: How can we make images with (necessary) text more translatable mechanically? Our documentation set includes some diagrams, such as entity relationship diagrams and flowcharts, where text is integral

Our documentation set includes some diagrams, such as entity relationship diagrams and flowcharts, where text is integral and cannot reasonably be handled in callouts. Our documentation is translated into another language, so these diagrams ought to get translated too. (I don't know if they currently are.)

What can we do to make that translation easier from a technical perspective? In particular, we use Visio to create these diagrams. Is there a way that somebody who's not also using Visio could take our source files and replace the text strings? That is, could somebody do a text-replace on the strings in the file even without using the tool to edit graphically? I'm thinking that this might be easier to automate/repeat, plus I don't know what graphics tools the translators have.

In this related question I asked about supporting the needs of differently-verbose languages. In this question I'm asking about mechanics, not content.

Load Full (1)

: How can I make names more distinctive without making them longer? In the point-of-view culture in my story, all of the women in priestly families have two-syllable names beginning with vowels.

@Turnbaugh521

Load Full 10 Comments

: When blogging recipes, how can I support both readers who want the narrative/journey and ones who want the printer-friendly recipe? Increasingly often, if you Google for a recipe your search results

@Turnbaugh521

Load Full 6 Comments

: Can a successful book series let the bad guy win? I have a five book series and I have plotted them all out. The main bad guy wins in the end. My problem with this is my girlfriend keeps

@Turnbaugh521

Load Full 10 Comments

: Canâ€™t remember the name of the writing style So I am interested in picking up writing and one of the styles I was interested in some 10 years ago I canâ€™t remeber the name or much of

@Turnbaugh521

Load Full 0 Comments

Login to post a comment!

1 Comments

Sorted by latest first Latest Oldest Best

@Deb2945533

Search for localization tools
I haven't personally used Visio in any formal capacity but have done translation/localization when developing web apps and other software. Most professional tools have a way to include localization for text strings and it is somewhat surprising that Visio does not natively support this.
After a quick search I managed to find this multi-language extension from bVisual that should allow multiple languages in Visio itself. I have not used this and have no affiliation, this is just one example of a tool designed to do this.
Another option is TransTools for Visio, again I have not used this and can't give a review of how well it works. But it shows that there are options available. I imagine there are others if you look harder as I doubt this is a unique issue.

Load Full (0)

Feed

: How can we make images with (necessary) text more translatable mechanically? Our documentation set includes some diagrams, such as entity relationship diagrams and flowcharts, where text is integral

More posts by @Turnbaugh521

: How can I make names more distinctive without making them longer? In the point-of-view culture in my story, all of the women in priestly families have two-syllable names beginning with vowels.

: When blogging recipes, how can I support both readers who want the narrative/journey and ones who want the printer-friendly recipe? Increasingly often, if you Google for a recipe your search results

: Can a successful book series let the bad guy win? I have a five book series and I have plotted them all out. The main bad guy wins in the end. My problem with this is my girlfriend keeps

: Canâ€™t remember the name of the writing style So I am interested in picking up writing and one of the styles I was interested in some 10 years ago I canâ€™t remeber the name or much of

Login to post a comment!

1 Comments

Back to top