The localization industry is beginning to grow as more and more companies find it necessary to adapt their products to local languages and norms. In the IT sector alone, localization costs exceed $1.5 billion annually with a projected growth rate 8-12% each year. All companies now more than ever recognize the need for efficient methods to produce cost effective and timely results.

In order to avoid the costly bottlenecks of a monolingual approach, holistic software documentation has been conceived at the Department of Database and Expert Systems of the Johannes Kepler University in Linz (Austria). By integrating software documentation with technical writing methods, multilingual terminology & documentation (T&D) and information management this approach safeguards against most of the repetitive and time consuming tasks of documentation production.

This combination of different methodologies becomes necessary for several reasons:

• Technical writing covers the preparation of all kinds of texts ranging from reports, product documentation to promotional materials.
• T&D combines the methods of terminology management with documentation creation techniques. Its multilingual character is an essential pre-requisite to be used in the localization business.
• Information management includes modern Quality Management (QM) procedures, applying the ISO 9000 series and other QM-systems to specialized information.

A work group has been established by the Universities of Linz and Vienna (both are TermNet members), Omnidoc (the European Society of Technical Communication) and Infoterm to prepare a "Guide to Holistic Software Documentation". The guide will list and describe all pertinent requirements for managing the production of multilingual software documentation along the lines described above.

A first draft of this guide is expected by early 1994. LISA members are invited to participate in this group.