Review of Help+Manual Translation Assistant

The Translation Assistant is an add-on program to the Help+Manual authoring tool. You can use the Translation Assistant to:

translate a Help+Manual project manually without having to own and master the Help+Manual software
have an entire Help+Manual project automatically translated by the DeepL service at the touch of a button (unlike the DeepL plug-in in Help+Manual, the Translation Assistant not only translates individual topics, but also the entire project or defined parts of it fully automatically at the touch of a button)
edit a translation at any time, regardless of whether the translation was created manually or by DeepL
after updating the documentation created with Help+Manual, compare the new status with the existing translations from the previous version so that only those topics that have actually changed since the last version need to be retranslated or their translation updated

Optionally, you can also use the Translation Assistant to extract specific data to be translated (and only this data) into a translation package, which you can then send to a translation agency, have translated there in a classic translation workflow via a translation memory system and re-import into the Translation Assistant after translation. This procedure can be interesting, for example, for languages that DeepL does not support well enough or in which you lack the in-house expertise to check the quality of a machine translation or to carry out a manual translation yourself.

The Translation Assistant always translates the source data of a Help+Manual project (the "single source") rather than the documents generated from it. If you create the documentation in more than one output format or in more than one variant, this has the advantage that identical texts only need to be translated and checked once. In addition, the translation remains largely usable even if the documentation is updated.

In this review, you will find out:

what working with the Translation Assistant is like
what the Translation Assistant can and cannot do

Notes: This review was supported by the manufacturer of the software. However, the manufacturer did not influence the content of the review. The version tested was version 9.6.

System requirements and installation

As an add-on program to the Help+Manual authoring system, the Translation Assistant can only be used for technical documentation created with Help+Manual version 7.5.4 or later.

Just like Help+Manual, the Translation Assistant runs under Windows and does not place any extraordinary demands on the hardware. It is installed and ready to use within a few minutes. A large monitor is highly recommended, especially if texts are not only to be translated purely by machine, but also manually translated or manually edited.

The Translation Assistant user interface is only available in English.

If you want to use machine translation from DeepL, you also need an account for the DeepL API. The basic version of this account is free of charge and includes a monthly data volume with which you can have small to medium-sized documentation completely translated into one foreign language. If you need more data volume in a short space of time (more extensive documentation or several foreign languages), you can upgrade the free basic account to a Pro version, in which you pay according to the number of translated characters.

Create a new language

The first step in the Translation Assistant is always to create a new language. The Translation Assistant creates a copy of all relevant project data. Like in Help+Manual, each language is always a separate Help+Manual project when working with the Translation Assistant.

Manual or semi-automatic translation

If the translation is not to be carried out fully automatically with DeepL, you translate all language-dependent content directly in the Translation Assistant. You or the person carrying out the translation do not need Help+Manual.

When translating, you will see the source text on the left-hand side and can translate the text on the right-hand side at the same time. As individual sentences sometimes have to be restructured in a different language, you can also assign the paragraph and character formats defined in the project in the editor if necessary or even change an image or a link. A practical feature is that if you are the author and translator in one person, you can also make small corrections to the original document directly in the Translation Assistant at the same time as the translation.

If you would like to have certain passages pre-translated by DeepL, you will find the DeepL plug-in in the Translation Assistant, which is already familiar from the Help+Manual program. If you select one or more paragraphs in the editor, you can have these paragraphs translated at the touch of a button using the plugin, whereby all formatting is retained.

A project not only includes the texts of the topics, but also various other text fragments, such as the values of text variables. You can also translate these in the Translation Assistant.

Fully automatic translation

Of course, the Translation Assistant really comes into its own when a complete documentation is to be translated fully automatically with DeepL at the touch of a button.

After creating the language, select the function Bulk Translate > Translate all entries (entire project).

The Translation Assistant and DeepL will now begin their work and, depending on the scope of the project, everything that needs to be translated will be automatically translated into the desired language a few seconds or minutes later: table of contents, texts, variables and all other translation-relevant text fragments in the project settings.

Now all you need to do is save, open the translated project in Help+Manual and generate the required documents there.

Update existing translation

Technical documentation, especially software documentation, is often updated frequently during its life cycle.

Regardless of whether it is a manual or machine translation with DeepL, the Translation Assistant helps you to find the places in a project where something has changed or been added since the last translation. Then only these passages need to be retranslated and not the entire project.

The most powerful mechanism in this respect is a three-way comparison of:

the old, most recently translated version of the source language
the new, current version of the source language to be translated
the last translation

The comparison clearly identifies where something has changed and what needs to be retranslated. These passages can then be translated manually or fully automatically via DeepL.

Limits and restrictions

The Translation Assistant expressly CANNOT do the following things:

The Translation Assistant is not a translation memory system (TMS). It does not contain a database and does not store translations for future reuse. The translated data is always stored exclusively in the respective Help+Manual projects.
The Translation Assistant does not offer translation management. You cannot use the Translation Assistant to manage translation statuses of different versions or track translation jobs. You must take care of this yourself.
The Translation Assistant does not offer terminology management.
The Translation Assistant currently only supports DeepL, no other translation engines.
Synchronization always works on a topic-wide basis. If, for example, only a single paragraph within a topic changes, this means that the entire topic is always retranslated in an automated machine translation. With manual translations, however, you have the option of only synchronizing the changed items and retranslating them individually.

Conclusion

The Translation Assistant is a great solution for the following two scenarios in particular:

Scenario 1: Technical documentation is to be translated manually by people who are not full-time translators themselves and therefore do not work with a translation memory system – for example, employees in a country office. In this scenario, the Translation Assistant makes it possible to edit the data to be translated (and only this data) without having to master the authoring system itself. When updating existing documentation, the Translation Assistant helps you to retranslate specific passages that have changed or been added.

Scenario 2: Documentation is to be translated or pre-translated with minimal effort using the DeepL service. In this case, the Translation Assistant enables a targeted translation of all parts to be translated at the touch of a button. All formatting remains unchanged. If necessary, manual corrections can be made to the translations at any time. As long as nothing changes in the original language, these manual changes are also retained for future updates.

With the Translation Assistant, Help+Manual is currently (as of 12/2024) a big step ahead of other help authoring tools and authoring systems. There is not yet a comparable solution for machine translating an entire technical documentation into its source data at the touch of a button.

The results of such machine translation are quite impressive. If you provide DeepL with an individual glossary for translation, which the Translation Assistant supports, DeepL also keeps to your desired terminology and does not translate too "freely", too "amateurishly" or "outside the industry", but really well and at an unbeatable price. If you are skeptical, try it for yourself!

Price and licensing

The Translation Assistant is only available as a floating license at a price of 398 euros.

The license is perpetual and includes updates for one year.

Manufacturer and licensing: helpandmanual.com