Localization of projects

[BogdanM777]

Hi guys,
It's me again
I am sorry to bombard you with so many questions, however I have a presentation tomorrow to the team regarding the advantages of DITA, and one of the topics is localization.
I think I told Radu once that I am also the translator for this company, so besides the creation/maintenance of the documentation I am also in charge with the translation/localization of the documentation.
Right now I am experimenting with 2 concepts of having the projects translated:
1. Have one project containing all translations (English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish) inside it in the form of something like:

Code: Select all

      <p>

        <ph audience="english">Text in English</ph>

        <ph audience="french">Texte en français</ph>

        <ph audience="german">Text auf Deutsch</ph>

        <ph audience="japanese">日本語のテキスト</ph>

        <ph audience="spanish">Texto en español</ph>

     </p>

This is working nice and fine withe the topic, however when I get to the localization of the bookmap, I find that I can do it only in one language as the xml:lang can be present only once at the beginning of it in order to automatically translate everything inside the project.
2. Have for each language one project, which is multiplying the volume of projects accordingly.
If I opt for the first solution, do you know how I could bypass the issue with the bookmap? Is there a way to specify all the languages, and the selection to be done at the time of the build?
Personally, I like the second solution, however the team might opt differently than me, so I have to be prepared.
Sorry for the long story, and thank you for helping me see "the light at the end of the tunnel".

[Radu]

Hi Bogdan,

I think the second approach is the one which is done the most.

Please try to post the same question on the Yahoo Groups DITA Users List. You will probably get some useful advice there from people who have been in the same situation as you. We do not have experience with how DITA projects should be translated as our manual is only English-based.

Coming back to this problem:

This is working nice and fine withe the topic, however when I get to the localization of the bookmap, I find that I can do it only in one language as the xml:lang can be present only once at the beginning of it in order to automatically translate everything inside the project.

Actually you should also set xml:lang on each topic. The XHTML-based outputs which convert each topic to an equivalent HTML file need to have the xml:lang also specified on each DITA topic in order to properly know how static texts (like "Table:", "Figure:") should be translated.

http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.2/os ... ranslation

Regards,
Radu

[BogdanM777]

Thank you very much Radu.
I will see what the yahoo groups say about my issue.
Have a great weekend.