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One time, we needed our On-Line Manual translated into Spanish for a
Venezuelan company. We looked at translation companies and they were
outrageous. There were about 800 HTML pages. We wound up hiring two
people from a temp agency. One from Mexico and one from Peru. Both
Spanish but with considerable differences in dialect. They had technical
backgrounds and basically worked together and agreeing on acceptable
language.
It cost the company a few thousand dollars but was way cheaper than
sending to an independent company for translation. That would have been
in the tens of thousands if I recall correctly.
So, that may be a possibility for you.
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+mschmidt=weathercentral -dot- tv -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+mschmidt=weathercentral -dot- tv -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com]
On Behalf Of Gene Kim-Eng
Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2006 11:26 AM
To: Martinek, Carla; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Crazy situation: Customer responsible for translation
This is what every company that does not localize does.
All customers who receive documentation in a language
other than their own translate the contents into their own.
Some hire a translator, others do it internally, but most
do it in their heads as they struggle to figure out what
your foreign (to them) language documents are trying
to tell them. If Trina's company has made a decision
not to do its own tranlations, it has already given up
control of how its product information is ultimately
delivered to every end user who does not natively
read its own language, and if it has decided to even
suggest to a customer that the customer could produce
its own translated documents it has already laid itself
open to all the liability and other possible issues.
Worrying about what file formats to provide (which
was all Trina's question to the list was about) is like
fretting over what color to paint the lifeboats on the
Titanic.
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