Presented by Ann Zdunczyk at Documentation and Training Life Sciences, June 23-26, 2008 in Indianapolis. Creating content for a global audience can seem daunting at first, but most best practices come down to practical guidelines and simple common sense. Document assets must be packaged in a consistent and specific way. Graphic assets must be tracked more specifically than with an English-only project. Effectively converting your content into target languages and locales involves a host of decisions: * Are graphic images in your marketing materials potentially misunderstood or offensive? * How can instructive graphics of device and equipment operation be created to minimize translations costs? * How can source-file document templates be designed to allow “breathing room” for target languages that will increase word count and paragraph depth? * What computer settings are required to enable you to view content published for Asian markets? * When generating multiple outputs from single source publishing, how can content best be organized for optimal results? * How can you select and qualify in-country review staff within your company to ensure that target languages are optimized for your audience? * How can you reduce the turn-around time for in-country review? * What can you do while authoring new content to maximize the leveraging of content from legacy files? * How can you monitor your project’s progress as it advances through various milestones on the translation vendor’s end? Attend this session to find out answers to these and even more critical questions that will help get the most out of your translation budget. The world is waiting for your product and accessible information to use it. Don’t be left behind as your competitors reach even further into expanding global markets.

1. Best Practices for Translating, Localizing and Globalizing Content in Life Sciences Presented by Ann Zdunczyk June 25, 2008

26. Questions and answers CONFIDENTIAL