How to Tango with Lingo

The ICD production room heats up every time there are files that are incompatible with SDLX™ or Trados™ . We have to find a work around, and it's usually more complicated or costly. Fortunately, the guys at MadCap Software™ decided to create Lingo that allows translation companies to work with files created by Flare™ and Blaze™ (MadCap's help file software). They were thinking ahead instead of waiting for SDLX or Trados to come up with a filter.

What it basically does is allow a translator to translate content from Flare into an SDLX environment without using SDLX. So you get the SDLX translation environment (left column source language segments/ right column target language segments) in Lingo, and it also allows you to create a translation memory for content reuse, and a TMX (Translation Memory eXchange) so you can import/export the file to SDLX or other translation tools. It also eliminates the problem of content transfer or extraction from a Madcap program into another software program. What it does not do is analyze the files for repeat content (saving you money), and build a memory from previously translated files.

One more thing, Lingo does not translate the content for you. Automated translations like Google translate are crappy and only work for very simple sentences or independent words. Technical terms and sentences with context value are usually inaccurate with automated translations. Therefore, if you are using Flare or Blaze, you can acquire Lingo, import the Flare or Blaze file, export your content as a TMX, and send the TMX file to the translation company. They'll analyze the file and translate the TMX. You get a translated TMX back, you import it in Lingo and you have a translated help file.

Well, thank you MadCap for thinking ahead, and reducing the stress for all of us in the translation and localization business.

Paper Out, Websites In

During lunch today, my colleagues and I had a discussion about the end of printed materials. Will magazine printing and book publications finally come to an end? Will we stop reading printed copies of newspapers? Well, almost every publication has an online subscription, and most major news organizations have reports and videos on the web. It's a natural progression from print media to online reading or viewing. I used to get subscriptions for auto magazines (yes, I'm a big car geek), but now I just read blogs and edmunds.com for the latest news. Occasionally, I would print an article or two if I wanted to read it at the gym, or if I have to wait in line at the DMV (hell on earth). I think it's safe to say that printed publications may come to an end in the near future, but what does that mean for translated content?

Many websites are translated, and most marketing content that appears on the web is translated. As the print media slowly dies off, the shift to web based formats will see steady birth rate. This will change the game for translation companies as they have to adapt to on-demand or live translations as content gets updated frequently, and there is no boundary to the 24 hour news cycle. Some companies have employed machine translations that are linked to an existing term base to generate professionally translated terms and ensure a certain level of consistency. It may work for smaller volumes of non-scientific or non-mechanical content, but the lack of a human translator in those fields will cause major terminology errors. The resulting effect will devastate a clients reputation. The move to CMS and database driven websites eases the translation and localization process, but a 24hour on-call human translator is still a few years away. The hybrid alternative is having a machine translation do most of the work, and a translator or editor review and edit the content. This is a little time consuming, but it will have a better result than purely relying on machine translations.

Only time will tell how far we move away from print media, and how much of the internet will consume us all. In the mean time, translation companies are starting to adopt online management tools to handle content. Server based technology has come along way with XML content and DITA constantly evolving, we might have a shot at a purely online world.

The Update Nightmare

Every Technical Communicator knows this tale. The horrors of updating translations of manuals, or updating content on a website. Is there too much content that I might get charged full prices? Maybe there's recycled content in the memory? Should I just send the updated text and not the whole manual? These are the questions facing Technical Communicators as they decide what they want translated for their updated content. The job isn't any simpler for Project Managers at translation companies. We have to see how much content is in the memory, and figure out the best way to get the content translated and placed back into the document, if required without it costing our client an arm and a leg.

You have some options for waking up from this nightmare. You can build a glossary of terms that you frequently use in your manuals. Then get that glossary translated. If your content is constantly updated, those terms will probably remain the same and appear again, and now those terms are already translated. For websites, if you use a CMS or database driven website, you can ask your translation company to provide you with an authoring tool that links the memory or glossary file with your server (you may have to pay for the licensing, and it all depends on the compatibility of your CMS and the translation companies TMS). This authoring tool will enable you to access the memory and translated glossary as you write the updates. Now you can choose translated phrases or terms, and incorporate it instead of writing completely new phrases that you have to get translated. These options allow you to maximize your translations and ensure consistency on your website's updates.

The Funny and Sad Side of Translation

Here are a few poorly translated signs. They are pretty funny, but it does bring up the importance of translating and understanding the context of the text in question. You can't just translate strings of text without considering the structure of the phrase, or the context that goes with it. I don't think I would order "crap eggs".