Verner, all, I agree with Richard. I've just now finished some in-depth research on this for my company. We are converting from Word to FM and will be localizing our docs. While you can easily convert FM to clean, usable, RTF via Mif2go, getting the Word file back to FM is not straightforward. You can use a 3rd party vendor like Enlaso to do it for you, but there do not seem to be any good Word->FM filters on the market. As I'm sure most of you know, the filters in FM are not what you might call robust, to put it nicely. They are the old Mastersoft filters that Adobe added when they bought FM, just to say that FM could import Word. I do not know if they have ever been updated, but I can definitely tell you that they do not work well. They convert text just fine, but not graphics, and tables often require a lot of cleanup before they are usable. Fortunatly there are tools such as Tablecleaner Pro to handle that.
The better solution is to hire a localization vendor that can take FM files and give you back FM files. Most of them can. But if you choose to use in-house linguists, and some of them do not want to use a new tool, fire them and hire people who will. Yes, I am serious. Having managed pubs for ten years, I believe that professional people who are worth keeping do not bury their heads in the sand and refuse to learn new tools. You have a job to get done. Tell them that they either do what is needed to help keep your company profitable or they can find a company that uses only Word. I'm sure there are some out there. Incidentally, the later versions of the Translators Workbench (including the S-Tagger) can open MIF files directly and work with them. The linguists do not have to have or use Word files. One other note regarding localization, Word, and FM. Many localization vendors will charge you 20% MORE to translate Word files than FM files. There are two reasons for this: 1) Graphics are generally embedded in Word. The vendor will have to take those with text in them out of Word, translate the text, and manually put them back. This can cost as much as $25 per graphic, per language, and it adds up fast. I'm sure I don't have to explain how FM eliminates this procedure. 2)Word is well known to have several major problems, including unstable autonumbering and crashing if the files are large. You get charged for the extra time the vendor has to take to re-do work because of those problems. Diane Gaskill Hitachi Data Systems ====================== -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:framers-bounces+dgcaller=earthlink.net at lists.frameusers.com]On Behalf Of Combs, Richard Sent: Wednesday, January 03, 2007 10:00 AM To: Andersen, Verner Engell VEA; framers at lists.frameusers.com Subject: RE: Translators Andersen, Verner Engell VEA wrote: > We are migrating from MS Word to Framemaker. Many of our 22 > translators will use FrameMaker or Trados S-tagger. Some, > however, will only us MS Word as they cannot or will not > learn a new tool. > > How do we give them a Word file? While it's possible, by various methods others have suggested, why would your company want to incurr the extra expense and trouble of repeatedly converting from FM to Word and back again? It seems to me that if you've decided to migrate to FM, you've decided to migrate to FM -- why do translators who "cannot or will not learn a new tool" get to veto that decision? If they won't accommodate your company's decision, replace them. Richard ------ Richard G. Combs Senior Technical Writer Polycom, Inc. richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom 303-223-5111 ------ rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom 303-777-0436 ------ _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to Framers as dgcaller at earthlink.net. Send list messages to framers at lists.frameusers.com. To unsubscribe send a blank email to framers-unsubscribe at lists.frameusers.com or visit http://lists.frameusers.com/mailman/options/framers/dgcaller%40earthlink.net Send administrative questions to listadmin at frameusers.com. Visit http://www.frameusers.com/ for more resources and info.
