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!

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Spaces and Units…

The handling of numbers and units in Studio is always something that raises questions and over the years I’ve tackled it in various articles.  But one thing I don’t believe I have specifically addressed, and I do see this rear its head from time to time, is how to handle the spaces between a number and its unit.  So it thought it might be useful to tackle it in a simple article so I have a reference point when asked this question, and perhaps it’ll be useful for you at the same time.

I have a background in Civil Engineering so when I think about this topic I naturally fall back to “The International System of Units (SI)” which has a clear definition on this topic:

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Those Project Settings!

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….

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Psst… wanna know a few things about file types?

01Studio has some excellent capabilities for getting more from your file types, and I’m often surprised by the reaction of Studio users when they find out what’s possible.

It seems we’ve been keeping a big secret that nobody was supposed to know… so I thought it would be worth taking a quick look at just one file type, everyones favourite, Microsoft Word.  The mechanism for finding these options in any filetype and seeing how they can benefit you will be the same as it is for Microsoft Word… and just as simple.  It’s a long post but hopefully useful.

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Understanding a 100% match

When I used to study maths as a boy my Father, who was an engineer and very straightforward in his views, always used to say 100% was the best you could give. It meant everything, so there was no more.  Any talk of giving 101% for example wouldn’t be entertained for a second because you clearly hadn’t given 100% in the first place.  It wasn’t possible and anyone who said otherwise was probably in marketing or sales!
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