Best way to lock content from translation

[Boone]

Does anyone have a best practice recommendations for locking down content in a project being sent for translation to prevent it from being translated?

Would the lock feature be used for this - which would be labor-intensive to open the files and lock the content - or is there a way to lock entire files or folders?

[doc_guy]

My guess would be that you would put conditions on the topics/folders that you want (or don't want) translated. Then when you send your project for translation, you could do an Export Project, where you can choose to include or exclude specific conditions. That way the resulting project that you sent to your translation vendor would only have the content that you wanted to send for translation.

[Boone]

Thanks again!

We usually use project zip instead of project export, but I'm starting to really see the benefits of using export instead. I'm going to try your solution of excluding conditional-ized content from the export. This may also help with the word count statistic; I could run the statistics on the exported project and none of the excluded content would be counted.

On a related note: do you know if content that is locked via the Flare "lock" feature is excluded from the word count? Do you know if locked content would be excluded from translation tools?

[doc_guy]

Locking files is only in relation to source control. It prevents other users from editing a file you are working in. And not all source control providers have the feature. For example, you can't lock a file if you use GIT, because the way GIT works locking a file doesn't make sense.

So, no locking files won't help you with translation or work count issues. It is simply a way to keep other people, who are using the same source control repository as you, from editing files you are working in, with the goal of preventing merge conflicts.

[Boone]

Thanks for the reply. I'm familiar with locking/unlocking files via source control, but this is not the feature I was referring to - sorry, I wasn't clear. I'm referring to the icon under the Flare Review ribbon named "Lock". This icon opens the following menu options: Mark Element(s) to be Locked, Enable Locks, Show Locked Elements.
The feature is described in MadCap Flare Help topic "Locking Elements".

[doc_guy]

Oh. Thanks for the clarification. No that won't affect word count. It only prevents others from editing portions of your topic if you send it out for review in MadCap Contributor. I don't believe it would be excluded from translation, because it is a content review feature, not intended to have any effect on translation. But I don't know that for a fact. Just my assumption.