Arabic translations from English FrameMaker files

[Tanya.Griffin at codan.com.au]

FrameMaker V7.1 (English)
Windows XP Pro SP2 Multi-lingual in Arabic language environment

I am unable to access the archives to view any previous discussions on this
matter.

There are websites out there that suggest you can force FrameMaker to play
the game with Arabic text. I am currently massaging English templates to
use with Arabic text, and having to overcome many obstacles; so far I have
discovered some workarounds to achieve the same end, so I have kept going.
Our biggest obstacle is the random insertion of text (not at the cursor
point), and application of character tags and conditional tags that change
the selected text to something completely different. I am assuming that
this is due to the lack of support for unicode characters. This appears to
be a show-stopper. Has anyone had any success in this field? Are there any
plug-ins available? Is it time to abandon commonsense and resort to Word?

If it can work, does anyone know of an Arabic dictionary that can be
slotted into the file system for use with FrameMaker? Currently I have
assigned None as the language in all paragraph and character tags, but it
would be most useful to assign an Arabic dictionary.

Regards,

Tanya Griffin
Technical Documentation Manager
Codan Limited

81 Graves Street
NEWTON SA 5074

Phone:      +61 8 8305 0457
Fax:  +61 8 8305 0411
Email:      tanya.griffin at codan.com.au