Localization management

[gdulinsky]

Hi,

I've developed some manual with Framemaker. Now I need to translate that manual to other language. And here is the question actually:

Is there any built-in tool or additional software to manage such translations. The common tasks for that tool are:

- notifications about changes in some parts of primary manual (which need corresponding changes in localized versions)

- managing images and other language-dependent content (screenshots for different languages may vary)

and so on.

I would be grateful for any advice about solving this task.

Thanks.

[susmur]

There are a number of so-called translation memory tools that can translate MIF files. There's a Wikipedia article on translation memory tools: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_memory

We use Star Transit, but SDL Trados can do the job as well and there are a number of other tools. These tools separate text from formatted. Then the text is segemented. This allows you to reuse previous translations when the source documents is modified. Only new and modified segements will have to be translated then. These tools are very useful, but most of them are very expensive. A pretty new tool which is more affordable is memoQ (which I have never used myself). It is available from http://en.kilgray.com/.

As for screenshots, I think the most important thing is to make sure that they are imported by reference.

HTH

Susanne

[Tigdave]

This topic comes up every few months, so check out the forum archives.

One of my earlier treatises can be found by searching  for "managing multilingual document"

Good luck.

Dave