Translation Memory and Reuse

This Forum is for general issues about MadCap Lingo
Post Reply
Madeline
Propeller Head
Posts: 40
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2017 7:49 pm

Translation Memory and Reuse

Post by Madeline »

I've just installed the trial version of Madcap. Our main driver is to try and reduce translation costs which are significant currently. I produce manuals for manufacturing equipment which are all 'one-offs' but generally very similar to something we've produced before. On top of this, 40 pages of content in each manual is exactly the same between all manuals in a project and all manuals between projects. We currently produce each manual (there's between 5 and 15 manuals for most projects) as one word document and all the word documents are sent for translation. When we start a new project, we find the most similar Word document, save a copy and update this for the new project. This workflow means we've got no way of identifying the changes between projects and when it comes to translation, the whole document is sent off again even if we had a previously very similar document translated.

The agency we use currently have a translation memory they leverage to reduce the cost to us but I’m trying to understand if we’ll get further benefits by using Lingo. We’re currently charged as follows:
Our pricing structure: untranslated is full rate, ‘fuzzy match’ is between 45% and 65% of full rate, and exact matches from the Memory are 30% of full rate.

So what I’m trying to understand is that if we have our own translation memory in Lingo or topic reuse between projects, can we avoid this 30% charge on reused content? And I think this is actually two questions:
- If a single project reuses snippets multiple times, are these only sent for translation once when a project is bundled for translation?
- If a project uses a snippet that’s been translated in a previous project and that snippet is linked from the global project, that won’t be sent for retranslation?

Thanks
Madeline
sdriggars
Propeller Head
Posts: 26
Joined: Wed Sep 03, 2008 2:00 pm

Re: Translation Memory and Reuse

Post by sdriggars »

Within individual projects, the snippets only have to be translated once. When you send the Lingo project for translation, the snippet file can be included in the translation bundle, so even if it is used 100 times in the project, it only has to be translated one time.

I'm not quite sure how to answer your global project question as I don't do that, but I think it would be the similar. Once the snippet is translated, the translation is stored in the translation memory. Assuming all your projects use the same TM, if you import the snippet into a project and apply the TM, it will find the match.
--Stephen
Post Reply