Exporting translations to Flare or keeping them in Lingo

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Dave1975
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Posts: 53
Joined: Thu Sep 15, 2016 4:25 am
Location: Belgium

Exporting translations to Flare or keeping them in Lingo

Post by Dave1975 »

Hi everyone,

We are about to have some of our Flare outputs (PDF + Online Help) translated into 12 languages by an external company. I will be sending them a bundle XLIFF created in Lingo.

Decision I have to make now is whether to export the translated results into seperate Flare projects for each language and build the outputs from there or keem them all in Lingo and let my source Flare project pick up the translated versions at build time.

A couple of thoughts/questions here:
The way I see it, keeping everything in Lingo will make things simpler. Downside is that the build time will of course increase.
Are there any specific reasons why you would use one solution or the other?

In general, would there be a specific reason for not using Lingo at all and just having the Flare project translated?

thank you

regards

David
Uwe Schwenk
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Posts: 58
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2016 12:30 pm

Re: Exporting translations to Flare or keeping them in Lingo

Post by Uwe Schwenk »

David,

before I reply in more detail, I have 2 questions for you.

1. Are you releasing all 12 languages simultaneously?
2. How often are updates planned?

Regards,
Uwe Schwenk
L10N Coordinator
Dave1975
Propeller Head
Posts: 53
Joined: Thu Sep 15, 2016 4:25 am
Location: Belgium

Re: Exporting translations to Flare or keeping them in Lingo

Post by Dave1975 »

Hi Uwe,

Yes, the objective is to release all languages in one go.

Updates only take place at major software releases, which is once a year.

thanks

regards

David
Uwe Schwenk
Propeller Head
Posts: 58
Joined: Tue Feb 23, 2016 12:30 pm

Re: Exporting translations to Flare or keeping them in Lingo

Post by Uwe Schwenk »

Dave,
first of all thanks for the answer. This helps a lot.

Here is my take on the options available based on your reply.

Option 1 – Keep everything in Lingo
While this is certainly an opinion, keep in mind one thing: If you keep everything in Lingo and make for example changes in the English and then compile and publish it before the changes are translated into the relevant languages, the languages will contain the English until they are translated and re-compiled. As for the compile time yes it takes time but the issue here is if something goes wrong its more difficult to track down and you often have to compile the whole set versus the individual languages

Option 2 – Use Lingo and export to Flare and compile individually
Using Lingo and exporting to the Flare projects and them compiling and publishing the Flare projects will provide a bit more work on your end, but it also provides you more control because you can compile languages individually and if you have issues in one languages you don’t need to compile all of them again.

If you use the first option, all languages will be in one directory with subdirectories for the languages and you have a drop-down list where the user can select his/her language. This will work well if the languages are all combined into one release. If the language are published to different locations, its not a good option, because you would have to move them around. The second option provides more flexibility in that regard.
In regards to using one option or the other, this will greatly depend on the direction your company will go and I cant really give you a good answer on that one.

As for not using Lingo at all and have the vendor just translate the Flare projects this is also an option but again, that depends on your company and how much control you want to exercise over your translations. For example I am set up where I prep everything send it to the vendor/s get it back and compile the projects and maintain the translation memories. However, this is based on my requirements as well as the general direction the company is heading. As stated before, it depends greatly on what your company will do now as well as further down the road.

HTH
Uwe Schwenk
L10N Coordinator
Dave1975
Propeller Head
Posts: 53
Joined: Thu Sep 15, 2016 4:25 am
Location: Belgium

Re: Exporting translations to Flare or keeping them in Lingo

Post by Dave1975 »

Hi Uwe,

Sorry for my late reply, have been involved in another project for a couple of weeks.

Thanks for providing your take. One thing I would like to mention is indeed that all languages will need to be published to the same webserver location for our online help system but I do see your point that exporting to new Flare projects gives you better control.

If I understand correctly, this also means that every change you make in the English source project will always need to pass through Lingo in order to appear in the translated projects?

regards

David
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