Re: FLASH: Translation

[Scott Rossi]

Recently, Paul Hagwood wrote:


> I have been working on demos for IBM

> (http://swaydemo.dfw.ibm.com/connected/) and I am now

> being hit with translation. Right now we are sending

> the demo to developers in Europe and Japan to

> translate all the text. My question is, does anyone

> know or can think of any way to use the flash program

> (or actionscript) to translate part or all of the text

> to other languages?

> Right now my word has been that we have to have a

> seperate effort to translate all the text but the

> client isn't satisfied with that and I'm getting

> pressure to prove that there is no magic multimedia

> program that can magically translate all the text.


What might be better is to get your client to prove that there *IS* a

multimedia program that can effectively translate one language to another

while keeping all subtlety, nuance and meaning intact.  Seems unlikely,

unless you're connected with a university or privately funded research

project.


We recently completed a CD presentation in Metacard that was translated from

English into 4 additional languages, which included traditional and

simplified Chinese.  The translations were handled internally by company

resources, and were saved as simple text files that could be read into our

engine on the fly.


Instead of creating a separate presentation for each language, we built a

single engine that references a "datamap" -- a text document that describes

which content documents are associated with the language currently selected

in the presentation, and where the documents are located.  This type of

arrangement allows your content to be completely modular, but it also means

your design/layout must be modular as well, to accommodate varying lengths

of text.


If your presentation is going to be crossplatform, watch out for special

characters, such as registration and trademark symbols -- these are keyed

differently on Mac/Win systems.  Try to establish a standard for the

creation of your content early on: Windows or Mac formatted, plain text vs

rich text vs HTML format, etc.


Regards,


Scott


_____________________________________________________________________

Scott Rossi                       Tactile Media - Multimedia & Design

Creative Director                 Email:

scotttactilemedia [dot] com

                                  Web: www.tactilemedia.com



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