Re: [docbook-apps] Multilanguage DocBook documents - best practices needed

[David Cramer <david@thingbag.net>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 07/23/2012 01:58 AM, Jirka Kosek wrote:

+1 with a few addenda below:

> In my experience the following works pretty well:
> 
> 1. Store your source language (usually English) as modular DocBook 
> documents.
> 
> 2. Prior sending document for translation assemble it into one
> large file.

As part of the preprocessing also:

* Profile to remove any internal content, <remark>s, and comments that
won't be in the output and might confuse the issue.
* Normalize the line breaks so you have one line for each block
element (e.g. para, title, etc). That way the translation memory tools
won't be confused if the line wrapping changes between releases.
* If processing it into a single file results in a very large file,
consider chunking back into one file per chapter.

> 3. Use agency which has very good translation software with
> translation memory

Require that they provide the TM as a deliverable so that you can use
it next time even if you select a different vendor.

Get bids from more than one vendor and compare them carefully. There
are many aspects which can affect the price.

> 4. If source document is updated, make one large assembled file
> again -- with translation memory only changed part of documents has
> to be translated again.

In the past, I've had our build produce as an additional artifact an
l10n kit that contained all the preprocessed files and instructions
for the l10n vendor. This process also provided us with a word count
per file which we used to check the vendor's count.

David
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJQDVe8AAoJEMHeSXG7afUhHbAH/i7n9d8MfNgSNDvSaq08e+uH
nw/UwbFELgWF4/O7/An7DrLFcVuHNqCpu8fGxL4o1QPh6NjNAF4gINLmMi5H39Mw
ViWPHfrKvrIqsEpPfDHjdxIEItM6k14Uu8I6zPJb4kG7SM5d+rY/FE//g7X9Y8B2
lrbGT8Dgg5UBTWD2p/QYgXllTsrAV1Pm7sOCRDGIIrW0+mb7vMWVR+3dMhJk0CIj
ADMD1I5vRMqpN/3CAJqK6UCp38kuMLsj06VnUKcSq6Qsu5RdK/VchH3TcaIgcyp1
LM2g1CikULBNbp9A4T0bU2XVXsGh/V92Bq9DgAtOTCMLNAtLbZ81EfBK2kXpPeU=
=1iXX
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----