Academy Case Studies

Students at Andreas Gordon School in central Germany recently worked together to produce a software package that would translate the Networking Academy curricula into German.

Students at Andreas Gordon School in central Germany recently worked together to produce a software package that would translate the Networking Academy curricula into German.

Petra Davis was facing a dilemma. She had been asked to translate the Cisco CCNA Discovery curriculum into German for her regional academy at the Andreas Gordon School in central Germany, but things were not going well.

Using the available WorldServer Desktop Workbench translation software would have required hours of laborious hand typing, so Davis resolved to use professional translation software, and correct any errors herself. “Even with the time I would need to spend on editing the software’s translations, the work would get done considerably faster,” she explains.

What started out as a time-saving exercise quickly became a technical challenge for Davis. “Downloading the files and running them through my translation software was no problem," she recalls "but uploading them back into WorldServer was. Since I hadn’t exported the files properly, they couldn’t be imported again.”

At that point, Davis decided to recruit some of her students to help with the translations. "I thought if I couldn’t get my software-translated files back online, the students and I would simply need to enter the translated version by hand using WorldServer .”

Thankfully, the technical ingenuity of her students spared them all many hours of typing. “They checked out the file formats supported by the WorldServer and by my translation software, and figured out right away that my translation software didn’t support the necessary .xliff file format," says Davis. “They offered to develop a plug-in for my translation software to support this format, and make it possible for me to export the files and import them again after the translation.”

Thomas Kuehn, one of Davis students, who she describes as “a real whiz at programming,” wrote the plug-in. “In essence,” she explains, “his program goes through the whole script of the exported .xliff files, filters out the parts that will be translated, and leaves the control information untouched.” Furthermore, the plug-in allows supports manual proofreading and stores the finished translation in the .xliff format, so it is ready to be imported into WorldServer.

Two other students, Nadine Jeznita and Daniel Kirsten, developed clear instructions so that this highly beneficial program could be used by others. “All of my students did an excellent job at facilitating the translation of the CCNA Discovery curriculum and they deserve a lot of praise,” says Davis, before making the following generous offer: “If anyone is interested in the plug-in for the translation software, we are willing to share.” Petra Davis can be contacted at pdavis@ags-erfurt.de.