Simplified English

Simplified English is a controlled language originally developed for aerospace industry maintenance manuals. It offers a carefully limited and standardized subset of English.

Proponents claim that Simplified English can:
* Reduce ambiguity
* Improve comprehension for people whose first language is not English
* Make human translation easier, faster and more cost effective
* Facilitate computer-assisted translation and machine translation

Simplified English has a lexicon of approved words and those words can only be used in certain ways. For example, the word "close" can be used in the phrase "Close the door" but not "do not go close to the landing gear".

Aerospace Standard

"Simplified English" is sometimes used as a generic term for a controlled language. The aerospace standard is actually an industry-regulated writing standard for aerospace maintenance documentation. It is not intended for use as a general writing standard. The US government’s Plain English [ [http://www.plainlanguage.gov Plain Language: Improving Communications from the Federal Government to the Public ] ] lacks the strict vocabulary restrictions of the aerospace standard, but it represents an attempt at a more general writing standard.

The regulated aerospace standard has been called "AECMA Simplified English", because the European Association of Aerospace Manufacturers (AECMA) originally created the standard in the 1980s. The AECMA standard originally came from Fokker, which had based their standard on earlier controlled languages, especially "Caterpillar Fundamental English". In 2005, AECMA was subsumed by the Aerospace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD), which renamed its standard to "ASD Simplified Technical English" or "STE". STE is defined by the specification "ASD-STE100", which is maintained by the [http://www.asd-ste100.org/ Simplified Technical English Maintenance Group (STEMG)] . The standard contains a set of restrictions on the grammar and style of procedural and descriptive text. It also contains a dictionary of roughly 1000 approved general words. Writers are given guidelines for adding technical names and technical verbs to their documentation. STE is mandated by several commercial and military specifications that control the style and content of maintenance documentation.

ee also

*Basic English
*Constructed language
*Globish
*Special English
*Newspeak
*Simplified Chinese

References

External links

* [http://www.asd-ste100.org/ Official page of ASD Simplified Technical English Maintenance Group (STEMG)]
* [http://www.simplifiedenglish.net/ Simplified English checker software HyperSTE, training and steps for implementation]
* [http://www.userlab.com/SE.html A brief overview of Simplified English with a selection of links]
* [http://www.world-english.org/ World English Organization]
* [http://www.controlledlanguage.com/ Simplus - Simplified English Checker]
* [http://www.plainlanguage.gov Plain Language]