I work as an inhouse designer for an international nonprofit and periodically have to work with documents being translated into other languages, mostly Romance ones. The one major job is the Annual Report which for the past two years has gone into four languages. Both times I have tried to go the route of tagging the English version and then exporting the English text as XML. This is then sent to the translators. Both times it has not been very successful.
There are a number of reasons. One of the major reasons is the translators don't know what to do with the XML file, even though I have imported it into Word without a problem and can provide them with a schema. This should nail down any major problems that might arise from messing around with the structure of the file, but it requires them to be familar with how Word handles XML (and how to load a schema). I can't train the translators, because they are from a continually changing pool, mostly freelance some not professional. Also the translations are usually checked by others within the organization who have varying level of technical skill
I have reached the conclusion that there are too many variables that can mess up translated file to make this a good application of InDesigns ability to import XML. I think the data which you import must be much more controlled information, information from a database, for instance.
Has anyone has success with InDesign, XML and translation? If so do, you want to share your expertise here? If not but you have found a low-cost (see above — nonprofit, using freelance translators) solution, would you share experience ?
TIA
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