When working with a translation agency, there’s more than one way to get your Flare content translated. Here’s our guide to the pros and cons of each option.
Are you still compiling Flare texts or sending the complete Flare file to your translation agency? That’s not really a serious question, but it comes from real-world experience. Language managers often think they’re making life easier for agencies by copying texts to other file formats, for example, but this is usually only necessary if the agency doesn’t have the required expertise with Flare and/or the right software.
There are three main options for sending your Flare projects to your agency:
- Compiled files (i.e. the targets you’ve built)
- Lingo projects
- Zipped Flare projects
Option 1: Send compiled files to the translation agency
The safest – though by no means the best – option is to build the required targets and send the compiled files to the translation agency. If your agency doesn’t know how to use Flare, this will ensure they can translate your files. The compiled files are usually online help guides in HTML 5 and Word or PDF files, which every translation agency can handle. But the big drawback of this option is that you won’t be able to import the finished translation back into your Flare project. That means you lose the ability to use all the functionality that Flare has to offer (e.g. variables and conditions) in the translated project. You then have to build a target for each version, which will need to be translated separately, so you miss out on the benefits of single-source publishing. Advanced translation technology (e.g. translation memories) at least reduces the costs of this approach, but it won’t save you much time. Even if you’re only making small changes to a project, each time you’ll have to build the required target and send it to the translation agency. At first glance this may seem like the safest option, especially if your agency has little experience of working with Flare. But it’s definitely not the best choice.
Option 2: Send Lingo projects to the translation agency
If you have MadCap and work with it, you can of course create your own projects there and send them to your translation agency, either as a Lingo package or an XLF package (see our guide to the ideal workflow for translating Flare projects here). A good translation agency won’t just send back the translated Flare project – they’ll also send you the Lingo project, so that you can archive it and build on what has been translated before. Preparing projects in Lingo sounds promising in theory, but in the real world it often causes problems. Working in Lingo usually takes quite a lot of time for technical writers or language managers, and it’s easy to make mistakes or to configure the wrong settings. Translation agencies which don’t know the ins and outs of Flare won’t be aware of the settings they need to configure (whether variables or snippets need to be flattened, for instance), and without the Flare file they also won’t be able to find the potential errors which crop up again and again in complex Flare projects. Plus, they won’t be able to check the layout, which is often a crucial part of the process with PDF targets in multiple languages in particular. If you’re sending XLIFF bundles to be translated, you also need to make sure the agency uses a CAT tool that can create pure XLIFF files, otherwise you run the risk of not being able to import them back into your Lingo project. In short, although you can create projects in Lingo, you don’t have to. Option 3 is usually the easiest way.
Option 3: Send the complete Flare project to the translation agency
If the project managers at your translation agency know their way around Flare, the easiest option for you is to send them the complete flare project and name the required targets, ideally in the form of a zipped project in flare with the extension flprjzip. The agency will take care of the rest, as they’ll be familiar with the problems that can occur and will know how to handle them. This benefits you in various ways. The agency ensures that you don’t just get a translation, but a fully functional Flare project in the target languages which you can use immediately. You don’t have to think about what has already been translated or whether you’ll be able to reimport the translated project. And the agency will carry out the final checks themselves. Plus, if there are regular updates, you can use a connector to send a specific version to the agency as an automatic starting point for the translation process. So if you work with a translation agency that knows how to use Flare, make the most of their expertise and send them the zipped Flare project for translation. You’ll save a considerable amount of time, money and stress.
Translating in Flare itself
Just to cover all the bases, we’ll mention this option too, even though we don’t recommend it: you can translate your texts in the Flare projects themselves. This usually happens at businesses which don’t have a CAT tool for their translations, and the drawbacks are clear. This way of working is inefficient and liable to produce errors, and you can’t access translation memories or benefit from the savings they offer.
If you’d like to talk to us and get an expert opinion on translating your Flare files, get in touch – our Flare experts will explain how you can make life easier for your business.
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