Multi-language/translation

Hello Melanie,

Sorry for the long delay in responding, but Christmas hype kinda got in
the way..  I don't know if you've found a solution yet or checked out
Back-End, but let me know..

Melanie wrote:
> You've touched on a very "sore" spot for me at the moment.

There are a lot of issues that multi-lingual sites need to contend with
that unilingual sites don't.

> We are users, not developers and are looking for something that will
> take the least amount of re-engineering to make something useful.

That's what most folks are looking for..

> We are looking to implement a CMS that needs to be able to manage
> translations as well as large amounts of reuse - customised content
> for some docs and overlap between documents. Our problem is we are not
> just producing a website, we produce paper docs, PDF, online help
> *and* web pages. 

Ok..  Sounds like a challenge for sure..  Wanting the same or similar
content to be produced for print, pdf, for an interactive help section
and for the web..  

There's a pdf tool in BE so that any page can be viewed as a formatted
pdf document.  But more customization would need to be set up to have
this set up so you can print it all out or bundle it into a single pdf
file.

> Needless to say we are finding it hard to find products out there that
> address this scenario (although I think there are many software
> development companies that would be in the same boat).

Probably...

> XML is pretty much a given, but we're still not sure what DTD/Schema
> to go with as a starting point (as we don't have a lot of experience
> in this, I think we're better off starting with something "standard"
> then customising as needed). DocBook seems to be the most mature (the
> fact that there are some "standard" transforms is most appealing) but
> I'm not sure if it will be the best fit.

Is there an industry forum where you could ask others in the field how
they produce their documentation?

> My questions are:
> Is Back-End capable of managing the creation of "documents"?

There isn't currently a structure to bind a number of sections/articles
into a single document which could be exported.  There may be specific
documentation apps out there that allow for this, but I am not familiar
with them.  I do not know of a cms that allows for a bulk import or
export of documents....  

We've thought about building an integration tool with OpenOffice so that
one could export from an OpenOffice document into Back-End, but haven't
had a client to drive the development of that application.  Since we
work on Open Source software the client's needs come first (but the
first client also needs to carry a larger responsibility for the
implementation).

> As far as the XML markup goes, how did you manage the multi-language
> aspect - elements, metadata...?

Basic rss/rdf/xml info can be exported in a number of formats, but is
pretty limited.  This could be expanded so that all elements are
available in XML, but we haven't done this at the moment.

Presently we have isolated all language specific information into it's
own language table so that a single article can have a language specific
title, blurb (abstract), content, keword metadata and description
metadata.  This allows us to have as many languages in the database as
the client requires.

Mike
-- 
Mike Gifford, OpenConcept Consulting
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Another world is not only possible, she is on her way -Arundhati Roy

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