Year of collaboration
2018 – ongoing
Context
Leading manufacturer of commercial woodchippers
For over 35 years, Timberwolf has been a specialist manufacturer of commercial woodchippers. As the largest supplier of commercial woodchippers in the UK, in recent years Timberwolf has been expanding into overseas markets
Aim
Establish a more efficient approach to authoring and translating product manuals
To support growth in international markets, Timberwolf needed to translate and localize their technical product manuals into at least eight languages. They knew their legacy toolset was making this harder.
With multiple products, variants for different markets, and critical safety regulations, Timberwolf needed a flexible authoring tool and information that was easier to understand.
They also needed a translation partner who understood how to get the best from the new tool and could advise them on how to optimise their documentation for efficient translation.
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Challenges
Making the transition from legacy tools and workflow
Timberwolf had been working with InDesign and Word for many years, with lots of product manuals published and still containing useful information. However, the transition had to be made to support a more efficient translation process and global growth.
Together, 3di and Timberwolf would need to be patient; establish new assets and workflows, test and hone them, and make sure we brought the range of contributors and stakeholders along with the new tools and processes.
Solution
Streamlined translation and localization process
The 3di team:
- Supported the in-house technical writer with making the business case to move from Adobe InDesign to MadCap Flare as the authoring tool. The key drivers were more efficient authoring and multilingual publishing.
- With the in-house technical writer, designed, implemented and tested the Flare template, so that all of the content types Timberwolf needed could be managed efficiently in English, and optimised for translation and localization.
- Created a multilingual glossary of technical terms, so the 3di translators understood the context and could be consistent across products.
- Established a Translation Memory, making each subsequent translation quicker, cheaper and more efficient.
- Provided Timberwolf with a scalable and reliable translation process, allowing them to ramp up translations when needed.
Result
A more efficient approach to creating and managing multilingual product manuals
The 3di team:
- Help Timberwolf set up MadCap Flare for their in-house authoring team.
- Successfully translated and localized Timberwolf’s documentation into nine languages (French, Dutch, German, Czech, Simplified Chinese, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish and Polish).
- Become Timberwolf’s trusted outsourced translation and localization partner – providing an end to end service starting at the initial optimisation, all the way through to publishing.
- Make it significantly quicker and cheaper for Timberwolf to create product variant manuals for multiple markets.
Testimonial
“Timberwolf adopted Madcap Flare over two years ago as our new authoring tool.
With no previous experience of this tool within the business, 3di have proved to be an invaluable ally.
They are always there to provide help and advice, ironing out the inevitable beginner’s mistakes and streamlining our output to the advantage of both parties.
With the development of new products and the need to update manuals at very short notice, 3di’s translation team have proved to be extremely adaptable, able to react at very short notice to ensure Timberwolf have the documents we need, in the languages we need, at the time we need them.”
Martin Wells, Technical Author at Timberwolf