I am currently looking at translating several of our Flare (V11) projects and I tried out a few things with Lingo (V9). Since my projects are all based on global project linking, I am trying to decide what the best workflow is to get the best of single sourcing while keeping the translation process nice and simple.
So far, I tried two different workflows which both have their pros and cons:
Workflow A:
For each project, I import it straight into Lingo, translate it and export it back into a new translated Flare project.
Pros:
- - The workflow couldn't be simpler!
- - I need to deactivate manually the "Auto-reimport before Generate Output" in the translated flare project before generating the translated targets. If I don't do this, my original untranslated global project files will replace my translated files, including snippets, CSS, etc. This is a pain because any change for example in a CSS in the global project means going through the complete lingo process again... On all projects
- I need to apply several changes to the translated project before generating the translated targets. For example, I need to change the publish destinations so that the translated project does not replace the original
- This workflow is (really) bad for single sourcing: all my global files go through the translation process for every project and that doesn't seem right
- I couldn't find a way to exclude some content (unused topics or internal comments for example) that I don't want to be translated
- 1. I translate my global project using Lingo and export it into a translated global project copy
2. from my original project, I create an export using a target which excludes content I don't want to translate (e.g. internal comments, copyright snippet page from the global project, etc.).
3. I translate the exported content by importing it into Lingo and exporting it back into a temporary Flare project
4. I create a translated project and set it up to automatically import both the translated copy of the global project and the translated exported content (e.g. *.html, *.png, etc.)
- - this workflow separates project specific content from global project content and ressources. For example, if I need to make a minor change in my global CSS, I only need to update all my translated copies of the global project and recompile all my project, without opening Lingo
- I have quite a lot of control on content I want to translate or not using the export fonction in Flare. For example I can translate docs chapters by chapters, which is basically how we work at the moment
- some global content is translated only once, which is the aim of single sourcing
- - Sacrebleu ! Does it really need to be that complex?
Thanx in advance for any feedback on this.