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Subject:Re: What do you brief translation agencies? From:ahowell -at- poolmail -dot- dolphinsoftware -dot- com To:"Jennifer O Neill" <jennifer -dot- oneill -at- village -dot- uunet -dot- be> Date:Wed, 3 Nov 1999 15:04:14 -0500
It is *extremely* important to let anybody DTPing your docs know what fonts
you're using. We used to go as far as to send them copies of all the fonts we
used (a widely-practiced, but technically not very kosher procedure). Most
companies will ask you what format your docs are in and by default will return
them in the same format, if they can. It sounds like they may be a Mac outfit,
which may explain why they didn't have CorelDraw. But the Corel/Illustrator
issue shouldn't really be a problem since files are easily translated between
the two.
You can never go into too much detail with a design/DTP firm -- even the most
profession firms can't read your mind (and if they try, you may not like the
results :-))
"Jennifer O Neill" <jennifer -dot- oneill -at- village -dot- uunet -dot- be> on 11/03/99 02:14:28 PM
Please respond to "Jennifer O Neill" <jennifer -dot- oneill -at- village -dot- uunet -dot- be>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
cc: (bcc: Ann Howell/Dolphin)
Subject: What do you brief translation agencies?
We've just received some manuals and labels from a well known translation
agency which were translated from English into several Western and Eastern
European languages. Translation and DTP were part of the price. The manuals
were in PM and the labels in Coreldraw.
We're dissapointed with the DTP results: they're not like the English
versions. Some of hte labels were returned in Illustrator, which we can open
in Coreldraw admitedly. Many of the files had font problems. The Polish PM
manual was awful. A couple of PM files we couldn't open.
With hindsight we should probably have told them the fonts we used but then
again they never asked us either so we didn't think about possible problems.
We're annoyed we got files back in a format different from that we gave them
(Illustrator not Coreldraw). My question: in how much detail should you
brief a translation agency when giving them a contract? It seems silly to
tell them we'd like the files back in the same format, or at least so I
thought until now. What should you tell them abouts fonts? I has assumed we
were paying for DTP expertise (which they said) so where did we go wrong in
briefing them? Thanks. We will complain to them.
