FW: Best Practice for Using the DITA CONREF Attribute for Translation (coming)

Hello All!

I wanted to let you know that our Conref
BP is already being referenced and addressing translation problems.

JoAnn

 

JoAnn T. Hackos, PhD

President

Comtech Services, Inc.

710 Kipling Street, Suite 400

Denver, CO 80215

303-232-7586



joannhackos Skype

www.comtech-serv.com

Sent: Friday, March 28, 2008 10:40
AM

To: JoAnn Hackos

Subject: Best Practice for Using
the DITA CONREF Attribute for Translation (coming)

 

Hi JoAnn,

 

I was wondering if you have a draft copy of the the best
practice document,  Best Practice for Using the DITA CONREF Attribute for
Translation. I was wondering if it had information pertaining to a particular
situation we're trying to resolve. 

 

As you know, we have a few customers who are working with
the translation vendors such as SDL and Idiom. The issue we are experiencing is
that when customers use conrefs for managing variables this creates issues for
the TMS as the TMS does not resolve conrefs.

 

Here's what one particular customer has discovered:

 

We're run into a translation issue regarding our liberal use of conrefs
to our variables file. After talking with SDL, it seems our use of conref-ed
variables greatly complicates the linguist's job in determining how to create
gender-specific articles, plurals, and possesives. This complication raises the
translation costs quite significantly.

 

Do you have any suggestions on how this type of conref use
could be best managed in DITA for translation?

 

Thanks!

 

Chia