Hi list,
In my team, we're working on a big web app using
struts and eclipse. The application is translated in some 6 other languages besides english.
For the language strings we're using the JINTO eclipse plugin, which works quite well at the moment. However, for each screen in the web app, we're also having a help file.
The management and translation of these help files is quite a big hassle and a pain. At this moment, for each screen and language there is a separate help file, which as the app grows becomes almost unmanagable.
As the project is open source and quite low budget, the deal is that organizations wanting a local translation take care of that themselves, but this doesn't quite work. For every help they'd have to check with the english version if their translation is still up to date, and if their are additions, and as there are so many helps this is quite a hassle. By the time they are done with a complete translation, they can start all over again because the new release of our software has already been released, with of course lots of changes in all help texts - which of course is not very motivating.
We would like to switch to one big file for each language where all help texts are taken from.
Does anybody know of any tools or strategies available for help text management in a big international web application? Any tips?