Whaddya know? They asked me first this time!

Do you spend a lot of your time running to catch up to the train? Have you ever been surprised in the middle of a meeting by project plans that were well underway with no thought given yet to localization? Are you getting used to it?

What if they asked you first (or at least early on) about the project's implications for internationalization and localization? Would you know how to react?

This certainly caught me by surprise a few months ago. A client called me in for consultation. He didn't want me to manage the upcoming localization of his user manuals; he wanted me to review and edit the English versions so that they would be ready to localize.

This client, though small, is enlightened. The company is selling English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese versions of several products, and it has a hand-in-glove relationship with its localization company. It knows where its global bread is buttered.

I jumped at the chance to work with people thinking this far in advance, so I reviewed the manuals and submitted changes, almost all of which were acceptable.

How can you review/edit documentation with an eye to translating it?

1. Take advantage of redundancy. Ensuring that identical sentences and paragraphs remain identical is a good way to lower per-word translation costs. Turn the text into a bookmark at its first occurrence, then invoke or cross-reference that bookmark at subsequent occurrences.
2. Ensure that the product matches the documentation. Not all organizations get around to this, believe it or not, and it becomes a bit of value added by the internationalization/localization function.
3. Standardize terms. Especially in companies without a well developed team of writers, manuals end up with pairs or trios of synonyms that will vex translators and add no information, so take the liberty of eliminating one in favor of the other:
   
   • Determine/specify
     
   • based on/according to
   • click the button/click on the button/select the button
   • lets you/enables you to/allows you to
4. Mention errors and inconsistencies that have nothing to do with internationalization. Again, you increase the perceived value of the localization function. Even though the result doesn't affect the localized products, the Localization Department (you) are contributing to a better core product.
5. Axe a few "dead" words. They add little to the explanation, will probably not survive translation, and inflate wordcount:
   
   • unique
   • basically
   • popular
   • congratulations
   • very much
     

By the way, the review took longer than I'd anticipated, so if you have a similar opportunity, don't bid a flat fee the first time.

Interested in this topic? Have a look at Improved Docs through Localization.