Localisation support software? (long)

Subject: Localisation support software? (long)
From: Alessandro Bottoni <albo -at- CADLAB -dot- IT>
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 1998 10:37:57 +0100

Like many software houses, we have to supply our customer with the program
GUI, online helps, HTML docs and paper manuals written in several different
languages, included chinese, koeran and japanese (maybe arabic and russian
in the future). Of course, we have problems with software/documentation
consistency and other details.

Oddily, we were not able to find any software designed to support us during
the localisation process, something like a specific PDM (Project Data
Manager) and/or consistency check tools. We did find a lot of systems
designed to manage the (multilingual) documentation development (Quark
Publishing System, for example), but anything specifically designed to
support the translation/localisation process.

I think this lack of localisation support software is somehow strange: many
software houses use the same compiler (MS Visual C++ or Borland C++), the
same DTP system (FrameMaker, PageMaker or Xpress) and have the same
problems. I expected that some software house, like MS and Borland, would
have already addressed these problems with a set of specialized tools, in
the same way they addressed the intranet building, for example. Naive, am I
not?

For example, a localisation PDM could be structured in this way:

1) a Database containing text strings and controls used by the program GUI.
This DBase would be considered the "reference" repository of all the
language-depending stuff used by software and would ensure the consistency
between software and documentation.

2) a way to refer to the components archived in the Dabase from within the
resource files and from within text documents (somethink like external
reference or hypelinks). We could call it "component virtualization" or
"conditional text".

3) the documents made by programmers and TW would became "source documents"
containing "place cards" instead of real text (just in every point where you
have to name a GUI element).

4) These place cards would be replaced by the real text strings/GUI
components by a specific set of tools.

5) This set of tools would make the real "object documents", that you can
use to make software and publishable documents.

Of course, you would be able to compile documents in different languages by
using identical "makefiles" (Winhelp projects) applied to different file
system branchs, containing the documents written in the desired languages.
This is our usual way to make online helps.

I understand that a system like that would be very complex and hard to use
(maybe because localisation is a complex work in itself) but I'm sure that
some good programmer would be able to design a much better one, maybe by
addressing just a part of the problem at a time (I'm just an hobbyst
programmer...).

Anybody of you ever dreamed about software like that? Do you think it would
be rather a nightmare? Does anybody knows if exists any software aimed to
localisation support?

Alessandro Bottoni
Technical Writer
Cad.Lab SPA




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