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CMS and Databases

Content management systems (CMS) are being used more and more frequently and this means translation management has to adapt. “Project management” must become “process management”. Being able to integrate information content environments with translation support tools is key to success. Telelingua’s technological and computing expertise allows us to create individually tailored gateways so as to optimize the management of files originating from these CMS, at the same time as maximising the use of translation memory software.

A content management system (CMS) is a piece of software intended for use in the design and dynamic updating of websites, multimedia applications, brochures and so on. Such systems all share the following functions:

  • they allow several individuals to work on the same document
  • they provide a publication chain (workflow) offering, for instance, the opportunity to publish document content online
  • they allow the separation of format and content management operations
  • they allow the content to be structured (use of FAQ, documents, blogs and internet forums, etc.)
  • some CMS include version control
  • when the CMS manages the dynamic content, this is referred to as a Dynamic Content Management System or DCMS

In the vast majority of cases, the content resulting from these systems is in XML format. The XML content will be encoded and structured differently depending on the file. This will, of course, have an impact on the translation process, since it will be necessary to extract and then reimport the content after translation in the original encoded format.

To give just one example, a large international group in the tourist industry entrusted us with the translation of its brochures, for which the multilingual content is managed by a CMS. More than 800 extracted files in XML format were managed simultaneously. The translations were supplied in bilingual XML files to take into account the client’s reimport requirements. Updating subsequent brochures is made easier thanks to the use of translation memories containing the previous translations.