Translating FM files into Japanese

[Gillian Flato]

Stephen,

Trados format is simply saving the files, in Frame, to RTF or MIF. Both formats can be imported to Trados. What he could be charging you for is desktop publishing. After he translates the content, he will have to massage it to look good in Frame. Japanese characters are extremely different than English so they take up different spaces on a page and have a different orientation.

Rather than hire one individual,  I would recommend hiring a professional translation vendor. I think you'll get a better price and higher quality than from an individual. A translation vendor usually has a QA team with linguists on it who will proofread the translation before it gets back to you.

-Gillian

From: framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com [mailto:framers-bounces at lists.frameusers.com] On Behalf Of Stephen O'Brien
Sent: Friday, June 28, 2013 7:16 AM
To: Frame Users (framers at lists.frameusers.com)
Subject: Translating FM files into Japonese

Hi,

We have located a translator in Japan to translate a 300-page training booklet written in English. The document is very largely table based with typically an image in row 1 and the caption underneath in row 2 with straddled narrow columns containing arrows to show a sequence of actions.

The translator is charging reasonable translation costs and then there is an additional 12$/page cost because the files are from FrameMaker. When we questioned that cost, he asked if we could provide files in Trados format. Maybe he is not familiar with FrameMaker files.

Anyway, I find this strange as in the past I have always provided FM files and the company doing the translation took care of everything else on their side. I received my Fm files translated into the target language from which I made PDFs.

Can anyone familiar with translating FM files explain why the individual is requesting files in Trados format? Can that be done - just pay a company to generate Trados files from FM files?

Many thanks (cold and wet here in Quebec City at 10 Celcius),

Stephen O'BRIEN
Coordonnateur à la documentation et rédacteur technique senior | Documentation Coordinator and Senior Technical Writer
InnovMetric Logiciels | Software
sobrien at innovmetric.com<mailto:sobrien at innovmetric.com>
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