Ian Henderson writes: Website developers and localization experts who help ready international websites in multiple languages know that the quality of source content is a major factor of success in website translation and localization -- but often they just have to work with whatever source content comes through the door. In the past few years, we have started to counsel our clients on how they will benefit if they consider introducing XML/DITA for source documentation, both for websites and for other content, such as technical manuals and user manuals.

Please join us for this day of celebration, meet the staff as well as important representatives from the industry.

Susanne LeGier, SDL Language Services Business Unit Director is heading up the new production office in San Jose.

A German native, Susanne successfully managed one of SDL's largest divisions in Europe for six years.  Her expertise spans cross-industries, from high-tech, finance to healthcare, a vertical for which she was instrumental in developing for SDL's German branch.

Most organizations that regularly produce contracts or proposals should consider using XML, and in particular the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA). Why? These documents use the same or similar sections over and over again, with enough variations — such as customer names and select clauses — to become the basis of expensive horror stories when mistakes are made as a result of search-and-replace or copy-and-paste errors. New technologies based on DITA can significantly reduce the risk of mistakes, while saving time and stress for staff as well.

On June 10, 2010, instinctools GmbH organized a webinar on the topic “DITA Specialization: Tools for Visual Support”. 

In this webinar, Alexej Spas talked about how the otherwise complicated activity of DITA specialization can be handled comfortably in a visual way. The benefits of having infrastructure support for DITA specialization in terms of model validation, import, export and integration with version control and documentation environment were also talked about. The webinar was structured as follows: