Translation savings is often considered the “low-hanging fruit” of a DITA implementation, the quickest path to significant return on investment. Why, then, are so many organizations surprised when their first and even subsequent rounds of DITA translations carry a hefty price tag rivaling their pre-XML translations?

The key lies in the process. A DITA translation, with its hundreds and even thousands of files, requires a deliberate process for managing files and effectively leveraging the organizations’ previous translations and translation memories. Without a sound process, the pre-XML desktop publishing costs shift in the new environment to the administration of source files and translation memory files, and require re-translation of fuzzy matches.

Documentation groups rigidly and efficiently manage their source DITA content, yet when it comes time to translate, the same groups quickly and willingly turn over their content to outside parties for management and quality assurance. Learn about the key areas of the translation process where groups can take control of their own translations, ensuring maximum leverage of TM, minimum need for outside administration, and higher-quality translations.

In their upcoming webinar, Frank Miller and Hal Trent of Comtech Services discuss a more effective process for managing the DITA translation process, showing how and where you can tighten your process to ensure better matches and higher quality translations before delivering a translation package to a translator. They demonstrate how you can use the OASIS XLIFF standard with DITA, in-house, to

• Convert multiple DITA topics and maps into a single XLIFF file to be sent to your Localization Service Provider
• Use XLIFF to pre-populate your topics with previous translations
• Match your XLIFF file against your existing Translation Memory
• Estimate project costs
• After translation, convert the translated XLIFF topics back into DITA topics and maps for publication