Some beginner questions

[helen]

Morning

I have a few starter questions about translating my Flare Project from English to another language. I've got a workflow in my head - I'm wondering if I've got it right.

- Create Project in Flare
- Open Flare content in Lingo and create a TMX File bundle
- Send to human translator
- Receive TMX bundle back - import into Lingo
- Save back into Flare

Is there some way that Flare and Lingo contol what I change in between that translation and the next release? For example if I tweak a couple of paragraphs, add some new content and juggle things around - how will I know what I need to resend for translation?

Also, if Lingo is just a tranlsator then I'm not sure that will work for me as I won't trust it to get things remotely correct. What I guess I'm looking for is a way to translate content once and be able to find out quickly what needs re-translating for the next release.

Perhaps Lingo does a rough translation before the human gets involved thinking about it? Then again, that's room for error straight away so I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with that notion either. I can't seem to work out what it does despite lots of reading, I've not worked with TMX files before either so any advice there would be lovely. We'll be sending the content to an external contractor for translation - they will have nothing to do with Flare or Lingo.

Thanks in advance!

[Richard Ferrell]

Greetings,
Here is the current work flow in MadCap Lingo:
- Create a project in Flare
- Import Flare project into MadCap Lingo and translate contents
- Export translated project back to Flare (It creates a new FLPRJ file)
- Open project and review in Flare

Your translator doesn’t need to have Flare; they just need a copy of MadCap Lingo. Once they are done translating, they will export contents into a new translated Flare project. Then, they can zip the project and send it back to you via e-mail.
You can control what you change in between translations and the next release by creating a Diff project in Lingo. So if you add content, change content, move content, etc, Lingo will let you know exactly what and where was changed when you create a Diff project.
TMX files are another great advantage in Lingo. The purpose of Translation Memory eXchange (TMX) is to allow easier transmission of translation memory data between tools and/or translation vendors with little or no loss of critical data during the process. In Lingo, you can import TMX files from tools such as Trados, CATALYST, and across. This allows you to leverage all prior translations, whether or not they occurred on the same project or document. By importing a TMX file into Lingo, all of your past translation work will become available as suggestions when you are localizing content in Lingo. Then, when you have finished translating content in Lingo, you can export the TMX files so that they can be used again in the other tools.

Hope this information was useful. Please visit http://www.madcapsoftware.com/training/livedemos.aspx and sign up for a Free Live Demo and to learn more about MadCap Lingo.

Thanks!

[forfear]

Morning

Is there some way that Flare and Lingo contol what I change in between that translation and the next release? For example if I tweak a couple of paragraphs, add some new content and juggle things around - how will I know what I need to resend for translation?

We tried translating in Flare without Lingo. Its hard doing it in Flare without Lingo.
Its doable if its a one-off effort, but its unlikely to be sustainable for long term documents that are updated on a periodic basis.

If you have made changes to a project that is already translated, Lingo provides you with the Difference proejct feature which highlights only the segments or items that need to be updated or retranslated. This answers your question quoted above.

Download the trial. I've gone down the path of translation of simply making a copy of the project. I've been doing that since robohelp. Its not the way if there is a better option.

[helen]

Thanks for the replies! The problem I've got is I have to translate the CHM for a customer - however I doubt very much our chosen translator will have Lingo so I'm trying to work out where this leaves me. I have all 3000+ topics needing translation and then I obviously need to build it afterwards to dispatch it with the application when it ships. I'll ask the translator company if they work with Lingo but I'm expecting them to say no.

Do I understand correctly I could purchase Lingo and create a TMX package for my translator to translate and that wouldn't require them to have Lingo? Then I get the TMX bundle back and and can take it from there? I can't play with the trial for another 2 weeks as I'm out of the office and I don't want my 30 day trial to tick down. This sounds like the best idea to me - I just want to check I've got things right really! I guess I'll get a Flare and Lingo trial going at home first and see what does what and take it from there. Sounds fun!

[NealPozner]

Unfortunately, the TMX files are not the files that need to be translated, but the result of completed translations. When you open a project in Lingo, the Flare topics are broken into strings - these strings are then translated by a translator. As each string is translated, that translation is saved into a Translation Memory (TM) database. As more strings are translated, the TM grows. Previous translations of strings can be leveraged for strings that are identical or similar in other topics - so the TM becomes more useful, and translations move faster, as one gets deeper into the translation process.

TMX files are used to import and export the contents of the TM so they can be shared across different TM databases.

[forfear]

I have all 3000+ topics needing translation and then I obviously need to build it afterwards to dispatch it with the application when it ships.
.....Sounds fun!

That's pretty darn positive.

3000+ topics is about near right and justified to go ahead with Lingo. If you're gonna be doing maintenance, i imagine this be about the right thing to do.

Lingo will import your flare project.
Lingo simply identifies all the strings that need to be translated.
When you're done,
Then you need to use Lingo to export it all back to a new standard separate Flare project (as the translated version)
You will use Flare to do all the Webhelp and HTML Help builds. Lingo does none of this.