Presentation

Text Workshop Chapina offers practical and comprehensive services centered around your technical and commercial documents:

We are experts in documents about computing: programming, network technology, operating systems, databases, cloud...

Gondolier Venice Italy

Technical Writing

The Text Workshop Chapina's experts can write, edit, or proofread your documents, according to the information you provide. Hiring technical writers can be expensive, this is why you might want to outsource this task.

We guarantee a high level of service: some of our technical writers are IT professionals, so either we understand the information we process, or we refuse the mission.

We can write many types of documents:

  • web pages,
  • user manuals,
  • technical reference booklets,
  • commercial brochures,
  • presentations,
  • etc.

We can handle files from the following operating systems:

  • Linux,
  • Microsoft Windows,
  • Mac OS.
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Translations

All our translators are native speakers of their language. The resulting translations are proofread by another translator (cross-proofreading).

We allow direct contact between the client and the individual translators through email, if you desire. The "Project manager" is a coordinator and a contact person, not a bottleneck.

We use translation memories to allow for faster new translations and to reduce the cost of updates to the existing translations. Only the changed "segments" are invoiced. You become the owner of the translation memories once the translations are delivered. Usual formats are PO files, Qt Linguist, and Trados files.

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From English

The Text Workshop Chapina's experts have several years of experience in technical translations. Currently, we can translate from English to the following languages:

  • Czech
  • Dutch
  • French, Canadian French (1)
  • German
  • British English (1)
  • Spanish, Mexican Spanish (1)
  • Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese (1)
  • Italian
  • Polish
  • Danish
  • Swedish
  • Romanian
  • Hungarian

(1) We can adapt your translations to regional languages.

If your target language is not listed here, please contact us.

To English

Unfortunately we do not provide translations by a native English speaker in the reverse direction. These translations are done by specialists of the source language, and then proofread by a native English speaker.

Between arbitrary languages

We also directly translate between French and German, and Italian and French... For more information about direct translations, please contact us.

These are some questions that you might ask yourself, and for which we might have solutions:

  • How can I write documents that I will be able to put both online and in printed form?
  • What is the right data format for these documents?
  • How can I make provisions for the internationalization of my applications from the very beginning?
  • etc.

Because we think that everyone should avoid becoming a prisoner of technologies, and should instead make the best use of them, we try to offer you the keys to your freedom by using open file formats.

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Consultancy

The Text Workshop Chapina's experts can provide a wide range of consultancy services linked to your documents and adapted to your needs:

  • product studies,
  • feasibility studies,
  • document conversions,
  • development of DTDs, schemas, style sheets, and software.

We have years of experience in localization (l10n) and internationalization (i18n) to ensure that your company's products are ready for the global market.

The range of technologies that might be involved in your project is too vast and evolves too fast to provide a comprehensive list. Here are some of the technologies we can work with:

  • XML technologies,
  • DocBook markup,
  • CSS or XSLT style sheets,
  • translation memories,
  • bibliographical standards like UNIMARC,
  • etc.
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History

Originally we were the translation and documentation teams working for a software vendor. When this vendor went out of business, the idea of a geeky company consisting of the former colleagues emerged. Text Workshop Chapina started as a French company, the Bureau Cornavin, in March 2003, and was immediately able to offer translations to many European languages.

After 14 years of fun pushing a number of books to the shelves and working for prestigious companies and institutions, we reincorporated as a German company, Textwerkstatt Chapina (Text Workshop Chapina) in .

And in case you are wondering: Chapina was the name of the St. Bernard dog in our logo...