have a proven track record in editing XML-based structured documents in FrameMaker.
Editing is not the only thing we do; we would be happy to make suggestions about the layout and structure of your documents and rewrite text.
Compliance with specifications
Just as machines are produced based on design specifications, manuals are also made to specifications. In the case of US Forces and the Ministry of Defense, MIL standards and other specifications ensure that manuals follow uniform formats (TO/J.T.O.). Some of our clients define their own manual specifications based on overseas examples, but ensuring that these specifications are followed to the letter is one of the challenges of manual creation. In the case of government agencies, manual specifications may be determined by each organization taking delivery of the product.
We at Honyaku Shuppan-sha have been involved in the process of deciding and coordinating manual specifications. If you have any problem with manual production, contact us - we are here to help.
Manual diagnostics
We offer manual diagnostics service to assess our clients' manuals and adapt, rewrite or polish them up as necessary. Our experienced technical writers and DTP operators will go over the text and layout of your existing manuals and provide a diagnostics sheet. It will tell you at a glance what's great about your manuals and what needs work.
We make our diagnostics from two different perspectives: the producer's and the user's. The manual producer's perspective focuses on the efficiency of the production process and compliance with relevant standards, laws and regulations, which is a vitally important aspect of manual production. In addition, we can make suggestions on how best to integrate the manual making process seamlessly into your company's workflow - you may have an excellent manual, but you cannot keep up the standard if it takes too much effort to produce. Our second point of view, that of the user, is all about ensuring that the person who handles the product can work safely and correctly by following the manual. These days we often see manuals that contain so much textual information it is hard to tell which points are really important. We make suggestions about pruning out unnecessary information and presenting key points better to make your manuals more readable and usable. With these two perspectives, we help our clients produce manuals that are easy to produce and compliant with all the necessary standards and regulations while ensuring that the user can operate the product safely and correctly.
Document creation using DITA
DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture) is an OASIS standard XML specification for technical authoring and is currently one of the most talked-about standards in the world, with many tools appearing on the market and more and more companies introducing it in their documents.
The advantage of XML is that, by separating style information, data can be outputted efficiently to different media, and DITA further adds reusability through componentization, enabling efficient document creation and management.
Are you considering multi-use of data including componentization of documents? Let us help you with manual production using DITA.
Translation
Translation