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Lost in translation (and in my brain)
Thursday, July 23, 2009 — posted by Alan Pringle
Last night, a bit of spam managed to worm its way through the filters on a personal email account, and I have to admit I glanced at the content while scanning previews of messages. That's when I spotted a paragraph that really jumped out at me:They have good management systems, product quality inspection system. And international speedboat (EMS) is the door - door accurate! Soon!
My thought process was, What's up with the international speedboats? And why are emergency medical services (EMS) using these speedboats? I knew that the person who wrote the content was likely not a native English speaker, but I could not figure out what the writer was trying to communicate.
This morning, I finally realized what the message was trying to say: the company uses EMS worldwide delivery services for prompt and accurate delivery to my door. My brain must not have been firing on all cylinders last night when I thought EMS meant "emergency medical services."
I don't think I've ever spent as much time thinking about a company's marketing message, but my thoughts weren't about using the company's services--I was merely trying to comprehend the message itself. That's not what the company intended, I'm sure.
Marketing for a global audience--particularly one that associates EMS with "emergency medical services"--is not an easy thing!
Labels: humor, localization
9:28 AM Permalink | |
Murder by metaphor
Monday, January 05, 2009 — posted by Alan Pringle
The Shanghai Tech Writer blog has a hilarious list of awful metaphors written by high school students. These gems include:- Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
- Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
- They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
Labels: localization, technical writing
7:33 AM Permalink | |
Put the drawing tools down!
Thursday, December 11, 2008 — posted by Alan Pringle
This list of technical writing myths has a decidedly DITA slant; I don't necessarily like the idea of DITA driving what is and isn't acceptable practice for technical writing. That being said, I endorse the information provided about myth #4:
4. The Callouts on Graphics Myth
If you want to reuse the same graphic in multiple publications and even multiple languages, it is a good practice not to put callouts in the source file of the graphic itself. Instead, you place your callouts "on top of" your graphic in your text editor (Word) or DTP program (InDesign, FrameMaker, ...). This is not supported in DITA. Therefore, if you need to use callouts in graphics, try to use language-independent ones (A, B, C...) in the source file of the graphic and put the explanation of these callouts in a table below the graphic in your DITA XML content. [Yves Barbion]
It's not just the DITA standard that doesn't support callouts placed with a document processor's drawing tools. We have a client for whom we created a custom XML structure for FrameMaker content, and that content contains many graphics with callouts. The client translates the content into multiple languages.
In the previous workflow in unstructured FrameMaker, the client placed the callouts in the anchored frame with FrameMaker's drawing tools. However, if you do that in a structured FrameMaker workflow and save content out to XML, FrameMaker by default saves each image with added callouts into a new CGM graphic file that no longer has editable callouts. There can't be complete round-tripping between XML and FrameMaker because the graphics aren't preserved in this scenario.
Therefore, the rule for this client is that an anchored frame can contain just one image file imported by reference. Period. No other text, text frames, or anything. If callouts are necessary, they are included as part of the source graphic; the client adds numbered callouts in Illustrator. A numbered list specifically for explaining those callouts follows the graphic.
The XML generated from FrameMaker points to the image files, and FrameMaker doesn't need to generate new graphic files to include any callouts added with FrameMaker's drawing tools. (If the directory containing XML files includes a CGM file that FrameMaker created during export, that usually means there is an anchored frame somewhere that contains something more than just a referenced image file.) Another huge plus: because the callout explanations are part of the text, they are translated without changing the original graphic.
Separating callouts from your images and making them part of the text is smart for any workflow because of localization issues, and it pretty much becomes mandatory when you're establishing an efficient structured authoring environment (and not just those based on DITA).
P.S. One other thing to think about with graphics in structured authoring environments: if you use XSL to transform your XML into online formats, determine if web-ready graphics (such as PNG files) will work in your print/PDF and online content. If so, you eliminate the need to convert images to formats for online viewing.
Labels: dita, FrameMaker, localization, structured authoring
9:00 AM Permalink | |
Food for thought on document maintenance
Friday, November 14, 2008 — posted by Sarah O'Keefe
[Updated to add link that I rudely left out.]In a report from tekom (link in German), we hear about a session on translation reuse strategies.
The presenters point out one underappreciated risk of translation management -- language evolution. They note that as languages evolve, information stored in translation memory could become out-of-date. In particular, they noted that Polish has changed significantly in the past few years. (translation and paraphrase mine)
And today, there's an interesting article at Gryphon Mountain Journals. Ben Minson points out the conflict between writing content that is easy to maintain and content that is most helpful to the reader:
We need to learn to strike a balance between efficiency and usability. That said, most of the authoring environments I see have a long way to go before they reach "overly efficient" and need to swing back toward usability.Generic: “To turn on the machine, press the Power button.”
Specific: “To turn on the machine, press the Power button, which is located on the top of the device.” (…plus an image of the button, plus an image pointing out where on the machine it appears.)
Which one is easier to maintain? Which one is more helpful?
I’ll ask a different way. Which one is better for the writer, and which one is better for the audience?
Labels: conferences, localization, technical writing
8:30 AM Permalink | |
SDL and Idiom: A marriage made somewhere warm?
Monday, February 11, 2008 — posted by Sarah
[corrected stupid math error]I was talking to someone from SDL about Idiom a few years back. "We hate their %$#!%$#@! guts," he told me. I never found out whether this was because Idiom was taking sales from SDL or because, I dunno, this person hated words that start with I or something.
But today, we have the announcement from SDL that they are acquiring Idiom for $22 million (plus another $5 million in assumed debt). Why did Idiom agree to the sale? They weren't exactly printing money (and perhaps that was the only other viable alternative).
Idiom’s audited revenues for the year ended 31 December 2005 were $7.9m (2006 unaudited - $10.0m), generating an audited loss before taxation of $5.9m (2006 unaudited loss - $5.3m).Let's translate. The company lost $5.9 million in 2005 and $5.3 million in 2006 as revenue increased 25% over that period. Not good.
Based on the revenue multiplier or 2.7x ($27 million sale price/$10 million in revenue), this looks like a sale based on services rather than products. In other words, SDL is picking up Idiom for their expertise and consultancy and not primarily for their software.
Idiom had investor backing. It looks to me as though the investors were none-too-happy with the growth rate and forced the sale.
As a business owner myself, I hope that the principals got something out of this, but based on the information I have, I kind of doubt it.
(via Gilbane)
Labels: business, localization
11:01 AM Permalink | |