FW: Best Practice for Using the DITA CONREF Attribute for Translation (coming)

["JoAnn Hackos" <joann.hackos@comtech-serv.com>]

Hello All!

I wanted to let you know that our Conref BP is already being referenced and addressing translation problems.

JoAnn

 

JoAnn T. Hackos, PhD
President
Comtech Services, Inc.
710 Kipling Street, Suite 400
Denver, CO 80215
303-232-7586
joann.hackos@comtech-serv.com
joannhackos Skype

www.comtech-serv.com

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Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 10:40 AM
To: JoAnn Hackos
Subject: Best Practice for Using the DITA CONREF Attribute for Translation (coming)

 

Hi JoAnn,

 

I was wondering if you have a draft copy of the the best practice document,  Best Practice for Using the DITA CONREF Attribute for Translation. I was wondering if it had information pertaining to a particular situation we're trying to resolve.

 

As you know, we have a few customers who are working with the translation vendors such as SDL and Idiom. The issue we are experiencing is that when customers use conrefs for managing variables this creates issues for the TMS as the TMS does not resolve conrefs.

 

Here's what one particular customer has discovered:

 

We're run into a translation issue regarding our liberal use of conrefs to our variables file. After talking with SDL, it seems our use of conref-ed variables greatly complicates the linguist's job in determining how to create gender-specific articles, plurals, and possesives. This complication raises the translation costs quite significantly.

 

Do you have any suggestions on how this type of conref use could be best managed in DITA for translation?

 

Thanks!

 

Chia