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Subject:Translation questions From:Alexander Von_obert <avobert -at- TWH -dot- MSN -dot- SUB -dot- ORG> Date:Sat, 2 Dec 1995 08:56:00 +0100
Hello Diane,
* Antwort auf eine Nachricht von "Diane K. Ritchey" an All am 28.11.95
"K> From: "Diane K. Ritchey" <dritchey -at- ocv -dot- com>
"K> I'd like to hear your
"K> suggestions or experiences with handling multilingual documents
"K> (any language).
"K> o do you provide separate part #s for English vs. Other
"K> Language books?
If you mean part no. of the books themselves: Shurely, as they are different
products.
If you mean part no. in replacement parts lists: That depends on whether the
parts are different from the original.
"K> o do you treat the Other Language books as separate entities
"K> from
"K> then on (with separate production cycles)? or do you
"K> consider
"K> translation as just one more phase of document production?
First you must decide on the market the book is supposed to be sold. If you do
spanish for the north-american market, you possibly might get away with a
simple translation. If the book is for another country, you might have to
rewrite it completely.
But I could imagine that Nancy Loft might tell you something about this.
"K> o do you find maintaining books in languages other than your
"K> own
"K> native language significantly more time-consuming?
Writing the original should be the most time-consuming. Everyone doing another
language version can build on the first version, even if he might be forced to
do some additional work.
"K> o any thoughts on how long translation time takes [per 100 pg
"K> segments]
"K> (as a percentage of production time--obviously the precise
"K> time
"K> must come from the translator)?
That really depends on your topic. If you have a few 1,000 pages of
replacement parts, you might use some automatic translation tools. If you are
to translate a novel, you might have to reinvent it in another language.
Greetings from Germany,
Alexander
--
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