Translation Issues

["F. Marc de Piolenc" <piolenc -at- mozcom -dot- com>]

[ Issue:
All of these manuals must be translated into other languages. I am
trying to
come up with a way of writing/organizing the manuals such that when
something changes or is updated, only that paragraph/section needs to be
re-translated, not the entire manual or chapter (for translation cost
reasons). Right now the plan is to have these manuals in HTML format.
The
easiest solution to me would be to write them in FrameMaker, and convert
them to nice, clean, pretty HTML using WebWorks Publisher. However, the
catch is that the translators use Word, not FrameMaker. ]

Speaking as a free-lance translator with ten years in the business, the
above sounds very odd. I have been forced to begin using Word (which I
despise) BECAUSE CLIENTS SPECIFIED IT. I prefer to work in plain text
and let my client do all the formatting by importing the text into a
suitable DTP or typesetting package, but I have to go with the flow. The
very idea of translators imposing a format on their clients is
unthinkable to me, and I can't imagine why you would remain a client of
such an agency. In this field as in any other, the customer is always
right because he is paying.

It makes more sense to have text translated by the translators, and have
the formatting done by pros in that field. It is generally cheaper and
faster, too, with fewer miscommunications.

Feel free to contact me off-list. It should be possible to devise a
system that gets you what you want at reasonable cost, in reasonable
time.

Marc de Piolenc
Autodidactics