Translators

[Diane Gaskill]

Verner, all,

I agree with Richard.  I've just now finished some in-depth research on this
for my company.  We are converting from Word to FM and will be localizing
our docs.  While you can easily convert FM to clean, usable, RTF via Mif2go,
getting the Word file back to FM is not straightforward.  You can use a 3rd
party vendor like Enlaso to do it for you, but there do not seem to be any
good Word->FM filters on the market.  As I'm sure most of you know, the
filters in FM are not what you might call robust, to put it nicely.  They
are the old Mastersoft filters that Adobe added when they bought FM, just to
say that FM could import Word. I do not know if they have ever been updated,
but I can definitely tell you that they do not work well.  They convert text
just fine, but not graphics, and tables often require a lot of cleanup
before they are usable.  Fortunatly there are tools such as Tablecleaner Pro
to handle that.

The better solution is to hire a localization vendor that can take FM files
and give you back FM files.  Most of them can.  But if you choose to use
in-house linguists, and some of them do not want to use a new tool, fire
them and hire people who will.  Yes, I am serious.  Having managed pubs for
ten years, I believe that professional people who are worth keeping do not
bury their heads in the sand and refuse to learn new tools.  You have a job
to get done.  Tell them that they either do what is needed to help keep your
company profitable or they can find a company that uses only Word. I'm sure
there are some out there.

Incidentally, the later versions of the Translators Workbench (including the
S-Tagger) can open MIF files directly and work with them.  The linguists do
not have to have or use Word files.

One other note regarding localization, Word, and FM.  Many localization
vendors will charge you 20% MORE to translate Word files than FM files.
There are two reasons for this:
   1) Graphics are generally embedded in Word.  The vendor will have to take
those with text in them out of Word, translate the text, and manually put
them back.  This can cost as much as $25 per graphic, per language, and it
adds up fast.  I'm sure I don't have to explain how FM eliminates this
procedure.
   2)Word is well known to have several major problems, including unstable
autonumbering and crashing if the files are large.  You get charged for the
extra time the vendor has to take to re-do work because of those problems.

Diane Gaskill
Hitachi Data Systems
======================

-----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 Combs, Richard
Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 10:00 AM
To: Andersen, Verner Engell VEA; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: RE: Translators


Andersen, Verner Engell VEA wrote:

> We are migrating from MS Word to Framemaker. Many of our 22
> translators will use FrameMaker or Trados S-tagger. Some,
> however, will only us MS Word as they cannot or will not
> learn a new tool.
>
> How do we give them a Word file?

While it's possible, by various methods others have suggested, why would
your company want to incurr the extra expense and trouble of repeatedly
converting from FM to Word and back again?

It seems to me that if you've decided to migrate to FM, you've decided
to migrate to FM -- why do translators who "cannot or will not learn a
new tool" get to veto that decision? If they won't accommodate your
company's decision, replace them.

Richard


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




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