Localizing Robohelp 7 Project

Yes, you'll want to work with the source files. The content of those files gets written to other files when you generate your output. As Colum said, I have set Notepad as the program to always open those file types with.

Just open them in Notepad via Windows Explorer. Take a copy first and make sure your project is closed before you do so.

Sorry I assume you mean the HHC, HHK, and GLO files in the project source folder.

HI Ben,

How do you open the HHK, HHC and GLO files; they are not html. If I try to open it asks what program I want to open them with....so I don't think they could either.

By the way I started to copy the text of the topic titles into the toc entries to save time.

HI Ben,

How do you open the HHK, HHC and GLO files; they are not html. If I try to open it asks what program I want to open them with....so I don't think they could either.

By the way I started to copy the text of the topic titles into the toc entries to save time.

For the TOC, you could copy the title text from each topic back into the TOC entries. Depending on the size of your TOC, that's probably quicker than giving the HHC file to the translators and waiting for them to return it.

The GLO (glossary file) is set up like this for each term and definition:

NAME=term
Definition.

So the translators need to leave the "NAME=" part alone but translate the rest.

As far as the index (HHK file) goes, the terms definitely have to be translated. If I remember correctly, the topic references in the index should automatically work and will show up in Italian as long as the topic title in the Properties dialog for each topic is in Italian.

--Ben

Hi Ben, Thanks for the info...you are very helpful. I have a few more questions. By the way, I didn't rename anything just put each project in a different location.

I received the Italian project back. So I changed the language in the English project to Italian and gave the entire folder to engineering. They dropped all the translated files into to the soure project folder.

I opened the Italian project, upgraded (initially created in RH6), and compiled with no problem....however, the TOC, index and glossary are still in English. How do I handle this. The TOC and index are custom, I did not initially autocreate the TOC based on the Project folder setup, nor did I autocreate the Index.

I am kind of at a loss here and there are seven languages. I can rename the toc books and topics based on info in the PrintDocLayout folder but am sure there must be an easier solution. What am I missing????

Thanks ahead of time

Kathy,

Sorry for the delayed response--I took a long weekend around a holiday here.

What you can do while you're waiting for your translated files to come back is to use Windows Explorer to copy your English project files and make a copy in a new directory for each additional language. Looks like 7 copies in your situation. If you like, in RH, go to File > Rename Project for each project and change the name to indicate which language it is, for example "projectname_es" for the Spanish version. Or you can just name the folder that contains the files according to the language of the project it contains--whatever will help you keep the different projects straight.

Note on renaming: RH changes the name of some of the source files, including the glossary and index, if you rename the project. This means that if you rename your localized projects, for each project you'll need to either (1) import the translated index and glossary; or (2) in Windows Explorer, rename the translated index and glossary files to match whatever RH changed the file names to, and then drop them into the source files over the top of what's there.

Next, in each copy of the project, in File > Project Settings, select the language for that project. Because everything is still in English, RH will show all the words as misspelled words with the red underlining.

When you get the translated files back, you can either import the topic files and replace the ones that are there, or just use Windows Explorer to drop them in over the top of the English files.

quote:

---

This means I would have the same project source files (with same names) for each language but stored in a different directory with each set of output files.

---

Correct, except see the above info about renaming.

quote:

---

Do you have to recompile each?

---

If I understand your question, you do have to generate the WebHelp output from each localized version. Generate the outputs to different folders. So for each language, you have a directory for source files and another directory for the output files. Any time you make a change to any project, the output would have to be generated again to include the change, just like the English version.

With your WebHelp skin, I think you'll want to set it to include the text next to the toolbar buttons (contents, index, etc.), unless you create and use button images with the correct translations for each language.

I hope I answered everything satisfactorily--let me know if there's anything unclear.

--Ben

Hi Ben.
Thanks so much for your input. I agree that keeping translations separate seems easier to manage...I don't what to have a logistical nightmare.

I sent the English version source files out for translation but didn't create separate separate language projects first. This means each translator will send back the original project source files with translated files.

When they come back how do I proceed? Sorry if these questions are elementary. Because I didn't create separate projects first I assume I would have to open my English project and change the project language setting to Spanish, for example. Do I then copy the project source files to another directory and drop in or replace the files)? I guess I would do this for each language. This sounds similar to what you did but backwards. Does anthing else need to be done?

This means I would have the same project source files (with same names) for each language but stored in a different directory with each set of output files.

Do I need to rename anything? Where do I do this? Am I missing anything else? Do you have to recompile each? Did you run into any other problems?

Hope I am somewhat clear here?

Thanks so much for your input. It certainly will make my life easier.

Kathy

I create a version of the project for each language (the standalone projects you mentioned).

You could do it in one project with conditional build tags if you do the following:

1. Add the content for each language to the original English topic.
2. Have a conditional tag and corresponding single source layout for each language.
3. Apply the conditional tag for a language to its content in each topic.
4. Set each language's single source layout to exclude every other language tag.

One of the limitations of doing it this way, though, is that you can still set only one language setting at a time in File > Project Settings. Technically, you could change the project language (and change the project title to the appropriate language) before generating the output for that language, but that could get tedious very quickly. This is one of the reasons I don't do it this way; another reason is that I already have conditional tags for roles, so complicating that with language tags would turn a single project into a monster.

I import the English version of each topic into my translated projects. Then I submit my English HTML topics to our translation group, and when they send them back in each language, I drop them into the project using Windows Explorer. That's just the process I've fallen into, though it would probably be easier to just import the translated topics into the appropriate project.

Trying to import each translated topic into the same project and keeping them as separate topics could make TOCs and indexes difficult to manage.

At the end of the day, no matter which approach you take, you will still end up with one set of output files for each language that should be kept in separate directories. Which approach to the source files you take mostly affects your management of the files.

Hope this novel helps

Ben