atw: Re: Translation and multi-language output - information required

Felicity wrote:
> Hi All,
>

> I am seeking information regarding processes and tools for translating Help 
> to other
> languages.
>
> I work in the documentation team for a software company, and we will soon 
> need to
> produce our Help in Korean, Mandarin and German. This is new for us.
>
> We are going to embark on a project to determine the best solution for us, 
> including
> the right authoring tool (we currently use RoboHelp) and 3rd party 
> translation services.

This is my +no+ means an authoritative answer, but rather one which is based on 
experience in starting down the road you're facing (but leaving before the 
journey was ended).

Several key points, however, stuck out from the research I did on this early in 
the piece, a few years ago (note this may mean some of the following is a 
little out of date):

a.) Asian languages in particular (Korean, Chinese, Japanese etc) require 
different computer encoding lengths, compared with say, English, German etc.   
So, where you can write "A" as one byte (8 bits) for a character in English, 
you may need two bytes ("A9" etc) to allow you to encode and distinguish 
characters used in, say, Mandarin and other Asian languages which have a much 
larger "alphabet" than most European languages.    The Unicode standard has 
been developed for the purpose of standardising this extension of the character 
set(s) used by computers.  (Do see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode if 
you're not aware of this stuff.).  This standard is increasingly accepted as 
the basis to be used for composition and publication of text in an 
international context.

b.) A common (not yet universal?) way of introducing and applying Unicode 
character sets in writing and publishing has involved the development of new 
standards for such protocols as HTML (web format) and XHTML (a successor to 
HTML).  The most common approach has been the adoption of XML as a standard, 
which encompasses an ability to cope with extended character sets such as 
Unicode. (XHMTL is a sub-set of XML, and the .docx format in Word 2007 is a 
(pretty messy) implementation of XML).

c.) This tends to imply that tools which are capable of handling XML formats 
(or a predecessor, SGML)  and doing it with some skill and facility are most 
likely to be useful in handling Asian and some other non-European languages.

c.) If you are looking at the task of translation +and+ maintenance of a body 
of translated documents,  one major method of simplifying the long term 
maintenance task is to break your information up into very small discrete 
pieces.  Most translation tools now work on the basis of being able to deal 
with short runs of text, translating each run once and then, when the text is 
found to be repeated elsewhere, reproducing that translation in any repetitive 
sequences.     If the text itself is easily split up into short runs or units, 
any changes made in the courses of revision of an original document can be more 
easily identified, isolated and retranslated.  It is obviously less expensive 
if a second version of a document is known to have changes only in certain 
limited areas, while the bulk of the translated text remains unaffected.

You will probably need to reassess the tools you use if you are looking to more 
economical methods of allowing for Asian language translation.  Suggestions 
that spring to mind include FrameMaker, which has had compatibility with Asian 
languages for some time,  and now handles "international" XML with some 
facility, as well as the new-comers, AuthorIT and MadCap. I'd be inclined to 
start looking in these directions.    Along the way, however, I'd suggest you 
also seriously look at the "reuse" techniques being adopted in designing bodies 
of XML-based documentation. (See 
http://projects.ischool.washington.edu/tabrooks/344/2004Pages/Projects/XMLforData/XML%20for%20Data%20Reuse%20it%20or%20lose%20it.htm)

Anyone think that RobotHelp is the answer?   It doesn't seem likely to me, but 
in that area, I'm a little out of touch with what's been happening. Last I 
heard, RoboHelp had had an XML-import facility added -- but the "first catch 
your hare" principal seems to apply... ie, how to get it all in XML in the 
first place...





-PeterM
peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool 
trusts either of them. - P.J. O'Rourke
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