Text item: What is the consensus opinion from the group with regards to user manual safety warnings for consumer consumption. The question is should warnings be listed in a "Before You Begin" type section at the front of the manual and referred back to or should they be covered in each subsequent section, repeated many times and killing many trees! What meets "Duty to warn" legal position?
[email protected] I have two questions for the group to consider, concerning the languages which are to be provided in manuals. My understanding of IEC 950 paragraph 1.7.14 of the languages required in manuals is as follows: A - Safety Instructions Whenever the information provided deals with safety, the information must always be provided in the language of the country where the equipment will be used. B - Servicing Instructions Information dealing with servicing the equipment by service personnel can always be provided in English. The requirements assume that service personnel consist of trained and authorized persons. C - User Instructions Germany demands that user instructions be provided in German. Their reasoning is that the user instructions inform the user how the equipment is to be operated properly, therefore they are necessary to prevent improper operation. Mexico requires that user instructions be provided in Spanish. At the present time, all other countries accept user instructions in English, however some are considering following Germanys lead. The recommendations from test labs is that user manuals for consumer products be provided in at least English, French, German, and Spanish. My questions are: 1) What are the group's comments on the above. 2) I have a manual intended for a serviceman. Using "B" above, it can be in English only. In the manual there are several safety cautionary statements. They will all be extracted from various sections of the manual and will be placed in a single separate section located at the front of the manual, and each will be translated into the language of the country where the equipment is destined. This will provide compliance with "A". We would also like to include the safety cautionary statements in the body of the manual, at the appropriate locations, to provide continuity when the serviceman is reading/following the manual. We feel that there is no need to also provide a translation in the body of the manual since there is already one provided at the beginning of the manual. The reasoning is twofold: (1) since English is accepted as the language for the serviceman ("B" above), the serviceman is presumed to know how to read English, and (2) the safety cautionary statement appears in his native language in the separate section at the beginning of the manual. Comments will be appreciated. Gabriel Roy Hughes Network Systems MD The opinions expressed are mine and do not necessarily reflect corporate. Text item: External Message Header The following mail header is for administrative use and may be ignored unless there are problems. ***IF THERE ARE PROBLEMS SAVE THESE HEADERS***. X-Moderator-Address: [email protected] X-Info: [Un]Subscribe requests to [email protected] X-Info: Help requests to [email protected] X-List-Description: Product Safety Tech. Committee, EMC Society X-Listname: emc-pstc X-Resent-To: Multiple Recipients <[email protected]> Reply-To: Gabriel Roy/HNS <[email protected]> Precedence: bulk Sender: [email protected] Content-Type: Text/Plain MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Languages required in manuals List-Post: [email protected] Date: 16 Sep 96 11:55:08 EDT From: Gabriel Roy/HNS <[email protected]> To: emc-pstc <[email protected]> Message-Id: <[email protected]> Received: (from daemon@localhost) by ruebert.ieee.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id LAA05533 for emc-pstc-list; Mon, 16 Sep 1996 11:57:11 -0400 (EDT) Received: from ruebert.ieee.org (ruebert.ieee.org [199.172.136.3]) by mailbag.jf .intel.com (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA07390 for <[email protected] el.com>; Mon, 16 Sep 1996 14:02:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailbag.jf.intel.com ([email protected] [134.134.248.4]) by fmmail.fm.intel.com (8.7.4/8.7.3) with ESMTP id OAA13821 for <Craig_M_Britlan [email protected]>; Mon, 16 Sep 1996 14:03:46 -0700 (PDT) Return-Path: [email protected]
