Manufacturing execution system UI strings require knowledge of production workflows. How alarm text mistranslation causes operator errors on the factory floor.
- A bare string is ambiguous
- Alarm text is operational instruction
- Screen and manual must agree
A bare string is ambiguous
MES and SCADA interfaces are dense with short strings — labels, states, alarms, prompts. Out of context, many are genuinely ambiguous: a two-word label can be a noun or a command, a state or an action.
Translating a string catalogue without context is guesswork dressed as work. Screenshots, the screen a string appears on, and character limits change the output substantially.
Alarm text is operational instruction
Alarm and fault text is read by an operator deciding what to do, often quickly. It has to identify the condition precisely and imply the correct response.
Vague or inconsistent alarm wording produces hesitation and wrong responses on the floor — a failure mode that shows up as an operations problem long before anyone traces it to translation.
Screen and manual must agree
The interface and the documentation describing it are typically handled as separate jobs at different times, so the operator reads one term on screen and another in the manual.
Treating them as one linked set against a shared termbase removes an entire category of avoidable confusion, and costs less than fixing it later.