Mathiew, Contact the localization vendor SDL International about that. As you probably know, they bought Trados about a year or so ago. I don't have a recent copy of the Translators Workbench, I was just passing on what they told me when they sent us a bid on a job. Considering what you just told me, maybe I need to contact them myself just to double check.
Diane -----Original Message----- From: mathieu jacquet [mailto:bobi...@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 4:50 AM To: dgcaller at earthlink.net; richard.combs at Polycom.com; verner.andersen at radiometer.dk; framers at lists.frameusers.com Subject: RE: Translators >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. I'm using the SDLX (Trados 7.x, I thought it was the latest) Workbench and I still have to do a .mif to .rtf conversion before translating... So I still use Word for my translation. Which Workbench version are you talking about Diane? The problem is not much that some translators are using Word and only Word, but rather that they do not have the STagger filter to perform the back conversion from .rtf to .mif (this is straightforward if no tag is crushed, which is easily checkable through the Verify STag function). Mathieu. >From: "Diane Gaskill" <dgcaller at earthlink.net> >To: "Combs, Richard" <richard.combs at Polycom.com>,"Andersen, Verner Engell >VEA" <verner.andersen at radiometer.dk>,<framers at lists.frameusers.com> >Subject: RE: Translators >Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2007 11:38:51 -0800 > >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: framers-bounces+dgcaller=earthlink.net at lists.frameusers.com >[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 > >
