… and this will be particularly good news for users working in SDL Trados Studio with SDL WorldServer. Today the Glossary Converter was updated on the OpenExchange with a number of very cool enhancements. These are support for users still working with SDL MultiTerm 2009, support for Microsoft Excel workbooks containing multiple worksheets, Spanish user interface, a number of smaller usability improvements and bugfixes and the one I’m most interested in here… support for TBX. TBX is a TermBase eXchange format that was developed for sharing terminology between different tools. The reason I’m so interested is because if you want to use a TBX file in Studio as a resource for your AutoSuggest then you have to use MultiTerm Convert in order to create a MultiTerm TermBase. This is not too difficult, but it can take a little work if there is a complex structure in the TBX… and of course it can take a little while as it’s at least a two-step process. So making this easier would be great.
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Translating Literature…
As I’m writing this I can hear the cry of “Use a CAT tool for translating literature, or prose… no way!” This is a discussion I see from time to time and there are some pretty strong feelings on this subject for a number of reasons. One of the reasons given is that you cannot take this type of material sentence by sentence and just do a literal translation. Other reasons may be more detail around this same point, and also touch on the need for a creative flow because this type of translation requires a very creative writing style rather than literally translating the words.
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What happened to my QuickInserts?
With the release of Studio 2011 SP2R a few changes were made to the QuickInsert toolbar so that space could be made available on the toolbar for functions that were thought to be more useful to most users… such as custom QuickInserts for example:
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My favourite OpenExchange apps in 2012…
When I started writing this blog the first article I wrote was about the SDL OpenExchange (now RWS AppStore). I thought I’d start this year off by sharing my favorite applications … my favourite FREE applications. We had a fair few of these over the course of the year but I’ll pick out six that I think are well worth a look. In no particular order (well… alphabetical order) these six are:
- Glossary Converter
- Package Reader
- SDLTmReverseLangs
- SDLXLIFF Compare
- SDLXLIFF to Legacy Converter
- Terminjector
Tea and settings
This year there has been a spate of articles explaining how to use the Project Settings and Tools Options in SDL Trados Studio. All of them are really useful and do explain the detail well… but I wanted to share the best explanation I have seen yet that comes from Jerzy Czopik, a well known Studio user and trainer. So here it is in its full glory…
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Working with Packages
A “Package”, sometimes referred to as a “Kit”, is the name given to a file produced by some Translation Tools that comprises of some or all of the following:
- Bilingual files for translation (SDLXLIFF, XLIFF, ITD, TTX for example)
- Any files as reference material (source files as PDF documents, image files, native versions of the source files, reference material etc.)
- Translation Memories (SDLTM, TMX for example)
- Termbases (SDLTB, TBX for example)
- AutoSuggest Dictionaries
- Analysis information and wordcounts
- Project metadata (due date, QA settings, filetype settings, custom quick inserts, etc.)
Identifying numbers in your analysis
Handling number only segments is a question that comes up a fair bit, and for a number of reasons. Mostly it’s the more simple question of how to handle them at all; sometimes they are recognised and Studio can auto-localize them; sometimes they aren’t recognised and you need to work around this a little. This question I’ve addressed a few times, so here’s a few links as a reminder.
Working with placeables that are not automatically recognised
A few articles ago I spent time explaining how to use the TermInjector OpenExchange application from Tommi Nieminen which allows you to create dynamic variables based on regular expressions.
It is a pretty complex article and I had to reread it a couple of times to get my head around it again, and I needed expert help from Tommi, but it was worth the effort because this tool could prove to be invaluable for users who regularly have to deal with numbers in a document that are not recognised by Studio, or currencies that are not used in a way that Studio can automatically localize them for you.
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Aliens and widgets…
Widget, the World Watcher is a purple alien who came down to earth to teach children about the problems caused by pollution and the importance of protecting our planet for future generations. Of course he also battled with evil villains and could shape-shift into various forms that allowed him to do battle and prevent the earths valuable resources from being stolen.
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"Please translate this short paragraph and return by email"
These “quick” jobs are never that quick if you want to make sure you add the translation to your Translation Memory, or leverage the work you’ve done before. You need to copy the text into a word document, or similar, then open the document in your favourite translation environment, translate the document, save the target translation, open the document and copy the text, finally paste it back into your email to return to your client.
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So how many words do you think it is?
Last Update 14 Feb 2015: Analysis based on SDL Trados Studio 2014 SP2 CU8 (11.2.4364.8)
It’s not unusual for people to see the word-count in a translation tool, compare it to the word-count in their authoring tool (usually MSWord..!) and then wonder why there are so many differences. Quite often I get sent documents and am asked to explain the differences which I often put down to a simple explanation; ultimately I think you need to be fair with this and Word is a simple word count, whereas a translation tool is designed to try and reflect the effort of the Translator. Studio even separates out the placeables and numbers so that the real effort becomes apparent and a fair way of measuring and charging for the work is achieved. How successful this is often depends on who’s asking and exactly what the source material is..!
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The ATA53 Studio presentation in San Diego…
As a follow on to the presentation I gave at the ATA this year, which was very well attended (photo courtesy of Wesley Budd) I thought it might be useful if I highlighted some of the things covered on the day.
The session itself was a little ad-hoc, deliberately so, because I wanted to make sure the content was relevant to the attendees, and because it wasn’t a getting started session. So I covered quite a lot of material, that judging by the number of people furiously scribbling down in their notebooks could use a little follow up!
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More useful resources… and multilingual TMs
In October 2012 the European Union (EU) agency ‘European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control’ (ECDC) released a translation memory into the public domain containing 25 languages… the 23 official European languages plus Icelandic and Norwegian. This comes in a similar format to the DGT Multilingual Translation Memory of the Acquis Communautaire that I described here in this article but this time it’s much smaller… so we can look at how to handle a single TMX file that contains all of these languages in one file using Studio.
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