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Subject:Trados as a style guide enforcement tool From:"Joe Campo" <jcampo -at- solidworks -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 24 Jun 2004 10:11:29 -0400
I know basically nothing about Trados, so please pardon my ignorance about this tool. I have questions about using Trados as a style guide enforcer. The goal is to reduce the variety in our writing styles, reduce the word count, and make our documentation leaner and more consistent. We are about 7 writers total.
Most of our documentation is online help, all created with RoboHelp HTML.
The original documentation is written in English, then localized in-house to 11 languages or so. All translators have RoboHelp and Trados. I believe their Trados vocabulary memory is fairly mature/well-developed because our documentation set is at least 7 years old, if not more.
When writers write new documentation, the writers try to enforce our style guide. We depend on ourselves as writers and peer editors to enforce the style guide.
My questions:
- Could the writers use the Trados translation memory as a base, and run our new English documentation, or even our changed documentation, through that memory to try to enforce our style guide? Does any writer or translator have experience using Trados this way?
- Would the writers have to be very proficient in Trados to do this, or would this be not too difficult to learn?
- Does anyone have relevant experience automating style guide enforcement another way, and if yes, how do you achieve this?
I searched the archives using keyword Trados and found some related info about making terminology databases from Hedley in Oct2002. We also investigated a forced content management system a few years ago, but we unconvinced it was adequate.
Thanks.
Joseph Campo
Technical Writer | Documentation Department
SolidWorks Corporation | 300 Baker Avenue | Concord | MA | 01742 | USA
Phone: +1-978-371-5164 | Fax: +1-978-371-7303 | jcampo -at- solidworks -dot- com
www.solidworks.com
SolidWorks - The World's #1 Mainstream 3D Design Software
#1 in production | #1 in customer satisfaction | #1 in sales
JoeC.
Joseph Campo
Technical Writer | Documentation Department
SolidWorks Corporation | 300 Baker Avenue | Concord | MA | 01742 | USA
Phone: +1-978-371-5164 | Fax: +1-978-371-7303 | jcampo -at- solidworks -dot- com
www.solidworks.com
SolidWorks - The World's #1 Mainstream 3D Design Software
#1 in production | #1 in customer satisfaction | #1 in sales
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