Hi Alexandra, I have been working in the translation area since the early 90's, and now do freelance work for numerouse translation houses. I have been working with unstructured framemaker since version 3.0 Unix. If you find a good translation agency then you will have an up to date memory (database) for your documents. You should not have to do any extra work on you Framemaker documents at all. When you send an updated document or even a new document to the translation agency they will do an analysis of your document(s) against the memory (database) that they have on file. This will allow them to see how much of the document will have to be is new. They will then use this memory (database) to translate you document(s). This will update your memory (database) to contain the new or changed information from your new document(s).
Before I became a freelancer I worked for AT&T's and Lucent Technologies' in-house translation department. We worked heavily in Framemaker and used Trados as our Translation Memory software. We were very satisfied with the way Trados worked with these files. Later we out-sourced a lot of out translation and DTP work. We would receive the documents from the translation agency and as a normal practice we would regenerate any generated text (TOC, Index etc.). In the beginning we would find problems with the regeneration, usually in the Index. We would fix this but would also let the translation agency know what problems we were finding. One thing you want to remember is that the memory (database) is yours. When you work with a translation agency make sure that you discuss this with them up front. If you decide to move to a new agency you can then provide them with the memory, otherwise the new agency will have to start from scratch with your translation. There are was to recreate the memory (database) but it will cost you. For one of the translation agencies I work with I use Trados or SDLX to do analysis on there documents and in a lot of cases do the DTP once it comes back from the translators. I still work in Framemaker along with most of the other desktop publishing software and graphic software on the market. If you have additional questions please let me know and I will do my best to answer. Z ****************************************************************** Ann Zdunczyk President a2z Publishing, Inc. Language Layout & Translation Consulting Phone: (336)922-1271 Fax: (336)922-4980 Cell: (336)456-4493 http://www.a2z-pub.com ******************************************************************
