Multilingual Help

Report · Mar 15, 2009

Hi, My question is, where can I find detailed instructions, or could anyone explain how to create a Multilingual Help Project?

I have checked the Help and Forum, but found just a simple affirmation that it could be done, not how.

I already have 5 Help files in English, French, Spanish, German and Dutch. They all have obviously their own .doc, and indexes, and they have the same Topic ID # that have been translated into each language.

How do you create a new project that includes all 5 projects?

A straight step-by-step guide would be most appreciated, as my understanding of RoboHelp is still quite limited, KISS (Keep it Stupid Simple!), Thanks!

Report · Mar 15, 2009

There's an article on Adobe's site but it is for RH HTML.

Not sure how you would go about it in RH for Word. The article refers to using agencies so maybe such an agency would guide you on what they need to work with you.

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/robohelp/

Help others by clicking Correct Answer if the question is answered. Found the answer elsewhere? Share it here. "Upvote" is for useful posts.

Report · Mar 15, 2009

Welcome to our community, Help Debutante

I'm not sure why you would want all five languages in a single project. I would think that if you are localizing, you would actually want to have a separate project for each language. Especially if you are doing Context Sensitive Help (CSH). I would think that separate projects would simplify creating CSH as you wouldn't have to monkey about with map id weirdness.

Hopefully someone that has worked with multilingual (single project) files will pop in to advise us on how they work. Until that happens, here are my own thoughts about a possible approach. Note that my thoughts are reflecting RoboHelp 7 or 8. Earlier versions won't make some of my steps easy.

* Duplicate TOC files.
A different TOC structure for each language.

* Duplicate Index files.
A different Index file for each language.

* Duplicate Glossary files.
A different Glossary file for each language.

* Duplicate Snippets.
I would think you would need multiple copies of any snippets used. One copy for each language.

* Duplicate Topic files.
I would imagine each topic would have matching topics in different languages.

* Duplicate Browse Sequence files.
Different Browse Sequences for each language.

* Duplicate controls.
Any Related Topics or See Also controls would likely need to be duplicated. One for each language.

Cheers... Rick

Report · Mar 15, 2009

Here I am again doing my Homer Simpson impression.

D'oh

I see my post stepped on my colleague Peter's! Sorry Peter. Didn't see you there. You must have sneaked in between!

Cheers all... Rick

(Who is longing to hit Rock Bottom)

Report · Mar 15, 2009

Hmm, I guess that a courageous one will beat the path and figure out a way to do it at some point, but I think I will leave that to more knowledgeable people and not venture in such uncertain terrain for now...

I guess we'll just keep working with our 5 (and growing) projects in different languages for now.

We were just looking for an easy way to keep track of modifications and thought maybe a single project could do that. But I guess it's not as easy as it sounds...

For now, I'll just go back to figuring out how to make the Macros work...