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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Unclean… who thought of that?

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!

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Life without Trados!

RIPThe launch of SDL Trados Studio 2014 this month brings with it the news that SDL Trados 2007 Suite will no longer be supported from the end of this year.  I don’t think this will come as a surprise to anyone as SDL had already ceased to support SDL Trados 2007 since the end of 2012, and with the releases of the 2009, 2011 and now 2014 versions of SDL Trados Studio it’s inevitable that the 2007 Suite version will follow suit.
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If I knew then what I know now!

Just learningPeople often tell me that using Studio is complicated.  Other people, who have been working with Studio tell me it’s actually quite logical once you get your mind around it.  I clearly lean towards the latter and whilst I always try hard to see the difficulties the conclusion I always come back to, rightly or wrongly, is that many users who used Trados in the past expect Studio to be similar and then struggle when they discover it’s not.
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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

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Working with Variable Lists

Updated January 2015 : Also possible, and easier, to use the Variable Manager from the SDL OpenExchange (now RWS AppStore) for this.
I mentioned in a previous post that it wasn’t possible to import long variable lists into a Studio Translation Memory using the desktop version of Studio. You can do this with GroupShare, but the ability to do this in the desktop version is a work in progress.
Well that wasn’t quite true and as I’ve been preparing for some roadshows and events that are coming up this month I figured out a simple workaround using SDL Trados 2007 Suite.
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Making the most of your resources… and some free extras

Updated 15 January 2015 : Only 10,000 TUs are required for the generation of an AutoSuggest dictionary with Studio 2014.
I’ve been talking to a Freelance Translator in Canada over the last few weeks who purchased Studio 2011.  She has a great set of resources from many years of translating, all split up in different sublanguages to cater for en(US), en(GB) and fr(FR), fr(CA) variations.  What she didn’t have was consolidated Translation Memories so she could maximise her leverage from all of these variations, or Autosuggest dictionaries, or termbases and didn’t use the AutoText lists.
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Upgrading your legacy resources – filetypes

When you upgrade from Trados to SDL Trados Studio there are a number of things you can take with you.  Translation Memories, Termbases, AutoText lists, custom variable lists, customised segmentation rules for example.  These are all discussed quite a lot in the public forums and in blog articles, but what we don’t see a lot of information on is how to update your file types.  As a result I think many users convert files to TTX unnecessarily just so they can use the old *.INI files they’ve had for years.
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Compatibility between SDL desktop translation tools (Part 1)

The new Studio product and the old Trados products are compatible aren’t they?  Would it be true to say that Studio can handle the old Trados formats, but Trados can’t handle the new Studio formats out of the box?  I think it’s true… but it still requires a little knowledge about how best to handle the compatibility issues that might arise.
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