FM to MIF structure messed (noob help)

[MiikaelVolk]

Hi all,

I am kinda familiar with Adobe Illustrator and InDesign etc, but taking my first steps with FrameMaker. I am using FrameMaker for converting FM files to MIF in order to be translated in some other software.

Now a problem has occured that some of the MIF files have the structure messed up. Some blocks have moved into other blocks where they should not be. For example, some pragraphs have moved inside image caption block. 

As I am new to FM - is there more to save as MIF than simply Save As? Some settings or checkboxes to be mindful of?

[Bob_Niland]

Have you tried to open the MIF(s) in the FM that made them?

What version of FM do you have, and what version to the translators have?

Theoretically, Save-as-MIF is all you need. Indeed, doing that can be used to clean-up a .fm binary that has some problems. this is called a "MIF wash", and is menu option in newer FMs. On older FMs, you'd just save as MIF, then re-open in FM.

[Matt-Tech Comm Tools]

What's the other software? The software or service vendor would be the best qualified to give you advice on prepping the files.

Generally though, there's an XLIFF export that is more efficient (both $$ and time) than a MIF workflow; have you looked at that?

Here's a video I made on the process: 

[MiikaelVolk]

The other software is Trados Studio. I'll definately check out XLIFF, thanks!

Can this also be automated? Sometimes there are hundreds of files that need to be translated. Our customers can deal with MIF, but it could be that in the case of XLIFF we need to add one more step for importing the translations?

[MiikaelVolk · Accepted solution]

UPDATE: It seems that the problem was not with FrameMaker after all. It looks like the structure got messed up in the translation software (Trados Studio) instead.