What would you do?

["Kevin McGowan" <thatguy_80 -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Hi everyone...

I'm in a bit of a bind, and I'd love to hear what y'all think I should do. 
:)

I started this tech writing job last week. The company has several 
documents, all giant Word files. They want to move into an XML environment, 
so we can 1) maintain XML modules of information, and create printable user 
guides at will, 2) include some of these XML files as online help, clickable 
from the UI.

Translation is also a concern...as they want to maintain multiple languages 
(English, French, German, Dutch, etc...).

So, here I am...with a bunch of crappy and poorly-maintained Word files, and 
I need to create a state-of-the-art XML system. They keep talking about 
DITA...but I'm not convinced that the DITA format is the perfect way to go. 
Frankly, I'm not sure about much at the moment.

Please share any advice/experience...

Cheers,
Kevin

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