Content change management on equal topics in multilingual Flare projects

[henkjans]

Hello,
I am a Dutch Flare user and I write manuals/documentation/online-help in more than 20 languages (Flare projects).
Due to laws and regulations in the European Union, I have to write the content in the user's language.
I'm looking for fellow Flare users who are also write equal Flare projects in different languages and use some sort of content management to track changes.

In other words:
when I change a topic in the Dutch (source) language, a tool alerts me that I must also edit all corresponding topics in the related 20 languages.

Has anyone used a work environment or tool for this?

And, is there a fellow Flare user who writes documentation in multilingual Flare projects? To possibly share some information.

Many thanks in advance,
Henk Jan

[trent the thief]

Hi Henk,

I believe for the most part, Flare authors needing translation are using MadCap Lingo. It lets you make your primary language updates and then you export out all the text into Lingo where someone would handle the translations. Then you bring the lingo output back into Flare.

That's a very, very basic description.

This covers it better:

https://www.madcapsoftware.com/products/lingo/#content

[henkjans]

Trent, thanks for your answer.
I do know what Lingo is and does.
But what I ment to ask is a tool which only points me to the files that must be translated when I changed one source topic.

Example:
Next files must be equal (but in different languages)

Dutch.htm = German.htm = English.htm = French.htm = Spanish.htm

Now I edit (change) the content of Dutch.htm.
The tool I'm looking for notifice me that I have to change German.htm, English.htm, French.htm and Spanish.htm as well. The tool sees this by the different that arise in the time/date stamp of the files.

I hope I make myself clear now.

[trent the thief]

Ah, now I understand.

I'm unaware of such a feature, but that sounds very useful. Anything that helps make the output better is a good thing

As a manual process, it would depend on the project structure (concepts/relationships/snippets/microcontent) and benefit by adding scripting.

With all the files living beneath their own language sub-directories (en, es, cn), I would create a separate target and use post-build scripting to gather each cross-reference and internal hyperlink and use those to build language equivalent links to include in the output as a text popup beside each "original" link.

If you have the budget for it, contacting Mattias Sander at improvementsoft[dot]com might be an easier path. He makes plugins for Flare. You can use the website or Flare's Slack channels at improvementsoft-plugins.