Translation cost comparison

[Alison Craig]

Actually, FrameMaker translation costs *can* be higher and I have some apples to apples experience on this.

When I first moved our manuals to FrameMaker, I sent the files for a trial quote as the final product was 99.9% identical to the Word file content I used to create the FM files - which had already been translated. The counts were measurably different with the Frame counts coming in higher. I had to push the LSP to clean up their act.

I have been told by more than one translation firm rep that some non-translation text (formatting, conditional text markers, etc) often ends up being counted as translatable content when extracting from Frame sources. And my personal experiences bears this out.

You have to be very aware of your actual Frame content and make comparisons to the total word counts in the LSP's quote (use the Frame word count function to give you a good feel for the number of translatable words).

Also, if you use more than one LSP, get competing quotes for jobs and compare the numbers between the quotes. This is something you have to stay on top of.

The flip side is you get way better content returned to you. If you tweak your own translations you will be amazed at the quality of a returned Frame doc vs a Word doc.

Alison

Alison Craig, Technical Writer
Ultrasonix Medical Corporation
Tel: (604) 279-8550, ext 127
E-mail: alison.craig at ultrasonix.com<mailto:alison.craig at ultrasonix.com>


________________________________
From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Roy Lewis
Sent: February 24, 2011 8:16 AM
To: Framers
Subject: OT: Translation cost comparison

I apologize for going off topic but can anyone point to figures that compares translation costs for Framemaker documents compared to MSWord documents. Someone told me Frame was generally cheaper, but they could not supply a source for the data.
Thanks,
Roy


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.frameusers.com/pipermail/framers-frameusers.com/attachments/20110224/dc63e624/attachment.htm>