Advice Needed for Translations

[straygoat]

Hello all,

I've just had a chat with a client who is dealing with a translation company for their project. They have proposed a solution that, to me, sounds like the wrong approach. I wondered what you guys would think.

The situation is this - the client currently has a project in English that is continuously updated. The project consists of several guides. For the Chinese market and French market, the customers get the first two guides in their native language and the remaining guides in English (I'm not sure of the reasons for this). The translation company have asked for the entire Flare project in English and will then translate the first two guides and return the project. While this is going on, the UK authors will continue to update the English help. When the translation is returned, the UK team will need to compare their updated English version with the English bits that have been returned by the translation company, and replace the older bits with the latest versions. That will mean that there is an English only project that is up to date, a Chinese project that has some English that will be out of date, and also a French project with another set of English that will also be out of date. Seems like madness to me, and against the single source idea.

Is it just me, or would it be best to provide the translation company with a project that only contains the bits they actually need to translate. Then, when they have done that, the UK team can just create a new TOC that includes the translated Chinese plus the latest English guides. So there is only ever 1 set of English topics - the most up to date ones. Anything that is translated just gets added to the English content in a separate target.

I hope that makes sense!

[Msquared]

Are you expecting the translators to update anything in the English project you send them? I would expect them to return you a separate French project, from which you can build your French outputs and a separate Chinese project, from which you can build your Chinese outputs. I would expect the English-only outputs to still be built from the English projects as normal. I wouldn't expect the translators to touch the English project, nor copy any of it into the foreign language projects, but just to use it as a source for the translation.

Am I missing something?

[straygoat]

No, the translators wouldn't translate anything in the English parts.

I'll try and make it clearer (because it is a mess!)

The 'Chinese' help consists of 2 guides in Chinese and 10+ guides that remain in English. The translation company want the entire project in English, and then they will translate the relevant 2 guides into Chinese and return those with the 10+ other guides that remain in English.

BUT while the translators are working on the translation, the tech authors will be updating the 'real' English project. So when the translators return the Chinese version, the English topics in the Chinese project will be out of date. The tech authors will then have to replace the English topics in the Chinese help with the up-to-date topics from the 'real' English project. To me, this seems like it is defeating the point of single sourcing - wouldn't it be better to just give the translation company the bits that get translated into Chinese? Then when they return the topics that are translated, the tech authors just create a new TOC that consists of the 2 Chinese guides + the relevant English guides. That way, there's only ever 1 set of English guides and it is always the latest one.

[techwriter31]

When sending files for translation, we only send the files that actually require translation to ensure that we are only charged for the topics that are translated. While probably not ideal, this can sometimes require that we make a copy of the project and save it to a temporary location and manually delete the files that we don't want translated prior to sending it. (Given the cost of translations, we have to ensure that we're only translating what we have to.)

I guess the question is - what is the value in sending the translation company all of the content?

It seems like the English guides should only be produced from one location - the English project. If the writers want/need the English outputs in the translated projects, it seems like they could use the External Resources feature, or something similar, to map and sync to these English outputs.

[straygoat]

Thanks for the reply. I agree with you - I don't see why the translators should get content that they are not translating. I think the best approach would be to create a project with just the stuff they translate, then when it comes back, create a TOC for it that also includes stuff from our English project.

[i-tietz]

Honestly - I don't see the problem there ...
Why don't you copy the translated files - and only those - into the updated project and leave the stale english files in the "translated project"? Or is the structure of the project too chaotic to find them? Then maybe you ought to change that ...

[straygoat]

Thanks I-tietz. I don't think we had considered having the chinese bits in added into the main, up-to-date English project. That might just work for now (as the foreign language projects get bigger, it will go beyond Flare's memory limit though).

[straygoat]

Thinking about it, that solution isn't going to work either - because the filenames of the Chinese topics have to remain identical to the filenames of their English equivalents so that hyperlinks/cross-refs are maintained. You can't have files with the same name in the same project.

What would be nice is a substitute option instead of merge, so I could create a TOC that lets me swap out one topic for a different one and Flare alters the links for me.

[i-tietz]

Thinking about it, that solution isn't going to work either - because the filenames of the Chinese topics have to remain identical to the filenames of their English equivalents so that hyperlinks/cross-refs are maintained. You can't have files with the same name in the same project.

What would be nice is a substitute option instead of merge, so I could create a TOC that lets me swap out one topic for a different one and Flare alters the links for me.

Then you would need a copy of the english project and copy the chinese files into that copy ...

Or:
Can't you do sth like that with project linking? You have the english-only files in the global project and have the translated files in separate projects and import the global one ... or sth like that ... ?
You can do the import and then do the build of the target. There's even an option (in the target?) that says sth like "always import before build".

[straygoat]

Yes, your first option would work...it's just that it means the 'master' English version has to be copied into separate projects for each language. Which isn't exactly a single source solution is it?

I think that is the only possible solution for the time being. I've asked MadCap about it, so maybe it will result in another feature request.

Thanks for your help.