Localizing Robohelp Files - The Basics

We get a lot of search engine queries like "localize Robohelp file" and "translate help project." I'm pretty sure that most of them come from technical writers who have used Robohelp to create help projects (Compiled HTML Help Format), and who have suddenly received the assignment to get the projects localized.

The short answer
Find a localization company who can demonstrate to your satisfaction that it has done this before, and hand off the entire English version of your project - .hpj, .hhc, .hhk, .htm/.html and, of course, the .chm. Then go back to your regularly scheduled crisis. You should give the final version a quick smoke test before releasing it, for your own edification as well as to see whether anything is conspicuously missing or wrong.

The medium answer
Maybe you don't have the inclination or budget to have this done professionally, and you want to localize the CHM in house. Or perhaps you're the in-country partner of a company whose product needs localizing, and you've convinced yourself that it cannot be that much harder than translating a text file, so why not try it?

You're partially right: it's not impossible. In fact, it's even possible to decompile all of the HTML pages out of the binary CHM and start work from there. But your best bet is to obtain the entire help project mentioned above and then use translation memory software to simplify the process. Once you've finished translating, you'll need to compile the localized CHM using Robohelp or another help-authoring product (even hhc.exe).

The long answer
This is the medium answer with a bit more detail and several warnings.

• There may be a way to translate inside the compiled help file, but I wouldn't trust it. Fundamentally, it's necessary to translate all of the HTML pages, then recompile the CHM; thus, it requires translation talent and some light engineering talent. If you don't have either one, then stop and go back to The Short Answer.
  
• hhc.exe is the Microsoft HTML Help compiler that comes with Windows. It's part of the HTML Help Workshop freely available from Microsoft. This workshop is not an authoring environment like Robohelp, but it offers the engineering muscle to create a CHM once you have created all of the HTML content. If you have to localize a CHM without recourse to the original project, you can use hhc.exe to decompile all of the HTML pages out of the CHM.
• Robohelp combines an authoring environment for creating the HTML pages and the hooks to the HTML Help compiler. As such, it is the one-stop shopping solution for creating a CHM. However, it is known to introduce formatting and features that confuse the standard compiler, such that some Robohelp projects need to be compiled in Robohelp.
• Robohelp was developed by BlueSky Software, which morphed into eHelp, which was acquired by Macromedia, which Adobe bought. Along the way it made some decisions about Asian languages that resulted in the need to compile Asian language projects with the Asian language version of Robohelp. This non-international approach was complicated by the fact that not all English versions of Robohelp were available for Asian languages. Perhaps Adobe has dealt with this by now, but if you're still authoring in early versions, be prepared for your localization vendor to tell you that it needs to use an even earlier Asian- language version.
• Because the hierarchical table of contents is not HTML, you may find that you need to assign to it a different encoding from that of the HTML pages for everything to show up properly in the localized CHM, especially in double-byte languages.
• The main value in a CHM lies in the links from one page to another. In a complex project, these links can get quite long. Translators should stay away from them, and the best way to accomplish that is with translation memory software such as Déjà Vu, SDL Trados, across or Wordfast. These tools insulate tags and other untouchable elements from even novice translators.

We've marveled at how many search engine queries there are about localizing these projects, and we think that Robohelp and the other authoring environments have done a poor job explaining what's involved.

If you liked this article have a look at "Localizing Robohelp Projects."