Translation

[Ga Bowen]

We are looking at translating some of our manuals. Initially we will use traditional methods, but eventually we will try DeepL. Ideally I'd like to have the translation importing directly back into H+M.

This seems like it might be a bigger task than I first thought.

Is there a guide you can point me to?

[Dave Gehman]

Tim will set you straight on where to find the docs. And he will set me straight if I have anything wrong below...

Meanwhile, I can illustrate the process.

First, you purchase a DeepL API license, which is incredibly affordable at $US 5.49/month.

You then install DeepL in H+M as a Plugin.

After you have the Plug-In installed, it's just a matter of clicking on the Plugin in the Project ribbon, whereupon a pane opens to the right of the workspace. You then select (highlight) the text in the topic you want to translate. You do this in a copy of your H+M Project, since that will become the translated version. The original text is loaded automatically into the Original window of the DeepL Translator Plugin.

You then just click on Translate, after selecting the target language.


Once you're happy with the translation, you simply click on Apply Translation. In the case of the graphic above, the German instantly replaces the English in the WYSIWYG H+M Write editing space.

There are ways to mark words so they don't translate. That part isn't and probably couldn't be automated.. and we'll have to do a lot of manual work on this aspect, because our software has a great number of built-in English keywords that won't be localized into other languages.

[Tim Green]

Added notes to Dave's excellent explanation:

We don't currently plan to implement a "just translate the whole project" option for DeepL. This is because it's machine translation, and even though it is almost frighteningly good, you still can't trust it implicitly. Just like the crew on the way to Jupiter with HAL 9000, you need to be able check and open the pod bay doors yourself and shut down the computer when you have to. Just like any artificial intelligence system, DeepL can and will make frequent errors that need to be corrected. Some of them will just be funny haha errors that would only be a little embarrassing in your documentation, but they can easily also be serious errors in instructions that could lead to critical or even dangerous misunderstandings. So the person doing the work with DeepL really should be able to at least understand the translated text and check for such errors.

You can find the instructions here:

https://www.helpandmanual.com/help/hm_a ... deepl.html

Also note that in addition to the approx. $5 per month subscription DeepL also charges a fee for translated volume, which is currently around $20 per million characters, which is also very reasonable.

[Ga Bowen]

Thanks for the replies.

Our manuals are quite often hundreds/thousands of pages long, so it isn't practical to go topic by topic at the moment. Therefore will will use an external translator.

This bit worries me a lot and I think I'm in a bit of trouble.

In the past we have sent a Word document and it has just been translated. Now we use H+M to produce a document with snippets, conditional text and variables and I cannot see a way of exporting this to the translator in a form that allows me to import back into H+M.

The absolute best method I can think of is having a separate, out of date, Word copy of the manual. I cannot emphasise how embarrassing that would be for me.

[Tim Green]

The absolute best method I can think of is having a separate, out of date, Word copy of the manual. I cannot emphasise how embarrassing that would be for me.

Don't even think about managing translation by exporting to Word and then re-importing. You would lose all your Help+Manual structures like toggles and anything else that is not just text formatting, and with projects of the size you describe you would have countless hours of unnecessary work to reformat everything after re-importing.

Translation must be done on the original HM XML of the projects, there is no alternative to that. There are two ways to approach it: Either use Help+Manual as the editor, or work with translators who use XML-aware translation memory tools like SDL Trados. If you use Help+Manual as the editor (you can give one of your Floating licenses to the translator for the job and revoke it afterwards by changing the PIN) you can manage updates with the Project Synchronizer tool. If your translators use translation memory that isn't necessary: You just give them the new version of the project when it is ready and everything that hasn't changed is translated automatically from the translation memory.

With projects on the scale you describe I would recommend contractors using translation memory. That is more efficient and it will also give you more consistent translation of your terminology, as the memory tools also maintain a terminology database for the translators while they are working.

This is all explained in the chapter on translation in the Help+Manual documentation:

https://www.helpandmanual.com/help/hm_a ... ating.html