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If you've seen the average help page for MadCap Flare, that's about
as wordy as I am in the product WebHelp that I create _using_ Flare.
(Hint, they almost never finish a thought above-the-fold, and you'll
often have to scroll three times or more...)
Even my short pages are peppered with drop-down and expanding text,
as well as links and references.
Yow! So, about a million bucks to translate my Help, huh?
Yow!!!
-----Original Message-----
From: Gene Kim-Eng [mailto:techwr -at- genek -dot- com]
Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2011 4:06 PM
To: McLauchlan, Kevin
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Translation costs?
it's been close to 10 years since I did a "first time" translation,
i.e., the localization vendor has no translation memory established
for the client company's reused content, so I can't help you there.
But I recently (last year) ran some localization for a client company
that had an established relationship with an existing vendor, and the
cost was 20 cents a word plus some hourly labor for DTP and review for
each language. A document of roughly 1000 words with text-free
illustrations was translated into 10 different languages at a cost of
about $3000.
Localization cost is primarily based on the number of words. The
number of topics is not relevant unless you're also expecting the
localization vendor to configure mapping. Ideally, your source
material will be in XML so that translated text can be swapped into
existing structure. And try to revise the source content to get the
embedded text out of your graphics before you send it in, because
localized graphics work is billed by the hour and one picture can
easily be worth 1000 words.
Gene Kim-Eng
On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 11:59 AM, McLauchlan, Kevin
<Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> wrote:
> QUESTION: What might be a ball-park guesstimate of the cost to have (say) a 1000-topic WebHelp system translated to one other language, from English?
> Assume a European language or Japanese. Only a few illustrations have text embedded.
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Create and publish documentation through multiple channels with Doc-To-Help.
Choose your authoring formats and get any output you may need. Try
Doc-To-Help, now with MS SharePoint integration, free for 30-days. http://www.doctohelp.com
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