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My understanding was that the EU set up guidelines for this requiring you
provide documentation in the native language of the country in which you are
selling plus one other EU language--usually English.
I have been involved in translation for some US companies. We typically
chose based on our perception of the markets in which we were selling,
either by actual or projected sales, and translated those key markets first.
**The markets that are best for you will obviously change based on a tonne
of factors.**
Anyway, for the companies of which I speak, a big issue was which dialect to
translate. For example, Mexican or Castilian Spanish? Brasilian Portuguese?
UK or US English? (At one company, I wrote both US and UK English books, a
big difference being metric versus US standard measures). Canadian or
Parisian French?
For example, one company, which intended to translate into many languages,
ranked them such: Mexican Spanish, German, Parisian French, Brazilian
Portuguese, Italian, Swedish with the rest to be determined and
understanding US English was the starting point. Another company chose US
English, UK English, Italian, Japanese, German, French, Castilian Spanish .
..
None ranked Russian very highly . . . in part, perhaps because of an
increased translation cost . . . ?
All the best.
Sean
sean -at- quodata -dot- com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sturzenegger Ivo [SMTP:STURZENI -at- CH -dot- sibt -dot- com]
> Sent: Friday, October 01, 1999 3:58 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Translation of manuals
>
>
> Hello,
>
> i am working as atechnical writer in an international company based in
> Switzerland. Currently I am working on a project, on trasnlation of
> manuals.
> We here in Europe has the problem of having many countries with many
> different languages. So now the question , do we have to translate the
> manuals into every language or only into the main languages and are there
> any appropriate guidlines of getting help on this issue ?
> Many thanks for your help.
>
