Translating documentation/insertion of screen shots

["Laurah Limbrick" <laurah_limbrick -at- csgsystems -dot- com>]

Hi all. I'm hoping someone out there has some experience with this issue.

We are working on our first project which involves translation. Our current
doc set is several thousand pages, with commensurate screen shots. The plan
for doc translation is that we (the documentation team) will be provided
with the translated GUI, and, using our current user docs as a guide, will
replace all screen shots in the English doc with the translated shots by
stepping through the foreign language GUI. The language for this first
go-round is Spanish, and so the assumption has been made that "everything in
the GUI will be in the exact same place", so that lack of knowledge of the
target language should (theoretically) not be a problem. Future customers
may not be using Roman alphabets, which may be an issue in that "just count
three items over on the menu bar, then count down two on the drop-down menu"
may not be an option, especially as it concerns data entry and keyboard
mapping.

I understand that it will be less costly than having our translation vendor
perform the task; however, since most of the documentation group doesn't
know the target language, I do have a few questions about the process.

My questions to you are:

1. Has anyone here undertaken such a project? How did it work out?
2. How do you account for the lack of knowledge of the target language? Was
this an issue?
3. We don't have the luxury of using a side-by-side computer approach (one
in English, one in Spanish). Presumably this will prove to be a usability
test of our English docs, since we'll have to step through the instructions.
Comments?

Thanks very much for any information you can give us.

Laurah
--
Laurah Limbrick
Instructional Designer
Open Systems Technical Information Development
CSG Systems, Inc.
303.200.3364



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