Working with Studio Alignment

#01Note to the wise: This article is quite some years old now and the alignment tool has improved a lot with many more useful capabilities since Trados Studio 2021.  But there may still be some value in this one so I’m leaving it here for posterity!

The new alignment tool in Studio SP1 has certainly attracted a lot of attention, some good, some not so good… and some where learning a few little tricks might go a long way towards improving the experience of working with it.  As with all software releases, the features around this tool will be continually enhanced and I expect to see more improvements later this year.  But I thought it would be useful to step back a bit because I don’t think it’s that bad!

When Studio 2009 was first launched one of the first things that many users asked for was a replacement alignment tool for WinAlign.  WinAlign has been around since I don’t know when, but it no longer supports the modern file formats that are supported in Studio so it has been overdue for an update for a long time.

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Upgrading your leverage

#01I’m onto the subject of leverage from upgraded Translation Memories with this post, encouraged by the release of a new (and free) application on the SDL OpenExchange (now RWS AppStore) called the TM Optimizer.  Before we get into the geeky stuff I want to elaborate on what I mean by the word “leverage” because I’m not sure everyone reading this will know.

Let’s assume you have been a translator for years (English to Chinese), and you always worked with Microsoft Word and Translators Workbench.  TagEditor came along, but you didn’t like that too much so you kept working with Word and Workbench.  It had its problems, but until Studio came along and in particular Studio 2014, you were still quite happy to work the same way you had for years.  But now you wanted to buy a new computer, and you really liked the things you’ve been reading about Studio 2014 so you took a leap and purchased a license of Studio.  The first thing you want to do is upgrade your old Workbench Translation Memories so they could be reused in Studio.  You’ve got around 60,000 Translation Units in one specialised Translation Memory and you really need to be able to have this available as soon as possible to help with a job you know is just around the corner.  You upgrade the Translation Memory and this worked perfectly!

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XML Length Restrictions

01This week I spent some time in Stockholm attending one of the SDL Roadshows.  As usual it was a great event, and we have more to come.  In fact this year I get to attend a fair few so if you’re attending Copenhagen, Milan or Paris in May then I’ll look forward to seeing you there!

But I’m not writing about the roadshows.  I also enjoyed a day before the roadshow with some of our very technical customers in a small workshop and as usual they had lots of interesting questions to tax our software and my brain!  But this time I had reinforcements in the shape of Iulia who is a QA Engineer from our Cluj office.  The team in Cluj never cease to amaze me with their dedication to making the products better and in supporting our customers, in addition to their knowledge of our products.  But the reason I want to mention Iulia in particular is because these technical sessions always involve questions around how we handle XML in Studio.  This time was no exception and one question in particular had me dreaming up all kinds of workarounds… they were interesting I think, but unnecessary because Studio has some clever features here I’d never looked at before, but Iulia had.  Of course I don’t know why I’d expect anything less from a team that QA our products, but I thought it would be good to share.

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