About the author: Jost Zetzsche is an ATA-certified English-to-German translator and a localization and translation consultant. He co-founded International Writers' Group on the Oregon coast and sends out a free, biweekly technical newsletter for translators (see www.internationalwriters.com/toolkit).
Help
systems—i.e., the documentation resource that is typically part of a
software program and can be accessed through the help menu—is a huge
topic on its own. I'm not planning to cover this in its entirety,
especially because this has already been done so masterfully in Bert
Esselink's "A Practical Guide to Localization" (John Benjamins, 2000).
But there are a few questions that I have been confronted with over and
over again, and here are some quick answers for those.
First of all, there is a great variety of help systems (JavaHelp,
OracleHelp, QuickHelp), but the two most often-used help systems in the
Windows world are HTMLHelp and the increasingly outdated WinHelp.
WinHelp
The compiled WinHelp system typically consists of two files, the .cnt
file and the .hlp file. While the .cnt file is a text-based file that
contains the table of contents for the help system, the .hlp file is a
compiled file that is made up of any number of RTF and image files.
These RTF files have to follow strict guidelines as to how they are
created so that hyperlinks, index markers, sections breaks, etc.
function correctly. Most larger translation environment tools
(especially those that have been around for awhile and seen the heyday
of WinHelp) have facilities to accommodate these special features (such
as hidden text for hyperlinks or the various kinds of footnotes).
In case you receive the .cnt and .hlp file for quoting or even
translation purposes, there's an easy way to "decompile" the .hlp file
into its RTF components. While there are a number of expensive
commercial tools for compiling and decompiling WinHelps (for instance,
see the well-known RoboHelp at www.macromedia.com/software/robohelp), under sourceforge.net/projects/helpdeco you can find the HelpDeco
application which allows you to break apart your help file and analyze
and translate the resulting RTF and image files (and typically any
number image files).
The downside is that this is not a particularly user-friendly
application. What you need to do to use it is to open a DOS window
(Start> Programs> Accessories> Command Prompt) and point the HelpDeco
application to the help file. So, assuming that you have placed the
helpdeco.exe at C:\decompile and your help file helpfile.hlp is located
right at C:\, you would enter
C:\decompile\helpdeco C:\helpfile.hlp
One file that is also created in the process is an .hpj file, the help
project file. Though this file is not to be translated, it is important
because it contains the information on how to re-compile the project
once the translation is done. The free Microsoft program that can be
used to do just that is called Microsoft Help Workshop, and can still be found at www.helpmaster.com/hlp-developmentaids-hcw403.htm
(Microsoft itself is not distributing it anymore). All you need to do
to re-compile—i.e., to recreate—the .hlp file is to open the .hlp
file with Help Workshop and click Save and Compile.
HTMLHelp
The process for HTMLHelp is similar but much simpler. Unlike the
WinHelp system, HTMLHelp consists of only one file, the .chm file. True
to its name, most of the translatable content of an HTMLHelp system is
contained in HTML files. To "get to" the HTML files, you will also need
to decompile the help file. Fortunately, both the compilation and
decompilation are done with the same freely available and easy-to-use
tool: HTML Help Workshop (you can download the latest version at http://tinyurl.com/3nznp).
To decompile an existing help file, just select File> Decompile,
select the .chm file, and choose a location to which you would like to
export the files. You could receive a great number of different file
formats, but the most typical are:
.hhp: the non-translatable project file (you will need this file to recompile the help),
.hhc: the translatable (table of) contents file in HTML format,
.hhk: the translatable index file in HTML format,
graphic files: these are often translatable and/or have to be
replaced with newly created target counterparts (which will have to be
identically named!), and
lots and lots of .html files with lots and lots of translatable content.
Before you start with the translation of your HTMLHelp project, here
are a few things that you should do first: Talk to your client and
inquire about the format in which the authoring of this project took
place. Chances are that it was either authored in some kind of
authoring environment that allows for the output in various formats
(PDF, printed materials, Web-based, help systems, etc.). While it's
entirely possible and really quite easy to translate the HTMLHelp
directly, your client may be much better served if you are able to work
in the original format.
If your client agrees that you should translate the help system
directly, translate the above-mentioned files, replace the graphics
(save them under the same name and the same location), and then
recompile the individual files with HTML Help Workshop.
Well, usually it doesn't work quite so easily, because chances are some
link was corrupted, some graphic is missing, or some file was renamed.
So it's advisable to do a quality assurance check which compares the
original files and your newly translated files. SDL offers an excellent
product for doing just that in HtmlQA (see www.sdl.com/products/htmlqa.htm). The equally helpful sibling product for the WinHelp process is called HelpQA; see www.sdl.com/products/helpqa.htm.
Once you've fixed your errors, you can proceed with the compilation in HTML Help Workshop.
Just select the .hhp file (make sure that it's placed at the root of
your project folder), select File> Compile, and your help file will
be all ready to go.
