[Podcast] Saving localization costs with content reuse

[播客]如何利用内容重用节省本地化成本?

2020-06-16 02:20 Lingua Greca

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS In episode 75 of The Content Strategy Experts podcast, Elizabeth Patterson and Bill Swallow talk about how content reuse can help you save on your localization costs. Related links:  Reuse in DITA and beyond (podcast) Use cases for content reuse  Twitter handles: @PattersonScript @billswallow Transcript: Elizabeth Patterson:     Welcome to The Content Strategy Experts podcast brought to you by Scriptorium. Since 1997, Scriptorium has helped companies manage, structure, organize, and distribute content in an efficient way. In this episode, we talk about how content reuse can help you save on your localization costs. Hi, I’m Elizabeth Patterson. Bill Swallow:     And I’m Bill Swallow. EP:     And we’re going to dive in to talking about how content reuse can help you save on your localization costs. So I want to get started with just a really general question, and when we talk about reuse, what are we talking about? BS:     That’s a very good place to start. When we talk about reuse, what we’re not talking about is copying and pasting of content. You could think of that in terms of reuse, but it’s not really what we’re talking about here. When you copy and paste content, you’re essentially duplicating it and then need to manage it in multiple places. What we’re talking about is more intelligent reuse of content, so writing it once and using it by reference wherever you need to use it. So this way it’s only written once, and it’s used multiple times as needed. EP:     Great. And we have done a podcast and an additional blog post just solely on reuse, so I will link those in the show notes. But I want to dive into now looking more specifically at how content reuse, now that we’ve defined that, can help us save on localization costs. BS:     Well, generally speaking, reuse reduces the overall number of unique words that you are translating. By using intelligent reuse in your writing once, and using it multiple times by reference, you have the opportunity to choose pieces of content that you will author once and only once, and that content gets translated once and only once regardless of how many times it’s being used. If you copy paste, you can still see a savings if the wording that you’re using is one for one, so if it’s absolutely exact all the time. BS:     For example, I know Microsoft Word has an auto text feature, so you can throw a basic reusable component like a caution statement or some other boilerplate text, and you can use that to insert it every single time. That may save you a bit of time on the offering side and ensure that the text that you’re inserting is exact every single time. The only problem with that is that it is inserted as normal text every single time you insert it, so it does still increase the total amount of words that you need to send to the translator. It might be a 100% match, but they still have to do a check against it to make sure everything is fine. And the systems that they use will still count those words and say, “Yes, this is a 100% percent match.” But it’s still being counted as part of your incurred cost, because there’s something that’s going to the translator for them to see, even though there’s a match. BS:     And in some cases you may even get what they call an ICE match, or an in context exact match, on that text. So if you are using something like Microsoft’s Word’s