It was Bruce Foster. http://home.comcast.net/~bruce.foster/products.htm
Z ****************************************************************** Ann Zdunczyk President a2z Publishing, Inc. Language Layout & Translation Consulting Phone: (336)922-1271 Fax: (336)922-4980 Cell: (336)456-4493 http://www.a2z-pub.com ****************************************************************** -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Diane Gaskill Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 4:36 PM To: Alexandra Duffy; framers@lists.frameusers.com Subject: RE: Translation questions Hi Alexandra, As you may know, Trados is now a part of SDL International. I have a contact there who can provide answers to any questions you have about Trados. I will send you his contact information offline. Ann's message contains good advice, especially about the TM. Also, since you are creating and sending MIFs to the your L10N vendor, you can save a bit of time with a great FM plugin called MIFsave (saves all FM files in a book to MIF). I've had it so long I've forgotten who wrote it (probably Bruce or Chris) but I am pretty sure you can find it on the FrameUsers website. If you read the white paper I think you mean, I really need to find time to update it. Processes and tools have changed a lot since I wrote it (for example, Trados now uses MIF directly). I'm working on it when I have time. I also would like to make a comment on L10N vendors. AS you may now realize, the lowest bidder is not always the best value for your money. The most important considerations when hiring an L10N vendor are that they have technical knowledge in the product area you are in and that they can do the job you need them to do. From your email, it sounds like it might be a good idea to consider another vendor. It might cost you a little more up front, but but if the vendor has a good QA process and provides better quality, the savings in time and work would be worth it, not to mention the reduction in worry and frustration. If I can help further, please let me know. You can send me a check via email. :-) Best, Diane Gaskill ========================= -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Alexandra Duffy Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 9:12 AM 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/dgcaller%40earthlink.net 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/azdunczyk%40triad.rr.com 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.
