LISA Forum Asia

CHINA FOCUS

Outsourcing Globalization and IT Services to China

Producing Multilingual Documentation: Cost Effective Design and DTP

09:00 - 17:00 : Thursday, March 13, 2008

Workshop Program

Welcome and Introduction

• Who's who?
• What does each participant hope to take away from this workshop?

The document localization process

• Understanding how a document goes from a Chinese source to an English translation
• Who is involved and what do they contribute?
• How do technologies impact what can and cannot be done?

Designing documents to fit your customers’ needs

• Who is your audience?
• Differences between countries
• Different user profiles (e.g., mobile users vs. desktop users)
• Distributions options (multiple language vs. single language documents) and meeting linguistic needs

Designing documents for easy localization

• Making text accessible to localizers
• Proper use of “stories” to contain text
• Dealing with labels, captions, graphics, and other textual content
• Data-driven tools
• Choosing a “look” or “looks” for documents
• Planning for differences in writing systems
• Separating form from content

Choosing the right DTP application

• Overview of current options, their strengths and weaknesses, and their market shares
• Different platforms and integrating with international suppliers
• Font formats and Unicode support

Language-specific issues

• What sorts of languages are there?
• What limitations do your choice of languages place on your other options?
• Special issues in Roman→Asian and Asian→Roman script localization
• Font support

Design testing and refinement

• How to improve processes and identify problems
• After-sales support
• Working with localization providers
• Identifying process hurdles and sticking points
• Issues of particular concern for Chinese companies doing business in the West

Discussion and conclusion

• What have we leaned
• Some examples of success and failure
• Your feedback