Our customer can look back on more than 90 years of company history. Founded in 1931 as a village forge, the company has developed over the years into a global player among German medium-sized companies, especially in the gardening equipment sector. With more than 25 locations, the company is represented in more than 15 countries around the world. To ensure that the products are always state-of-the-art, the company founded an innovation centre a few years ago.
The products are being continually further developed with new digital solutions, intelligent functions and improved battery performance. The short product cycles and rapid market introduction of technologically updated devices require constant adaptation of the technical documentation and rapid translation into all the relevant languages. The name of our customer stands for safety, convenience and pleasure in gardening – as an expression of the quality of life. That’s why it’s particularly important that the technical documentation also reflects these values.
In 2016, our customer decided to introduce a new content management system to meet the constantly growing requirements.
The operating manuals for the products combine multiple target languages in a single document. New manuals can be published as a multilingual document only after they have been translated into all languages.
Thus, the translations are an integral part of the creation process of the technical documentation.
This challenge called for very clear processes that not only control the close cooperation between the product managers and the technical editors at C+P, but also enable the translation department and the preferred translators to be involved at an early stage. These processes should be determined by a special information architecture in Schema ST4 and the use of translation memories in order to save time and money with a high level of security.
Together with our customer, we decided on the Component Content Management System (CCMS) Schema ST4 from Quanos. The customer has found an experienced partner in C+P, who offers technical editing in Schema ST4 and specialist translations from a single source. Regular contact persons have been appointed both for writing the manuals and for the translations. The technical editor announces all new projects to the project manager for translations so that he can inform the translators about upcoming jobs. This “early warning system” shortens reaction times. The new texts are created from Schema ST4 as language-related XML files that are combined in a COTI file and exported via the COTI interface. The COTI file is then imported into the translation memory system with all the XML files. This reduces the effort considerably. This saves time and the project manager can concentrate on the essentials: commissioning the translators, quality assurance of the translations and maintaining the translation memories.
Export from Schema ST4 for translation
Creation of a translation package with the COTI interface
Return of all languages to Schema ST4
Publication in the final layout via and in Schema ST4
The interaction of a CCMS and translation memory significantly reduces translation costs. The manuals have a modular structure in Schema ST4. From Schema ST4, only the texts that have not yet been translated are exported for each language using a so-called delta export. After the texts have been imported into the translation memory, all translations that have already taken place and all translations that can be reused are identified in a second step. C+P offers “100% matches” and repetitions free of charge. From the beginning of the cooperation, a team of preferred translators was organised on the C+P side that, over the years, has been able to further specialise in the customer’s products with each order. From C+P’s perspective, this is a fundamental addition to the implementation of ISO 17100 standard for the creation of high-quality translations, besides the native speaker principle. There is open cooperation because the translator’s questions are answered directly by the technical editor. This is essential for describing innovative equipment that offers new functions. In addition to the translation packages, the translators also receive the PDF with all the graphics and feel supported in their work. These well-thought-out processes contribute to high quality despite faster processing times.
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