Translation Management Software (?) recommendations

[paul_newb]

I use FrameMaker 10 on a Win 7 PC to maintain a large PDF docs set.

Some of the dpcs will need to be translated from English into German and French (and maybe other languages in the future). So I'll probably be supplying the translation company with my FM docs saved in MIF format.

After the initial translation, I want to be able to keep track of which bits of the English manual has changed and will need re-translating. And maybe even store translations in a translation memory so that we can re-use translated phrases.

Can anyone recommend any 3rd party translation management software that integrates with FrameMaker 10?

Or any techniques for keeping track of changes in an English doc, so that I can do a 'delta' to establish what needs translating 6 months down the line? (I suppose I could manually run compare, but I'm hoping that there are for tools or plugins that will do as much of the work for me as possible)

Thanks

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

From what I’ve read, all good localization companies maintain a translation memory for you – they don’t want to have to do more work than they already have to.

[FieryPantone]

Conditions might give you a handy way of manually tracking updates – I used to use these for regulatory docs that had to be reissued every three months. Easier translation management is often cited as a good reason for working with structure, in the sense that your content is/can then be in smaller units; you could explore creative use of text insets to mimic this without diving into to the complexities of full structured FM … or use it as an argument for getting lots of support and encouragement to do exactly that <g>

Cautionary horror story from an earlier client: the translators they selected swore blind they'd be working directly on the .mif files with a compatible translation memory system. They didn't, preferring to convert things to Word and send them out to humans. End result, all my {letter}: sequence markers came back with a thank-you, Word French fine space inserted before the colon. Client didn't use that agency again …

[paul_newb]

Thanks Niels, I'll have a look at Conditions and see how they may help.

I may just make the switch to structured docs anyway, especially if going structured can help the translation process.

Jeff - while we will use a translation agency to do the initial translation (one of the good ones!), then we'll probably maintain it ourselves. We have several native French and German speakers to assist. So I need a way of tracking changes ('doing a delta') in-house. I could just do a doc compare and/or keep a log of changes, but I was hoping there's something a bit slicker than that out there.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

You may want to re-think the in-house route – there’s just been a good post over on the TCS Users Google Group by Diane Gaskill (of Hitachi) on localization. I think she would recommend that you use your in-house talent to QA/proof the results from your LSP.

[Matt S - Tech Comm Tools]

The ability to leverage translation memory is the reason to stick with the translation agency. That way, they only have to tx the delta, and you don't have to (attempt) to manage an internal team that probably already works a full schedule.