Lingo and RoboHelp

[Lucia]

Hello,

I work in a company where many documentation teams already use RoboHelp for documentation.

In the team I work, we still use a combo of FrontPage + FAR.

We are now testing other tools, and also analysing the documentation <-> translation workflow, as we have international versions of the product.

So what I'm doing right it to test Flare + Lingo, and also RoboHelp + Lingo, and I need to present the comparison of the workflows.

I'd like to know if any of you works with Lingo and RoboHelp and how is your workflow. Any tips or best practices?

[RamonS]

Unless I missed something, Lingo works only with Flare projects. That would mean importing the RH project into Flare, translate with Lingo, then take the Flare project and somehow make it back into a RoboHelp project. I admit I haven't used the newer versions of RH, but I hardly think it has any particular advantages over Flare. I think the constellation RH + Lingo is non-starter from the get go.

[Lucia]

Hello Ramon,

It's possible to translate RoboHelp files in Flare, but not as a project. So once I've translated all the files I have to reorganize the translated files in my second language project.

I know working with Flare and Lingo is much better. But the situation I'm into is that I have to "prove" that the workflow Flare <-> Lingo is much easier than the RoboHelp <-> Lingo one. And I just want to be sure that I'm not missing any information.

[RamonS]

It's possible to translate RoboHelp files in Flare, but not as a project. So once I've translated all the files I have to reorganize the translated files in my second language project.

Yea, isn't that the argument you are looking for? Because of the import and reorganization steps that get added when throwing RH into the mix the workflow with Flare will be easier. Besides that, unless you have RH and Flare already you'd need to pay for two HATs on top of Lingo. Using Flare & Lingo exclusively saves the license cost for RH, which I guess would cut the expense by at least a third.
I think it makes more sense to compare Flare & Lingo against RoboHelp & some other translation tool. Although I am supposed to advertise for MadCap's products (well, I guess not really) looking at a less Flare centric translation tool may help all teams. It is like picking development environments and programming languages. If you use Java, Python, or PHP you have plenty of choices for IDE. If you decide to use Delphi or C# you are stuck with one option, which obviously is the best one. Same for Lingo. If you already use Flare then using Lingo is a very good choice as translation tool (I cannot say if it is the best as I do not know much about other professional translation tools). If you are using RH, FrontPage, and a bunch of other tools then using Lingo is an option, but there may be better fits.
The question to ask is if there is any interest in standardizing on Flare across all teams. If yes, going with Lingo is likely the best choice to start off with. Many companies that have diverse development and documentation teams eventually reach a point where settling for one suite makes more sense financially, but also logistically as corporate design rules are easier implemented and maintained. It is also easier to give the same look & feel and make all products appear as if they indeed come from the same company.
I work at a place where many companies got glued together and slowly the process of shifting from a bunch of companies to one company making a bunch of products takes place. In our case the decision from the top was to put all eggs into the Microsoft basket (and the ones banking squarely on Silverlight for RIAs already regret doing so), because then we get much better licensing deals and free access to MTCs and such plus a joint-venture project. My guess is that eventually the documentation teams get to be on the same platform as well and I am convinced it is not Frame or RoboHelp.

I think in order to give some better advice on the path to take we'd need to know what the goal is. Is the goal to pick just one translation tool, because you need one or is it to pick a standard combo of tools across teams? My guess is that the intention is to stick with RH and plug some translation tool on top of that. You may want to ask folks in the RH forums or on the HATT list if you haven't done so already. And that is about as much advice and suggestions I can give. I'm working exclusively in Flare, so for translation needs Lingo is the way to go.