Hi Alexandra, Considering the amount of time you've just spent tagging your Frame files with the changed text, not to mention the amount of correcting you did to the Spanish files once they were returned by your translator, do you still think the lowest bidder saved your company any money? Before my company wised up, we used to send our translators a Frame file containing only the changes made in our manuals. This was time consuming in two ways: creating the file and reintegrating the translated text into the translated manuals. With 18 supported languages it was a full time job for me. The idea of having a translation database, or translation memory, is to identify text that already exists in translated form and separating it from text requiring localization. In a proper work flow you should never have to go through what you just did. Did you communicate the corrections to your translators after the first round of localization? No translator is perfect, that's why we have our translations proofread by our technicians at our regional offices. Any corrections they suggest go back to the translators, and eventually get added to the translation database. There should never be an issue of an out-of-date translation database unless you flip between two different translators with different databases. Any changes made to your manuals have to go back to the translator. We finally sourced a translation company that makes very efficient use of translation memory. We send them the complete manuals in native Frame format, along with all the graphics for the manual. We get back translated Frame and PDF files ready to print and send along to our customers. As an aside, if you've made extensive use of generated files (TOC, Index), autonumbering, cross-references, conditional text, etc. in Frame, I wouldn't even contemplate migrating all of that to Word. You'll want to slit your wrists trying to get that piece of ordure to do what Frame does. Just my two-cents. Best of luck.
Berny Gagné Lead Technical Writer Husky Injection Molding Systems Bolton, Ontario, Canada -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alexandra Duffy Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 12:12 PM To: framers@lists.frameusers.com Subject: Translation questions Hello, FM 6.0 unstructured ePro WWH 5.0 We recently translated our documentation set (two manuals, about 1,600 pages) into Spanish. This wasn't a very smooth process, but it was accomplished by sending our .mif files to the translator, who uses TRADOS. The translator was selected based on the lowest bid. The translator did create the database files that are used for facilitating future translation; however, once we got the files back from them, there were so many errors and changes required that we question the usefulness of the database files. Our Spanish FrameMaker files are now significantly different from the files that they gave to us. Now we are moving on to the next version of our software, and facing difficulties understanding how to mark what has changed since the last version, and translate only the new/changed text. What we ended up doing is comparing our English files in FrameMaker, and, using the CMP files, added the new/changed text into the Spanish files, marked with a Translation condition. This was a huge chore. I just KNOW that others do not do it this way. The managers are not happy with the amount of time this took, and we aren't happy because it was very tedious. I have read the white paper about translation that is often mentioned, but the process is still not clear to me. I don't really know what TRADOS can do and how the translators use it with .mif files. (The PTBs claim that TRADOS works *much better* with Word, and why do use FrameMaker anyway?) I also know that many of you have switched to structured FrameMaker to solve some translation issues (like these?) but at the moment, switching to structured with our small, very busy dept. is cost- and time-prohibitive. If you are still using unstructured FrameMaker and translating your text through several versions, I would like to know: * What your companies do to mark text that has changed? How do you move the translation up to the next version? * Can't translators take the latest mif files from you and use TRADOS to identify what has changed? * What if the database from the translator is out-of-date? Can't they build a new one based on new files? * Is there really a difference in this process (re:TRADOS) if we used Word? I think we're making this way harder than it needs to be and would appreciate your input. Please, can you CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], as I am on the digest. Thanks, Alexandra Duffy Senior Technical Writer Nemetschek NA _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send list messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/bgagne%40husky.ca Send administrative questions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info. _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send list messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/archive%40mail-archive.com Send administrative questions to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.