Growing a product range, buying new companies, being bought yourself, adopting new technology, reorganising etc… all of this creates significant change across an organisation that often feels as though you’re on a merry-go-round where things change as you go around until you’re back to where you started and then it all changes again. I can only imagine that feeling applies to customers and employees alike as each revolution strives to be better than the last, easier to navigate, meaningful in its purpose and full of the promise of success once properly implemented… and yet slightly confusing at the same time!
oldy but goody
Tag used to determine which posts should be reposted.
Translating AI…
Why would you have to? Surely Ai can translate itself? If not it sounds like a pretty big topic… or I’m just confused. Acronyms can do this to you and these days we do have good reason to be confused… Multiterm/Machine Translation (MT), National Aeronautics and Space Administration/North America South America (NASA), Role Playing Game/ Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG), Wages For Housework/Working From Home (WFH)… the latter essentially being the same!! The list is huge and these days I find myself looking something up almost every day. Ai is another one… Artificial Intelligence is probably what crossed your mind right from the start, particularly since I put it on top of a brain! I actually found 164 meanings for this acronym but only one of them matches the topic for my article… and that is Adobe Illustrator which should be a far more manageable topic for translation!
The Black Box…
An interesting thing about Trados Studio is how easy it makes it for new users to save all their projects in one place, all their translation memories and all their termbases. In fact it’s so easy that I’m absolutely certain many users never give these things a second thought as they start to get to grips with using the software itself. But then, one day, these users upgrade… in some cases even the upgrade seems to happen automagically… and then the problems start. After becoming a competent Trados Studio user, excited to try the latest version, all of a sudden the translation memories, termbases and projects are all gone! Lost inside the black box otherwise known as Trados Studio!
Introducing the multilingual XML… super filetype!
I was compelled to make a return to a previous theme around Marvel Comics because it’s the only way I can do justice to the amazing work the RWS AppStore team carry out on a daily basis. There are some things you just can’t wait to get up in the morning for, and for me, one of these things is being able to work with this team on a daily basis. The first meeting of every day for me is with this team and what a fantastic way to start the day it is! I started this article by mentioning Marvel, but as you’ll see, the hero of this story is probably a Honey Badger!
Let’s learn about XML…
This year at the Spring Trados Roadshows the emphasis was firmly placed upon education. Almost all the presentations were based on providing translators, project managers, localization engineers etc. with great material to help them as they work with the Trados toolsets.
I had a few presentations at this event and decided it might be useful to post a few of them here, especially the ones that might help with some of the common filetype questions we see in the communities from time to time.
A file with a view…
I started thinking about “A room with a view” by E. M Forster when I contemplated how to start this article. But as you can see from the images on the left my mind wandered from this idea and was focused more on the “view”. This is quite possibly because our R&D team started a “Working from home” distance challenge to cover as much distance as you can every day for a month by physically getting out of your office/home and taking some fresh air. A great initiative in these days of working from home where it’s all too easy to never leave your desk! Walking, running, cycling and even swimming were acceptable activities and you get the distance converted into points based on the type of exercise you are doing. You do have to track the activity and you have to take a few pictures as evidence of your efforts… but that brings me back around to my topic for the article… the pictures, or more specifically the views. Yes, this is a very tenuous link indeed with the actual topic which is studioViews!
Short term memories…
“Not only is my short-term memory horrible, but so is my short-term memory.” I have no idea who this quote can be attributed to, and its certainly not original, but it is quite appropriate when I start to think about the evolution of Trados. Ever since Trados Studio was launched you can be sure to find many “experts” in places like ProZ and even the SDL Community recommending you don’t upgrade because there is no difference compared to the last version. To be fair, if you only use a fraction of the features despite having used the software for a decade, then it probably is like this. The alternative being these “experts” have very short-term memories.
Psst… wanna know a few more things about file types?
I wrote under this title back in 2013 and provided a bit of information about the Word filetypes in Studio. It was a pretty popular article and I always meant to circle back and do some more. Seven is a lucky number so now we’re in 2020, seven years later, I thought I’d do it again… and it’s also just as long, so grab a coffee first!
A Private AppStore…
All the apps come in these places
And the apps are not the same
You don’t look at their faces
And you don’t ask their names
You don’t think of them as human
You don’t think of them at all
You keep your mind on the money
Keeping your eyes on the wall
I’m your private AppStore, I don’t cost no money
I’ll do what you want me to do…
Every time I think the words “Private AppStore” that song comes into my head and leaves me with an earworm for a while. Funny, but true!
Some you win… some you lose
When we released the new Trados 2021 last week I fully intended to make my first article, after the summary of the release notes, to be something based around the new appstore integration. The number of issues we are seeing with this release are very low which is a good thing, but nonetheless I feel compelled to tackle one thing first that has come up a little in the forums. It relates to some changes made to improve the product for the many.