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I've seen situations in which a company entrusted translation to a
"partner" customer, who bought the product rights and then sold the
translated product in a particular country.
I have many years experience with internationalization and localization,
but without knowing more about your situation, I can't offer much
specific advice.
For example, you say you don't want to hand over Frame files. If this is
an end customer that is buying a single copy/license of your product, I
understand that you don't want to entrust them with your source. You
wouldn't do that with the software, why do it with the documentation?
I am guessing that your company wants to translate the software but not
translate the documentation, and they are doing this for cost reasons.
The strategy is to let the customers decide if they want translated
documentation as well. If so, given them printed books and let them
decide *what* and *how much* they want to translate. In other words, let
them write their own documentation based on yours.
You'll have to decide if you want to insist on retaining the rights to
the work they produce.
By the way, as a localization expert, I think that this is probably a
bad idea.
Joe Malin
Technical Writer
(408)625-1623
jmalin -at- tuvox -dot- com
www.tuvox.com
The views expressed in this document are those of the sender, and do not
necessarily reflect those of TuVox, Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+jmalin=tuvox -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+jmalin=tuvox -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf
Of Trina Pearce
Sent: Wednesday, August 02, 2006 7:35 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Crazy situation: Customer responsible for translation
My company has decided that we will not translate our docs. Our
customers will be responsible.
So now, our doc team is faced with the task of determining what type of
files to provide our customers with so they can have the documentation
translated.
Currently, our delivered English documentation is via PDFs.
WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Word features support for every major Help
format plus PDF, HTML and more. Flexible, precise, and efficient content
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