Database > Formatted HTML files?

Subject: Database > Formatted HTML files?
From: "Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 13:10:38 -0400

Rowena Hart reports: <<I'm talking about translating English into French,
Spanish, etc. The average response to my question seems to be that I should
avoid putting my text into a database, because translators will work in
whatever file
format I give them. For example, I could deliver the HTML files from my web
help project to the translator, who would simply return the HTML files with
all of the visible English translated into the target language. They would
leave the HTML tags and other format strings alone. Is this correct, or have
I misunderstood people's responses?>>

This sounds pretty close to correct. The translators will tell you which
formats they can work with, and how best to prepare files in these formats,
and you should never begin this kind of project without talking to the
translators first. Find out right from the start how you should work so as
to save them and you lots of grief. But in general, they should be able to
work directly in your source files if you're using standard software such as
Word or Frame. One thing to watch out for is hyperlinks: when you translate
a file, you have to decide whether to translate the hidden text that your
software uses to define the hyperlinks. For example, if your English text is
"Open file" and the hidden text used to define the destination for this link
becomes "open_file", do you change the text to "Ouvrir fichier" and the link
to "ouvrir_fichier"? That's consistent, but it creates a problem if you're
going to be the person who maintains the help file: you need to understand
the translation well enough to confirm that the links still go to the
correct place after translation.

<<Of course, I would prefer to simply author my online help text in RoboHelp
and forget about databases altogether.>>

That seems to be the best approach. The types of databases you're probably
thinking of are useful primarily in two situations. In the first, you're
generating dynamic Web pages on the fly using active server pages or some
form of database-enabled Web software; in that case, it makes good sense to
store your text in a database, and the translation process would have to
take this storage into account. Would the translator work with the database,
or with the raw text before you put it into the database? The second case
would be when you're producing a large body of work with lots of repetitive
text, in which case your translators can reap considerable benefits from a
machine translation system or translation memory system that stores the
standard translations in a database. In that case, it's the translator, not
you, who maintains the database.

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
"User's advocate" online monthly at
www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/usersadvocate.html

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that
English is about as pure as a cribhouse [We're Happily Overcoming Repulsive
E-mailfiltering]. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has
pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle
their pockets for new vocabulary."-- James D. Nicoll

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