Translation questions

[Gagne, Bernard (Bolton)]

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an issue of an out-of-date translation database unless you flip between two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: framers-bounces+bgagne=husky.ca at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+bgagne=husky.ca at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of
Alexandra Duffy
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 12:12 PM
To: framers at 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: aduffy at nemetschek.net, as I am on the digest.

Thanks,

Alexandra Duffy
Senior Technical Writer
Nemetschek NA
_______________________________________________


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