Newbie Question re: Translation Work Process

[Mark Barratt]

Lin Surasky wrote:

> OpenOffice wasn't as buggy as Word. We could output the Frame content
> directly to XML which the translation tool can deal with. However, can
> we get it back into Frame cleanly? 

Yes. This is what we do (but see caution at the end):

In a structured Frame binary file, with an XML application, which 
round-trips successfully (ie you can save as XML and open the xml file 
through Frame + the apprpriate Structured Application with no changes or 
losses), export the file and translate. Then import the result. Easy.

You might wish to add an attribute such as xml:lang to some or all of 
your elements. You can use this to enable language-specific 
spell-checking in Frame, and also as an identifier to tell other 
post-processors what they are dealing with.

Caution 1: If you are using XML as a 'native' save format for Frame 
files that don't have a Structure Application (DTD, read-write rules, 
etc), you are on your own. It should just work, but we don't use that 
process.

Caution 2: This may not work well for languages outside Frame's 
character sets, because the result may not render properly in Frame. I 
don't know enough (ie anything) about how Frame renders Japanese/Chinese 
from xml utf-8-encoded files to guess at what happens, and I'm sure that 
other writing systems (Arabic, for example) are not supported.

best

-- 
Mark Barratt
Text Matters

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