Re: Translation: Word vs Framemaker vs Indesign

[David Neeley <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Catherine,

Depending upon your documentation release cycles, I can see that
version control would be a huge difficulty with so many language
targets.

If you are not already doing it, I suggest you begin to examine the
various content management systems around with an eye toward keeping
the entire document base in all the required languages. Thus, when a
change only involves rewriting a part of a manual, the only part that
must be translated is the part that changed. Often, this can be
extremely beneficial in terms of cost and convenience.

Today, this can be done very inexpensively in terms of acquisition
costs--but at the cost of some learning and integration time. I have
been learning about a newly released filesystem for Linux called
Reiser4 that appears to be an extremely efficient and high-speed XML
store directly in the filesystem. It can use plugins to perform
various operations on the data that is stored.

However, even if you use the more "pricey" of the CMS systems--for
example, Documentum as it's well known by now--you would find great
savings in the translation costs--in many cases, enough to offset the
cost of purchasing, installing, and converting to the CMS to begin
with.

Others have already addressed the Frame issue--and Bruce has quite
correctly pointed out you could also do what you are doing now in
OpenOffice.org with no acquisition costs. However, you would most
likely have to either save the data as Rich Text Format or, perhaps,
write an XSLT to translate the native OpenOffice format (XML) to
something the translation folks can deal with directly.

Personally, what I would *not* do is to keep the whole mess in Word.
So much is broken with it in terms of long docs (have they ever fixed
the auto numbering or master doc features?)...and the output .doc
files are both unnecessarily large and some what fragile.

I think the direction InDesign is taking is clear--in the not so
distant future, it is to replace Frame entirely--once long doc
features are well-enough fleshed out in the InDesign product. This was
a statement made by Adobe's CEO in a streaming video interview made
just prior to the launch of Frame 7--which had their marketing people
going crazy for a while trying to deny. There is no denying that
InDesign is a much more modern code base capable of easier maintenance
and upgrades. Adding the Frame-like features to it as well--and a
surprising number are already there, by the way--will make it
enormously capable but very complex, no doubt.

Thus, at the moment if you have the time, budget, and motivation--I
would look at the CMS solutions and what it might take to convert your
existing doc base to make full use of them. Then, I would use the most
suitable input tools for the CMS you select. This should, when the
transition is complete, greatly reduce the time to market of all your
language versions while saving a good bit of money in the process. You
would have to study the system you select and your own needs to
determine what a reasonable payback period might be.

David

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