Translation questions

Tue Oct 10 07:44:32 PDT 2006

Alexandra,

I definitely echo Karen's advice about Word.  We have some Word docs (don't
even ask)and two vendors we use told us that they will charge us 25% more to
translate docs in Word than docs in Frame.  Why?  Because the graphics are
all embedded in Word and they have to take them out and replace them with
the translated ones.  This is a manual process and takes time. And they
charge for -everything- they do.  The other reason is that they expect Word
to crash a few times during the process and that they will have to do some
of the work over.  And then there is the autonumbering...   Well, everybody
knows how stable Word is, right?

Most vendors accept FM files.  You do not need to save the files to MIF.
One of the advantages of sending FM files is that they are binary and are a
lot smaller than the ASCII MIF files.  Zipping the files solves the size
problem, but saving to MIF is an extra step that you don't need to do.

I'm not sure that Karen is right about vendors charging you for words that
have already been translated when you are using a TM.  I'm pretty sure ours
does not, but check with your vendor to be sure.

Diane
=========================

-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+dgcaller=earthlink.net at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+dgcaller=earthlink.net at lists.frameusers.com]On
Behalf Of Karen Story
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 10:14 AM
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Re: Translation questions

Hi Alexandra,

To save money, we break our books into small files, and only hand off the
files that have changed. This saves us a lot of money in translation costs,
but it means that we have to do all the file integration and resolve missing
fonts and a few other issues. Every so often we hand off the whole book,
because the older sections get out of alignment with the translation memory.
If your compay can afford it, it's best to always hand off everything to the
vendor.

We hand off FrameMaker files, not mif files.

* Can't translators take the latest mif files from you and use TRADOS to
identify what has changed?

Yes, but they will charge you for every word, even the words that were
already translated.

* What if the database from the translator is out-of-date? Can't they
build a new one based on new files?

Yes, but this costs money.

* Is there really a difference in this process (re:TRADOS) if we used
Word?

Don't use Word! The Frame to Mif to Trados and back process works just fine.

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 12:12:13 -0400
From: "Alexandra Duffy" <aduffy at nemetschek.net>
Subject: Translation questions
To: <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Message-ID:
	<D95492FBBB38E9479AE33C0FC06AC0FC681568 at EXCHANGE.nemetschek.net>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"

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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