When it comes to RPG's. I definitely wouldn't do any outside work on maps or manuals unless we've made an official announcement about picking up the game on the main page.
You see, we can hold back announcing things for a number of reasons these days. After years of doing this, we've figured out it is best to announce once most of your ducks are actually in a row. There are many things that can bring a translation to a grinding halt and stop it from being completed.
1. Technical aspects, such as Arc the Lad where the game is just too much work for the amount of time we have.
2. We might hold off to make sure the core translation support is solid. We've worked with some excellent translators. Men and women who were definitely committed to getting the job done. However, when working with a new translator, it is best to err on the side of caution. They might have the best of intentions, but have never done a translation before and find that it is just too much work or too difficult for them and drop out on us or just disappear without a word. It has happened a few times to us already. We don't blame any of them. It is a heck of a lot of work and we totally understand that some people just don't understand that going in. We are just happy with whatever they complete. Everything helps.
3. We are already really busy with what we already have on our plates so announcing more (especially stuff in early development) is just unnecessary. We don't need to make some artificial quota and there is no award for the most projects. If we find someone else has started working on that project too, we'd quietly talk to them and either continue our work as well, cancel ours or best yet try to join forces if it was at all feasible.
4. And a final reason we may not announce is because the decision to move forward with it as a D-D project, joint project with another team/person or donate it to someone else has not been made. Bongo` does donate his work and services to others. Everyone in the team is free to do so. So it is possible that a project won't move forward as a D-D project in the end.
With all that being said, you can still pretty much find us talking publicly in the forums around here about any big projects we've got underway, even if they haven't been announced. Small projects are sometimes kept under wraps but those are an entirely different matter. They usually take a number of weeks, not a number of months or years to complete, and sometimes we just like to have small surprises for you guys so you know we are still working even when progress on larger stuff has slowed (which has been the case recently.) We even have a couple of these in the works right now that you should be seeing pretty soon but I'm not going to say what. That is our little secret
Anyway, back on topic, I definitely wouldn't do any work until an announcement. When it comes to RPG's, most if not all will be announced well before release and you'll have plenty of time to do that work on maps or manuals once the announcement drops.