Pagemaker to FrameMaker conversion

[Combs, Richard]

Carol J. Elkins wrote: 
 
> Thanks for your comments. Unfortunately, my client doesn't 
> know what he wants other than to reduce the twice yearly 
> expense of printing the Spanish version of this book. I 
> maintain this manual in FrameMaker and the gal who maintains 
> the Spanish version works in PageMaker. I think my client 
> needs to consider a new vendor for the Spanish version. Here 
<snip>
> 
> I suggested to my client that we might convert the doc to 
> FrameMaker and have a "professional" manage revisions to the 
> Spanish version. That would, at first glimpse, be a better 
> idea than having my FrameMaker version translated to Spanish. 

I have no direct experience with either localization or conversion from
PM to FM, so I may be way off base, but... If the English version is in
FM, and it's the original source for the translated version, then I'd
_really_, _really_ prefer to start with the FM version. 

It seems to me that it would be relatively easy for a Spanish speaker to
replace the English text in your FM files with the corresponding Spanish
text (assuming the existing translations are of good quality). Just
pasting plain text and applying pgf and char tags as you go should go
fairly quickly. The callouts will simply have to be redone properly --
but you have the translated wording to work from. 

The result would be a Spanish FM book that matched your English FM book
-- not just in appearance/layout, but in all the "plumbing" -- graphics,
xrefs, variables, running headers/footers, generated lists, etc. I
suspect that result would be at best very difficult and time-consuming
to achieve if you start from the PM version. 

Maybe I'm off-base, but that's my $0.02. 

Richard 


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Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
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