feature, you can drop that text in every single time and you can get this, “Yes, it is a 100% match every single time it’s inserted.” And if it’s a full paragraph, it could be, “Yes, it’s a contextual perfect match. It’s a paragraph and it says the same exact thing.” But more times than not, when you talk about inserting strings of text that say the same thing over and over and over again, the context may shift depending on where you’re using that text. In which case then you get maybe a 100% match, which still requires some review, or you get what we call a fuzzy match, where if you happen to make an edit to that text that was inserted and copied and pasted it’s no longer 100%, and therefore the translator has more work to do. BS:     And there may be questions. This one has two words that are different from this other block of text. They say roughly about the same thing, should they be translated the same way or is there a reason why they’re different? That just slows down your translation process, it injects confusion, it injects questions that need to be mitigated and answered or you can then suddenly have a divergence in the translation where you shouldn’t have. The translator might’ve translated it two different ways because it used two different structures. BS:     So true reuse or intelligent reuse moves that out of the way by taking the text that is being reused every single time, putting it somewhere to the side, is translated separately, and then can be used as it needs to be used throughout whatever it is you’re writing. Your manual, your web content, whatever you need to. And there are plenty of tools that are out there that do this well. Two of which that come immediately to mind for desktop publishing based tools are FrameMaker and MadCap Flare. BS:     FrameMaker uses a series of conventions where they store content in chapter files, and those chapter files are assembled within a book file. And you can easily reuse an entire chapter in multiple different books just by linking to that chapter file from the book. You don’t have to rewrite the information, it’s not being copied and pasted. It’s a dynamic link that goes right to that file and pulls it into the book. BS:     FrameMaker also has text insets which function a little bit in the same way where you have a separate file that has a block of text and you can say, “Hey, go to this file, grab that text, and place it here.” And the smart thing about this is that when you do that in FrameMaker you are not creating an editable copy of that text. It is a reference to the file that contains the text, but you cannot modify it within the context of whatever it is you’re writing. It is uneditable. You can see it, you can read it, but it is uneditable, and you can’t modify it. BS:     The same goes for MadCap Flare, where you’re building things in a similar fashion. Where you’re grabbing individual files, and you’re putting them together in an order to create some kind of document or website or what have you. And MadCap Flare also has something similar to text insets, they call them snippets, and you are able to insert these snippets throughout your content. And those, again, are managed in a separate place, they’re written only once, and they are non-editable in the context of where you’re using them. They’re only there as a reference point. BS:     Now, these are great, however, you do have some concerns when you’re using these tools for localization purposes. They’re not inherently bad, but if you are looking