Translating Help content to multiple languages

[MDennetti]

I am currently using RoboHelp 11, but will soon be moving to version 2017. I am planning to translate Help content to multiple languages and would like to ask the following questions please:

• Is it best to create a new project for the translated content as a copy of the original project, or can translated content be added to the original project, and then be outputted using Conditional Build tags, for example?
• For the above approaches, are there any functions in RoboHelp which could help with the translation process, including the tracking of topics that have been sent for translation, etc.
• Any recommendations or "gotchas" for using RoboHelp for the translation of Help content? Languages may include both Asian and European languages.

[Peter Grainge]

A lot of this has been covered several times over so please search on translate and come back with specifics not covered there or below.

Creating a copy of the project for each language and giving those to an agency that works with RoboHelp translation has some benefits. Principally they put each copy into a database, translate and give you back the translated version. On updating, you give them the newer copies and they know what has changed so you only pay for translating the changed content. Check your agency works that way.

The CBT method has the downside that the filename and topic title (I think) will get displayed in English no matter what else gets translated. I doubt an agency would work that way as updating would not be so clear cut.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

[MDennetti]

Apologies. I will come back with some more targeted questions.Thanks very much for your advice so far.

[MDennetti]

From my research, it looks like the recommended approach is to send a copy of the project to the agency. However, I was wondering if anyone has had any success keeping translated and non translated content in the same project, and if so, does RoboHelp version 11 or version 2017 offer any functionality to support this way of working?

[Peter Grainge]

There is nothing specific to translation other than as described above, namely build tags to exclude content not relevant to a language.

The big difference between using a specialist RoboHelp agency, is their software tracks changes to minimise work when updating. Using one project is not the way they work. If you are doing it in-house you could have one project but you then have the problem of tracking changes. You also have the issue of certain parts would always be in the main language.

Set up a simple project with just a few topics and then try translating that to see what I mean.

I am basing this on what I have learned from following these forums and talking to people. If a practitioner can add something, please do.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring information

@petergrainge

[MDennetti]

Thanks. These comments are helping me get a feel for the risks and challenges I may face in translating content. I was wondering if anyone has encountered any significant problems using languages such as Chinese and Japanese in their RoboHelp projects in versions 11 and later. As this is something I have never done before, and have not had the opportunity to test, I am not sure what problems might be encountered using these languages.

[Jared Hess]

You've prob already received answers to your Chinese and Japanese related questions. But if not...

We localize our RH projects into 16 languages, including Chinese and Japanese and generate .chm files.
In our case, we submit our entire RH project to our localization department. They work with translators to translate just the .hts, .hhc, .hhk, and .htm files.

Regarding Chinese and Japanese issues (all multi-byte langs and in some other languages too), you will run into issues if your output is a .chm format and try to build from your normal English language settings. In those cases, certain strings (like terms in the index and to and Related Topics buttons etc) appear as gobbedlygook gook characters if you don't change your comptuer's System Locale in Control Panel's language setttings to match the desired language.

Also, watch out for printable format with Asian languages. I've had them do weird things to tables and you have to manually correct the tables in the generated .doc output.

In HTML5 output, things seem to behave better.

[MDennetti]

Thanks very much.