Just a random collection of things I thought it might be useful to know, mostly about translation technology….
Tag used to determine which posts should be reposted.
Everyone is probably familiar with a similar phrase, often mistakenly attributed with biblical origins, “the Lord helps those who help themselves”. The phrase actually originated in ancient Greece through one of Aesop’s fables called “Hercules and The Wagoner“:
Continue reading “Community helps those who help themselves…”
Back in 2015 I wrote an article called “Good bugs… bad bugs!” which was all about the unintended positive side effect as a result of computer software not working as intended. I’d actually forgotten about this article until this weekend as I was pondering my own behaviour in responding to a post in the RWS Community. In fact it was my wife that got me thinking as I allowed the community thread to frustrate me because I couldn’t understand why some users can’t see reason… my reason! I had comfortably created two buckets in my mind.. either they are just incapable of understanding and I’m talking to a brick wall or they just won’t understand because they don’t want to listen since it doesn’t suit their own agenda. It didn’t help that none of my suggestions were even acknowledged, but nonetheless it took my wife to remind me that perhaps I wasn’t listening to them properly!
The most viewed article I have ever written by far was “So how many words do you think it was?” which I wrote in 2012 almost ten years ago. I revised it once in 2015 and whilst I could revise it again based on the current versions of Trados Studio I don’t really see the point. The real value of that article was understanding how the content can influence a word-count and why there could be differences between different applications, or versions of the same application, when analysing a text. But I do think it’s worth revisiting in the context of MT (machine translation) which is often measured in characters as opposed to words… and oh yes, another long article warning!
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!
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!
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!
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!
Continue reading “Introducing the multilingual XML… super filetype!”
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.
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!
“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.