to do a lot more with your content, let’s say you are styling your content very differently for different outputs or you’re creating the same type of output, but the styling is different. The text insets in such are in the snippets. They’re going to, I believe, carry a lot of the formatting information over with them however they’re formatted, where they’re stored. So it’s not incredibly ideal, but it does reduce the total number of words that you’re translating. BS:     When you move to something like XML, you have a bit more available to you because you have these conventions, but they’re built into a format of writing that does not have the formatting applied to the content. So it’s all text base and you can do quite a bit with organizing and reorganizing your content without having to worry about your headings being formatted one way or another. It’s all just plain text and the formatting is applied at the point you’re publishing. EP:     Right. So I think what we’re seeing here, obviously, is that there’s really one main way that you’re going to be saving money on your localization costs through reuse, and that’s just reducing that word count. But the way that you go about making that happen in your strategy is really going to vary depending on where you’re at as a company. BS:     Right. EP:     So I want to get into a few tips. So what are some tips that you have for reusing content, particularly when you are planning to localize that content? BS:     Well, the knee jerk response to anyone who is doing localization for the first time, and has all of this reuse potential in front of them, is to reuse as much as possible and to apply conditional text or conditional formatting as much as possible. And even I was guilty of that many, many, many years ago where we would have a manual that would go out in 19 or 20 different languages but one of them was over in Europe. And I figured, “Oh, well, for the English stuff we’ll just condition in and out the characters that differ between certain words. We’ll condition in or out a U in color or we’ll condition out a Z for an S for localize.” These types of things. And I thought I was being quite inventive and it came back immediately that no, you cannot do this, because when you send something for translation the translator gets a wall of garbage that they’re looking at and wondering what you’re trying to do with these words. BS:     So my first bit of advice is do not go too granular with your reuse. Things like reusing words or phrases, I would really limit that as much as possible. You really want to reuse at a larger chunk level. So if we’re talking DITA or if we’re talking something like MadCap Flare, reusing at a topic level. So here is a topic with a heading and a bunch of text or a procedure or what have you, reuse that whole piece. If you need to reuse it five, six, seven times, that’s great. You’ve written it once and you can leverage it an additional four or five times. That’s fantastic. Reusing things like notes, cautions, warnings, they tend to stand on their own. I mean, they’re used in context with other text, but the warning itself, you can write those to be very standalone as far as what the thing you should not do is and what the outcome of that is within the context of that warning statement. And you should be able to put that off to the side, write it once and use it everywhere. BS:     There are two benefits to that. One is the localization impact and the other one is that all your warning messages are