Generating translated online help

[Wroblewski, Victoria]

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Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2012 11:00:01 -0600 (CST)
From: Nancy Allison <maker at verizon.net>
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Generating translated online help

Hi, all.

We use FrameMaker 10 and RoboHelp 9 in a Windows 7 environment.

If you manage many translations, how do you handle the online help? 

In the past, in English only, we have produced a .chm file that currently is linked only to the main page through a Help menu item. (If it matters for translation considerations, I am pushing hard for context-sensitive help in the future.)

Does your translation house take your FrameMaker files and your sample English RoboHelp output, and generate the online help for you in all your translated languages?

Or do you take the translated FM files and generate the translated help files in-house?

 (snip)
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The big benefit to generating the files in-house is that you have more control over them.  If you may need to change any settings for the project, or may need to change information (like they decide to rename the product at the last minute), it's much easier to just do them rather than re-submit to a translations house, etc.  Also, if you suddenly find you have to produce something else, you can cobble things together with what you already have translated (within the past year, we needed to quickly throw together a quick reference and we luckily had all the information we needed from the Frame files for a help project, which we had gotten translated - was the work of about 30 minutes to have a PDF of the information in all the translated languages).

That said... you do have to plan for your own time to generate all the files.  If you do decide to create them in-house, you also need to make sure you have a localized template if you're importing from Frame (so all the things like auto text are also translated into the languages you need, etc.).

It is a much more sane process to just send them the output files and have them return output files, but usually if there are risks of parts of the project changing or needing to re-purpose your translations, it's often the best practice to generate your help in-house.

- V