Sunday, December 7, 2008

Single-Sourcing, Translation Savings

If you output your content into different formats, you know how important single-sourcing is in content creation. When you consolidate recurring information and build your files from a single source regardless of formats, you are also able to maximize the leveraging power from your translation memories and minimize your costs. For instance, if you have a lot of content for brochures and marketing materials, you can re-use a lot of it for websites without re-writing it for html files. Therefore, the translations used for those brochures are re-used for the website.

Many of the current authoring tools offer the flexibility to single-source. Quark 8® offers the option to create XML based content and output files in Flash. Adobe FrameMaker® also allows outputting content for help files when the structured content is stored as raw content in XML format instead of a manual. When you consolidate your material and start single-sourcing, you are able to save time and re-use your content across your output formats. Translation consistency is also enhanced, and you are able to maximize the use of translation memories.

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