exactly the same wording. And it will drill that information into your readers’ heads over time as they read it to say, “Oh yeah, I shouldn’t do this. I should not do this.” There are only so many ways that you really should say, “Don’t stick your hand in the machine while it’s working or you’ll lose it.” You really want to say it only once and repeat that statement multiple times until it’s drilled into your audience’s head to, “Hey, don’t stick your hand there.” EP:     Yep. And you want to make sure that it’s being said in the same way so they don’t take a different meaning from that. BS:     Exactly. Or have it translated differently even though you meant to say the same thing. EP:     Right. And something that I’m thinking about as we’re talking about what companies give their translators, so that their translators are trying to figure out what they mean, is writing style. So when you get into an organization that has many different writers, what are some things that you need to be aware of when you’re planning on sending content to translators? BS:     The first thing you have to do is have your style guide nailed down and make sure that all of your writers are following that guidance. Sometimes in larger organizations where you have too many authors, and perhaps not enough editors to clean up after them, you might want to look into some kind of editing based software or language based software like Acrolinx or Congree to do a lot of the spot checks automatically, rather than relying on someone to catch it in proofreading. Especially if you have tight timelines, quick turnarounds, and everyone’s just too busy to proof each other’s work. I know that the days of having a fleet of editors cleaning up after writers has kind of run its course. There are still many technical and editorial editors out there, but not to the degree they used to be in, let’s say, even the 1980s when, unfortunately, I started working. EP:     Right. And content governance can help with that as well, right? BS:     Oh, absolutely. The more you can nail things down and have a process for how you produce your content, the better off you’re going to be. And the one thing you absolutely must do, and I wanted to touch upon this also with the style guide, is you have to include your localization people in that overall plan for governance in styling as well. You want to bring them in to help define the language style that you’re going to be presenting this information in. The way they’re going to write their translations, how you want their translations to read, and which words they should use, and which words they should not use and why. BS:     You really need to have a global style guide at that point and be able to provide glossaries of information to your translators, because you may have different translators for each language depending on when they’re available to take on the work. Unless you’re fortunate enough to have them all in house as employees, which is extremely rare. A lot of times that work is outsourced, whether it’s through a language service provider or you’re doing it direct with other freelance translators. So being able to have that global style guide in place, to have a global glossary in place. And what’s really critical is being able to, when you do have these reusable components, that you’re going to be giving them to translate not only the components, but the content where the component is lacking. Because when you’re reusing by reference that content does not exist in the