The most important basic rule for link texts is to give the reader something to help decide: Where will a likt take me? What kind of information can I expect there, and for what applications? Will there be plenty of information, or bare minimum? Will it be easy, or difficult to digest? Will there be practical examples or abstract theory? What are the benefits from following the link? What is the effort associated with the click? The greater the share of this information that can be communicated even BEFORE opening the new topic, the better.

Well formulated links let the user know without ambiguity what kind of information to expect in the topics referenced. It can become very difficult to limit these link texts to a reasonable length. Here, link titles, using the HTML title tag can serve as a good supplement. HTML link titles are displayed when the user hovers with the mouse over the link.

The link title reduces the user’s risk of entering a dead-end street. At the same time, it becomes easier to situate the referenced page in its context. The reader will be in a position to start absorbing the information immediately, without first having to find out what the whole thing is all about.

The problem of conveying information about the destination becomes particularly serious in the case of links on graphics. Only rarely images or symbols alone are enough as explanation.

This difficulty is particularly frequent in web sites that are predominantly marketing oriented. As an extreme example, take the case of a bank’s web site: like in all banking advertisements, pictures of happy, dynamic people of the younger generation greet you. Clicking on the images will take you to the various information zones. How many smiling faces do you have to click on before you can finally access the price tables of your current account? A phrase has already been coined for this phenomenon: "Mystery Meat Navigation". Just like you can never know at the meat counter what exactly the butcher has put into your sausage.

Every link draws the attention of the reader away from the actual content. This happens because the layout stands out prominently (underlining), and because of the anxiety over losing out on important information by not reading the text "concealed" by the link. Further impediments arise because sentences grow longer or more complicated on account of the links.

The ideal link is integrated into the text in such a way that the sentence would read just the same even if the link had not been there. In the ideal case, the link text should not contain any navigational information; instead, it should contain information that is purely related to the content.

There is only one exception: If it is a link to a web site and it is likely that the user will print a topic, then include the complete URL in the link text. The same applies to printed documentation, such as manuals, of course.

Remember that the probability that a sentence might have to be split into two or more parts during translation increases with the length of the original sentence. The translator will then have to decide which fragment should host the link. This partial loss of "context" will definitely reduce the communicative power of the link.

If links need to be split or moved, it means essentially more editing effort, and, in technical terms, it is highly error prone. If the translator does not have the required software, this task is usually left to the author or to the translation coordinator.

If the translator is working with a translation memory system, links in the middle of a sentence can make it more difficult to recognize already translated segments. This is because the translation memory divides a sentence with a link differently from one without any links, namely, into three segments: the part of the sentence preceding the link, the link text and the part of the sentence that follows it.

Challenges of a special nature crop up when text modules are going to be put to multiple use. The following scenarios could arise:

Scenario 1:

The same module is used to generate both print media (printed manuals, PDF) as well as online media (online help, web site, multimedia). The page number will have to be mentioned extra for the cross references in the print media. To help in identifying the target without ambiguity, the title will have to be mentioned as well. In the online version, on the other hand, typical texts that appear in printed manuals, such as "see page x" or chapter or section numbers should not appear on any account. Also, there is no need to cite the complete title here.

Powerful single source tools and content management systems are capable of creating the print versions automatically. In your source text, make sure to avoid all media-specific words like "topic", "chapter" or "page". Such terms are allowed only in their appropriate versions and should be inserted by the authoring system at the time of generating the document. The same applies to page numbers. The way you formulate your text should take all this into account.

Scenario 2:

The same text modules are used for documents referring to different product versions. It might happen that in some of these versions, certain targets do not exist at all. In such cases, there should be no references to indicate the presence of a link at this point in some other version.

Scenario 3:

Not every link that appears in the online version for reasons of comfort is worthwhile to interrupt the flow of the text with a reference to the chapter heading and page number in the printed version. Thus, usually the printed version should suppress certain links, which are present only in the online versions. Also in this case, there must be no explicit reference to the link.

In actual practice, it is not always possible to satisfy all the requirements of good links, like uniqueness, brevity, and integration into the flow of the sentence. And if the texts are going to be put to multiple use (single source publishing), how to formulate them becomes a real challenge. There are several good reasons clearly separate the text from navigation, and to remove the majority of the links from the actual body of the text:

One tried and tested approach is to include only those links into the main body of the text, which really justify any interruption in the flow of the text. A rule of thumb that is useful here: In a private conversation, would you interrupt the other person at this point to draw his or her attention to some additional information? If the answer is yes, the link is probably justified in the text. You can move all other links to a place beside the text or onto another navigational device. Here, again, the same rules of style and formulation apply, but things get considerably simpler.