Computer aided translation AND proofreading with context (Word with thumbnails) - Storyline 360

Jun 19, 2023

Dear Community,

This is probably a long shot but maybe someone else has been in my shoes before and was able to come up with a solution/workaround and could help me out ! Here's my situation :

The company I work for (we are an agency) is trying to implement a new workflow for courses' translation, having a first translation being performed by a computer tool,  then proof read and edited by a native (on the client side), and finally reimported in Storyline for the final version in the new language.

Here's what we've been doing so far:

1) Export the content to Word (single table). 

2) Copy and paste the column "Translation" into a blank Word document

3) Have it translated by the tool

4) Replace the original "Translation" column with the new translated column

5) Import the new Word into Storyline

All these steps are successful and we can translate the course. However, proofreading the content becomes very complicated at this stage, as we loose the possibility to have a Word file with thumbnails (we need the context) having both the source language AND the computer-translated text. In fact, once the Word is imported, the "source" language becomes the new translated language and if I export a new Word file with thumbnails, I'll have twice the same language in both columns (obviously). As a result, the person who needs to proofread the content won't have the original text to compare the translation against. Their proofreading will therefore only be limited to correcting "obvious" mistakes and this could not be acceptable. I couldn't possibly copy and paste all the translated (nor the original) text into a Word with thumbnails, it contains over 130 pages !

My question is then : has anyone had to deal with a similar situation and find a way to generate/obtain a Word document, whit thumbnails, of a content translated with a computer tool while keeping the source language?

The only solution I have, so far, is to provide the reader with a "single table" Word file, with no images and - therefore - no context, that will be the results of step 4) mentioned above.  This isn't ideal but it's all I have been able to accomplish so far. (We will of course publish a new version on Review, but there is "hidden" content that is not necessarily seen unless the reader clicks on specific areas of the course.)

For clarity: We also tried exporting to XLIFF and it works (it's even faster) but we cannot use this method as we won't have a file with the two languages (source and translated) that the person in charge of proofreading could open (he proofreading will be done internally, by someone in the clients' team).

Apologies if what I wrote makes no sense, English is not my native language !

Thanks in advance to anyone who'll jump in the conversation!

Rosaria

1 Reply
Thor Melicher

@Rosaria,

May I suggest instead of immediately re-importing the file into Storyline, have your reviewer go through the document once you paste the computer aided translation in?

This way they can correct the Translation column and then you can import the final copy back into Storyline.

If I'm misunderstanding your approach, please let me know, and I'll see if I can come up with some additional ideas.

Thor