Translation?

[obair]

On 1 Meitheamh 2006, at 6:37 am, Geoff Hart wrote:

> >Paul wondered: <<Our docs in English will not be finalized until 
> about 4 weeks before they must be given to the customer in another 
> language (mid-August). A translation will take about 4 weeks.>>
>
> >I'm assuming you mean that this is the translator's estimate given a 
> careful estimate of the amount of work you have described to them? The 
> less accurate your estimate, the more room you need to leave for 
> slippage (time overruns).  It's worth noting that the exact match 
> between the two time periods sends up a red flag for me: there's no 
> room in that estimate for slippage, which is inevitable in many 
> projects. That means you need to find a way to free up time at the end 
> to correct any problems.
> >For future projects, it's well worth your while to figure out a way 
> to get the developers to freeze the interface and the features far in 
> advance of the deadline. These parts are easier to design well, test, 
> and freeze early in the design process so developers can subsequently 
> focus on the actual plumbing that makes the product work. If you can 
> achieve this, it's conceivable that you can come close to final 
> documentation well in advance of completion of the programming.

That would be great, but it can't happen in this case.  Maybe 95% done 
in advance of July 1, but they can't freeze the GUI before their 
promised "gold" date.

> <<It has been suggested that I should turn over to the translator now 
> those chapters that we expect will have no or almost no changes, since 
> it would be impossible to have the entire translation done and the 
> docs printed and bound etc in the 4 week window starting in 
> mid-July.>>
>
> > This makes good sense. First, it allows the translators to begin 
> developing a terminology list (for the sake of standardization) and 
> researching any problematic words or phrases. It will also give them 
> an idea of whether you understand the concept of consistency and, if 
> not, provide advice on how you can achieve it. Second, if there really 
> are only minor changes, this means that some parts of the translation 
> will be complete before you've even sent them the final parts. If 
> there are subsequent changes (e.g., the name of the "Output" menu is 
> finally changed to "Print" <g>), these are easy to make globally.

Yes, it does seem like this might be a good thing. I do have some 
chapters that are unlikely to change.

I guess I could use mif2go to convert chapters one at a time so I could 
send the translator selected chapters.  I would rather keep the Word 
content (coming from Frame) in one large Word file, since I know the 
Master pages "feature" in Word works as well as I play the tuba.

Now, if I could just find the many hours it will take to get mif2go 
conversion working right...

best,
Paul