Maylath, Bruce, and Emily A. Thrush. “Café, The, Ou Lait?: Teaching Technical Communicators to Manage Translation and Localization,” in Managing Global Communication in Science and Technology, ed. Peter J. Hager and H.J. Scheiber (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000), 233-254.
While I initially passed this article over when looking for items for my bibliography, I eventually determined that it was more relevant than I first thought. The article describes how to educate technical communicators on managing translation and localization issues. Localization is really at the heart of participatory design--it makes the content, visual or otherwise, relevant to the end user.
Maylath and Thrush state that international and intercultural issues receive limited coverage in technical communication textbooks, at least at the time this article was published (2000). While I haven't experienced this (my first class in the Technical Communication certificate program was a Topics in International Technical Communication course), I have noticed that localization seems to be mentioned more and more frequently in trade articles about technical communication.
While much of the article covers language and translation issues, the writers spend time discussing cultural differences and how they impact localization. For example, the article mentions a study of faxes sent and received from a Finnish export company written. Nearly half of these faxes were written in English, and almost all were written by non-native English speakers. The authors noted that just because a common language is shared, it doesn't mean that misunderstandings are eliminated. The same principle is true for developing visuals. Regional differences can greatly impact how one interprets the meaning of the visual.
The article also mentions that visuals may be used differently in different cultures. Annual reports from Japanese companies use graphics to enhance esthetics, which American readers of the reports found confusing.
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