Category: Studio Tips

Quick tips on how to do things in Studio

Working with Studio Alignment

~ Paul Filkin ~ 19 Comments

#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.

Continue reading “Working with Studio Alignment” →

Upgrading your leverage

~ Paul Filkin ~ 13 Comments

#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!

Continue reading “Upgrading your leverage” →

XML Length Restrictions

~ Paul Filkin ~ 13 Comments

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.

Continue reading “XML Length Restrictions” →

Yanks versus Brits… linguistically speaking!

~ Paul Filkin ~ 14 Comments

001The debate over who’s right, and what’s the correct spelling… localization or localisation… will undoubtedly go on for a long time, unless you ask my Mother who knows the British are right of course!  I always lean towards the British spelling, probably the result of my upbringing, and when asked I always take the British point of view.

There are many Americanisms that have crept into our everyday speech, and if I’m really honest I use them too!  If I’m even more honest I think I always used them and didn’t even know they were American English and not British English.  The “z’s” are easy, but who gets cypher and cipher the wrong way around, disk and disc, gaol and jail or even meter and metre.  No doubt there are those amongst us who would never get them wrong (my Mother would never get them wrong) but I think there are plenty of words like this that have become, dare I say it… interoperable!  But what happens if you don’t want to get them wrong, and if you always want to stick to American English or British English?  In our business this is often an important distinction, so with that introduction let’s take a quick look at how you could manage something like this using MultiTerm and Studio.

Continue reading “Yanks versus Brits… linguistically speaking!” →

Unclean… who thought of that?

~ Paul Filkin ~ 7 Comments

001I spent the weekend at my Mothers house the week before last and was digging around looking for photographs of myself when I was the same age as my son.  I found a few… a few I wouldn’t share with anyone else but my son!  What was I thinking with the baggy trousers and platform shoes…!

I also found some old Army pictures including these two taken during my basic training, which did an excellent job of shaking me out of my baggy trousers and platform shoes!  Also provided me with the most tenuous link yet into the translation environment because I wanted to write about clean and unclean files.  I don’t know who came up with this terminology, but if I think about it, the description probably fits quite well.  But the first time I heard it I’m sure something like these photos would have been closer to mind!

Continue reading “Unclean… who thought of that?” →

Quicker Inserts!

~ Paul Filkin ~ 8 Comments

01

If you work with special symbols when you are translating in SDL Trados Studio, and don’t have the appropriate keyboard then you are faced with a number of options.  You can add the symbols you want as Quick Inserts; this is fairly straightforward and I’ve discussed this a number of times in the past.  You can use AutoHotkey or some other tool that makes it easy to add special characters based on a keyboard shortcut.  You can install a different keyboard layout and then learn where the various keys are.  You can use windows alt codes… so to add the letter a with an umlaut ( ä ) I would use Alt+0228.  Actually on my laptop I’d have to use Alt+Fn+0228 as I don’t have a numeric keyboard, so the combinations can be tricky, and you have to remember them all or leave post-its all over your screen 😉  You could also use the windows character map, where you can select the symbol you want and then copy and paste it into your target segment.  And lastly (I think… although I’m open to more suggestions) you could keep MSWord running in the background and copy and paste as needed from a page containing the symbols you normally use.

Continue reading “Quicker Inserts!” →

All I want is a simple analysis!

~ Paul Filkin ~ 44 Comments

01If this title sounds familiar to you it’s probably because I wrote an article three years ago on the SDL blog with the very same title.  It’s such a good title (in my opinion ;-)) I decided to keep it and write the same article again, but refreshed and enhanced a little for SDL Trados Studio 2014.

Something I only occasionally hear these days is “When I used Workbench or SDLX it was simple to create a quick analysis of my files. Now I have to create a Project in Studio and it takes so long to do the same thing.”  I do think this is something you’re more likely to hear from experienced users of the older products because they initially find that getting a quick report out of Studio is a far more onerus process than it used to be.  What they might not think of is how you can use the Projects concept to make this easy for you once you become just as experienced with the new tools.

Continue reading “All I want is a simple analysis!” →

AnyTM… or SuperTM!

~ Paul Filkin ~ 16 Comments

02In February last year I wrote an article called “It’s all English… right?“.  It was about a Translation Provider plugin available through the SDL OpenExchange (now RWS AppStore) and it resolved a common request from users.  The request was why can’t I use my en(US) Translation Memory with my new customer who wants the work as en(GB)?

It’s a valid question, and Studio does have valid reasons for wanting to retain the differences between the different flavours of English… or any other language you work with that also has different flavours, like Spanish, French or Arabic for example.  But it’s also a valid request to be able to use one Translation Memory for this because it’s perfectly simple for you, as a Translator, to maintain multiple Translation Units and handle any other differences between placeables that Studio assigns automatically based on the language flavour.

Continue reading “AnyTM… or SuperTM!” →

You only need a key!

~ Paul Filkin ~ 6 Comments

01Why is the SDL OpenExchange (now RWS AppStore) called the OpenExchange?

If you weren’t familiar with SDL and the OpenExchange initiative then perhaps the name suggests it could be a platform of some kind that supports an open exchange of information or tools to help manage the open exchange of data or processes that are not supported out of the box in the core products.  Maybe you might also think that the word Open could refer to some kind of opensource facility?

Continue reading “You only need a key!” →

Those Project Settings!

~ Paul Filkin ~ 6 Comments

01A couple of years ago I wrote an article on the SDL blog explaining the differences between Project Settings and Global Settings.  Things have changed a little now, although the principle is the same, and Studio 2014 has a different interface so I thought, given the number of times this still comes up, that I’d refresh the article a little and have another go at making this clear.  If you are still using Studio 2009/2011 then the original article might still be helpful – Studio… Global or Project Settings?

If you’re using Studio 2014 then here’s the update….

Continue reading “Those Project Settings!” →