file that they’re looking at. BS:     So you want to be able to provide additional contextual information to the translator to say, “Oh, hey. When you get to this point there’s a bit of content that’s being inserted.” And maybe even provide them with the reasonable content to say, “This has already been translated, but this is what’s going in here.” So that way when they get to that point they’re not stumped and say, “Well, this doesn’t make sense because it goes from part A to part C, we’re missing part B. I don’t know what it says there.” That can certainly throw off the translation process. So being able to provide that additional context around what is going on in your content set is critical when you’re doing things with intelligent reuse. EP:     Right, right. So I think really one of our main takeaways from today is that you certainly can save money when it comes to localization on the translation side of things, but you need to be prepared to really pay attention to your translator’s needs. BS:     Absolutely. I mean, the savings that you get from a reduced word count is all fine and good, but the translation is only as good as the quality of the translation itself. And if you’re tripping up the translator in any way, you’re not going to see that return on an investment in localizing. EP:     Right. Absolutely. Well, I think that that’s a good place to wrap up. So thank you so much, Bill. BS:     Thank you. EP:     And thank you for listening to The Content Strategy Experts podcast brought to you by Scriptorium. For more information, visit scriptorium.com or check the show notes for relevant links.   Use cases for content reuse Reuse in DITA and beyond (podcast) The need for a localization strategy (podcast) A hierarchy of localization needs Localization strategy: not just cost minimization Localization strategy: Your key to global markets
播客:在新窗口中播放下载 订阅:Apple Podcasts Android Email Google Podcasts Stitcher TuneIn RSS 在《内容战略专家》播客的第75集中,伊丽莎白·帕特森和比尔·斯华洛谈论了内容重用如何帮助你节省本地化成本。 相关链接: DITA及其他方面的重用(podcast) 内容重用案例 推特句柄: @PattersonScript @BillSwallow 文稿: 伊丽莎白·帕特森:欢迎来到Scriptorium为您带来的内容策略专家播客。 自1997年以来,Scriptorium已经帮助公司以一种有效的方式管理,构造,组织和分发内容。 在这一集中,我们将讨论内容重用如何帮助您节省本地化成本。 嗨,我是伊丽莎白·帕特森。 比尔·斯华洛:我是比尔·斯华洛。 伊丽莎白·帕特森:我们将深入讨论内容重用如何帮助您节省本地化成本。 所以我想从一个真正的一般性问题开始,当我们谈论重用时,我们谈论的是什么? 比尔·斯华洛: 这个问题很好。当我们谈论重用时,我们不谈论的是内容的复制和粘贴。你可以从重用的角度来考虑这个问题,但这不是我们在这里讨论的问题。当您复制和粘贴内容时,您实际上是在复制它,然后需要在多个地方管理它。我们讨论的是更智能的内容重用,所以写一次并且在任何你需要使用它的地方通过引用使用它。因此,这种方式只需要编写一次,并且在需要的时候可以使用多次。 伊丽莎白·帕特森:很好,我们已经做了一个播客,还有一篇专门关于重复使用的博客文章,所以我会在节目说明中链接这些内容。我们已经做了一个播客和一篇额外的博客文章,完全是关于重用的,所以我会在节目说明中链接这些内容。但我想深入探讨一下,现在我们已经定义了内容重用,如何帮助我们节省本地化成本。 比尔·斯华洛: 一般来说,重用可以减少你翻译的单词的总数。通过在你的写作中使用一次智能重用,并通过引用多次使用它,你有机会选择一些内容,你将作者一次,只有一次,这些内容将被翻译一次,只有一次,不管它被使用了多少次。如果你复制粘贴,你仍然可以看到一个节省,如果你使用的措辞是一对一,所以如果它是绝对精确的所有时间。 比尔·斯华洛: 例如,我知道微软 Word 有一个自动文本功能,所以你可以抛出一个基本的可重用组件,比如一个警告语句或其他样板文本,你可以用它来插入每一次。这可以节省您在提供端的一些时间,并确保您每次插入的文本都是精确的。这样做的唯一问题是,每次插入它时,它都作为正常文本插入,因此它仍然会增加需要发送给翻译人员的总字数。这可能是100% 匹配,但他们仍然需要做一个检查,以确保一切正常。他们使用的系统仍然会计算这些单词并说,“是的,这是100% 匹配。”但是它仍然被计算在你的费用中,因为有些东西会送到翻译那里让他们看到,即使有匹配。 比尔·斯华洛: 在某些情况下,您甚至可以在该文本上得到他们所谓的ICE匹配或上下文完全匹配。 因此,如果您使用的是Microsoft Word的功能,则可以每次删除该文本,然后得到的信息是:“是的,每次插入100%匹配。” 如果是完整的段落,则可能是“是的,这是上下文完美匹配。 这是一段,说的也一样。” 但是,很多时候,当您谈论一遍又一遍地插入要说相同内容的文本字符串时,上下文可能会根据您使用该文本的位置而变化。 在这种情况下,您可能会获得100%匹配,这仍需要进行一些审查,或者您会得到我们所说的模糊匹配,如果您碰巧对插入,复制和粘贴的文本进行了编辑,则不再是100 %,因此翻译者还有更多工作要做。 比尔·斯华洛: 这篇文章中有两个词与另一篇文章不同。 他们所说的大致相同,他们应该以同样的方式翻译吗?这只会减慢你的翻译过程,引入混乱,引入需要缓解和回答的问题,或者你可能会突然在翻译中出现不同的地方,而你不应该这样做。译者可能用了两种不同的方式来翻译它,因为它使用了两种不同的结构。 