MadCap Flare Localization Process

An accurate localization engineering is key to the success of any Flare project localization process.

To some extent, this localization process has a lot in common with any web site localization albeit with certain important considerations.

Among other benefits, a proper project preparation helps in keeping budget and deadlines at bay, from quotation to rollout.

The localization of a Flare project includes various engineering tasks which, in general, have the following goals:

• Establish the scope of the localized outputs
• Filter out the translatable text
• Prepare the translatable text to fit into the standard translation workflow
• Technical assessment on linguistic issues
• Edit the underlaying Flare project to meet the target language requirements
• Support in decision-making issues
• Fix defects caused during translation (bugfixing)
• Support the translation process and its management

Since the Flare project to be localized might include several potential outputs, limiting the scope to those outputs actually required and filtering out the content requiring translation, is esential to accurate word counts and thus in any localization project planning.

To leverage the expertise of linguists as well as the convenience and savings of machine translations, it is paramount to provide the appropriate formats to such resources.

A Flare project includes different file formats, some readily supported by translation tools but others requiring preparation so they can follow the standard translation workflow, with the subsequent advantages for any Language Service Provider vendor.

Once the translation stages have been completed, the applicable files are implemented in the Flare localized project and the required outputs are created in order to be tested for linguistic, functional, and aesthetic issues. To streamline this troubleshooting process, a debug output can be built to assist all parties involved in pinpointing and fixing any potential issues.