比尔·斯华洛: 所以真正的重用或智能重用是通过把每次都要重用的文本放在旁边的某个地方,单独翻译,然后在你写的任何文章中都需要用到的时候就可以用到它。 你的手册,你的网页内容,任何你需要的东西。 有很多工具可以很好地实现这一点。 对于基于桌面出版的工具,脑海中立即浮现的两个是FrameMaker和MadCap Flare。 比尔·斯华洛: FrameMaker使用了一系列的约定,它们将内容存储在章节文件中,这些章节文件被组装在一个图书文件中。 并且您可以很容易地在多本不同的书中重用整个章节,只需从书中链接到章节文件即可。 你不必重写信息,它不会被复制和粘贴。 它是一个动态链接,直接指向那个文件并将其拉入书中。 比尔·斯华洛: FrameMaker也有文本插入,它的功能有点类似于你有一个单独的文件,其中有一个文本块,你可以说,“嘿,转到这个文件,抓取那个文本,然后把它放在这里。”这件事的聪明之处在于,当你在FrameMaker中这样做时,你不会创建一个可编辑的文本副本。 它是对包含文本的文件的引用,但是您不能在您正在编写的文本的上下文中修改它。 则不可编辑。 你可以看到它,你可以阅读它,但它是不可编辑的,你不能修改它。 比尔·斯华洛: 同样的道理也适用于 MadCap Flare,你可以用类似的方式来建造东西。你抓取单个文件,然后把它们放在一起,创建某种文档或网站,或者其他什么东西。而且 MadCap Flare 也有类似于文本插入的东西,他们称之为代码片段,你可以在内容中插入这些代码片段。而且,这些都是在一个单独的地方管理的,它们只被编写一次,并且在使用它们的上下文中是不可编辑的。它们只是作为一个参考点。 比尔·斯华洛: 现在,这些都很好,但是,当您将这些工具用于本地化目的时,您确实会有一些顾虑。它们本质上并不坏,但是如果你想对你的内容做更多的事情,让我们假设你正在为不同的输出设计不同的内容,或者你正在创建相同类型的输出,但是样式是不同的。在这样的文本插入是在片段。我相信,它们将随身携带大量格式化信息,不管它们是如何格式化的,也不管它们存储在哪里。所以这并不是非常理想,但它确实减少了你翻译的字数。 比尔·斯华洛: 您转向XML之类的东西时,您有更多的可用空间,因为您有这些约定,但是它们被构建在一种没有将格式应用于内容的写作格式中。 所以它是所有文本基础,你可以做相当多的组织和重新组织你的内容,而不必担心你的标题是格式化的一种或另一种方式。 它只是纯文本,格式设置在发布时应用。 伊丽莎白·帕特森:对。所以我认为我们在这里看到的,很明显,有一个主要的方法,可以通过重复使用来节省本地化成本,那就是减少字数。但是在你的战略中实现这个目标的方式,真的会因为你所在的公司而有所不同。 比尔·斯华洛: 没错。 伊丽莎白·帕特森:所以您有什么建议吗?对于重用内容,特别是当您计划本地化该内容时,您有哪些技巧呢? 比尔·斯华洛: 对于那些第一次做本地化工作的人,他们的下意识反应就是尽可能多的重复使用,尽可能多的应用条件文本或条件格式。很多很多很多年以前,我们有一本手册,可以用19到20种不同的语言出版,但是其中一种在欧洲已经过时了。我想,“哦,好吧,对于英语的东西,我们只是条件,在某些字符之间的差异。我们会调整一个 u 的颜色,或者我们会调整一个 z 来调整一个 s 的本地化。”这类事情。我觉得自己很有创造力,但很快我就发现,不,你不能这么做,因为当你发送一些东西要翻译时,译者会看到一堵垃圾墙,他们在看,想知道你想用这些词做什么。 比尔·斯华洛: 因此,我的第一个建议是不要过于细化您的重用。例如重复使用单词或短语,我真的会尽可能地限制它们。您确实希望在更大的块级别上重用。因此,如果我们讨论 DITA 或者类似 MadCap Flare 的东西,在主题级别上进行重用。所以这里有一个标题和一些文本或者过程,或者其他什么,重复使用整个部分。如果你需要重复使用它五次,六次,七次,那很好。你已经写过一次了,你可以再写四五次。太棒了。重复使用诸如笔记、警告、警告之类的东西,它们往往自成一体。我的意思是,它们在上下文中与其他文本一起使用,但是警告本身,你可以把它们写成非常独立的,只要你不应该做的事情是什么,以及结果是什么,在警告语句的上下文中。你应该能够把它放在一边,写一次,然后在任何地方使用。 比尔·斯华洛: 这样做有两个好处。一个是本地化影响,另一个是所有警告消息的措辞完全相同。当你的读者读到这些信息时,他们会说,“哦,是的,我不应该这么做。我不应该这么做。”只有那么多的方式,你真的应该说,“不要把你的手在机器工作,否则你会失去它。”你真的很想只说一次,然后重复多次,直到你的听众深深地认识到,“嘿,不要把你的手放在那里。” 伊丽莎白·帕特森:是的。 你要确保它是以同样的方式被说出来的,这样他们就不会有不同的意思了。 比尔·斯华洛: 完全正确。 或者把它翻译成不同的,即使你想说的是同一件事。 伊丽莎白·帕特森:对。当我们谈论公司给他们的翻译人员什么时,我想到的是,他们的翻译人员试图弄清楚他们的意思,是写作风格。因此,当你进入一个有许多不同作者的组织时,当你计划将内容发送给翻译者时,你需要注意哪些事情? 比尔·斯华洛: 你要做的第一件事就是确定你的风格指南,并确保你所有的作者都遵循这个指南。有时候在大型组织中,你有太多的作者,也许没有足够的编辑来清理他们,你可能想要寻找一些基于编辑的软件或者基于语言的软件,比如 Acrolinx 或 Congree 来自动做大量的抽查,而不是依靠别人来校对。特别是如果你有紧凑的时间表,快速的周转,而且每个人都太忙而没有时间检查对方的工作。我知道那些由编辑组成的编辑队伍清理作者的日子已经走到了尽头。现在仍然有很多技术和编辑人员,但是他们的程度已经大不如前了,比如说,甚至在20世纪80年代,不幸的是,我开始工作的时候。 伊丽莎白·帕特森::对。 而内容管理也可以在这方面有所帮助,对吗? 比尔·斯华洛: 哦,当然。 你越能把事情确定下来,并有一个如何制作内容的过程,你就会越好。 你绝对必须做的一件事,我也想在风格指南中提到这一点,就是你必须把你的本地化人员也包括在风格管理的总体计划中。 您希望引入它们来帮助定义您将以何种语言风格来呈现这些信息。 他们写译文的方式,你希望他们的译文读起来如何,他们应该用哪些词,哪些词不应该用,为什么。 比尔·斯华洛: 在这一点上,你真的需要有一个统一的风格指南,并且能够为你的译员提供信息的词汇表,因为根据他们什么时候能够接手工作,你可能有不同语言的译员。除非你足够幸运,让他们都成为公司的雇员,这是极其罕见的。很多时候这些工作是外包的,无论是通过语言服务提供商还是你直接和其他自由译者一起做。因此,能够有统一风格指南到位,有一个统一的的术语表到位。真正重要的是,当你拥有这些可重用的组件时,你不仅要给它们翻译组件,还要翻译组件缺少的内容。因为当您通过引用重用时,内容并不存在于他们正在查看的文件中。 比尔·斯华洛: 因此,您希望能够向译者提供额外的上下文信息,让他说,“哦,嘿。当你到了这一步,就会有一些内容被插入进来。”甚至可以为他们提供合理的内容,比如说,“这个已经被翻译过了,但是这就是这里的内容。”这样,当他们到达那一点时,他们就不会被难住,说,“这没有意义,因为它从 a 部分到 c 部分,我们漏掉了 b 部分,我不知道那里写了什么。”这肯定会影响翻译过程。因此,当您使用智能重用进行工作时,能够围绕内容集中发生的事情提供额外的上下文是至关重要的。 伊丽莎白·帕特森:没错。 所以我认为我们今天的一个主要收获是,当你在翻译方面进行本地化的时候,你当然可以省钱,但是你需要做好准备,真正关注你的译者的需求。 比尔·斯华洛: 当然。 我的意思是,你从减少字数中得到的节省是很好的,但是翻译的好坏取决于翻译本身的质量。 如果你搞砸了翻译程序,那么你就看不到本地化投资的回报。 伊丽莎白·帕特森:没错,确实是。 非常感谢你,比尔。 比尔·斯华洛: 谢谢。 伊丽莎白·帕特森:感谢您收听由 Scriptorium 为您带来的内容策略专家播客。更多信息,请访问 scriptorium. com 或查看相关链接的演示说明。 内容重用案例 DITA及其他方面的重用(podcast) 本地化策略的必要性(播客) 本地化需求的层次结构 本地化战略:不仅仅是成本最小化 本地化战略:开拓全球市场的关键

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