The PerfectMatch…

mage: A heart made of puzzle pieces with a piece missing.In the world of translation, Trados Studio’s PerfectMatch feature is like the overachieving student who always gets straight A’s, and its academic partner is the brilliant but slightly disorganised professor.  PerfectMatch, with its meticulous and precise matching capabilities, often finds itself patiently sorting through the professor’s vast but somewhat chaotic repository of knowledge.  Picture PerfectMatch as the diligent student, poring over texts late into the night, determined to find that one perfect translation match.  Meanwhile, the academic partner is the genius who wrote the book on translation but can’t quite remember where they put it. Together, they form an unlikely but unstoppable duo – the PerfectMatch feature meticulously cross-referencing every word while the academic partner brings a wealth of knowledge, albeit sometimes hidden under a pile of papers.  It’s a partnership where precision meets wisdom, creating translations that are not just accurate, but also enlightened!

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Back to school… again!

The image depicts a stylised portrait of a person wearing academic attire. The individual has a neatly trimmed beard and moustache, and they are wearing a blue graduation cap with a tassel on the right side. They appear to be smiling contentedly, with their eyes closed in a serene expression. The figure's graduation gown is dark blue, and they are wearing a white shirt with a green tie underneath. The image has a clean and modern vector art style, with flat colours and simple shapes for features.After I did my last studies, apart from all the endless mandatory HR type training we have to endure these days, I thought that would be it for any sort of formal training for me.  In fact the main reason for me doing my last formal studies, TCLoc Masters degree at the University of Strasbourg, was to fill the gaps I thought I had given a complete lack of education in the field I’ve been working for the last 17-years.  That degree was very useful and I definitely learned a lot and filled some gaps, but whilst there was an element of technical localization to it I think it only scratched the surface and didn’t really cover the sort of skills that I think are needed, not just for localization engineers, but also for professional translators and project managers, working in technical localization today.

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Character counts…

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!

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The portfolio merry-go-round…

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!

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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!

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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.

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Not your usual stuff!

Time seems to be going faster as I’m getting older as it doesn’t seem that long ago since we saw the release of the 2019 version of SDL Trados Studio.  But here we are, it is that time again and many users will already have noticed they have a shiny new version in their account… SDL Trados Studio 2021.  Fast as it is, we don’t want to do these product launches too often because I can tell you it’s a major undertaking requiring no small amount of coordination between the product management teams, core development teams, AppStore team, support teams, customer success teams, marketing teams, sales teams, back office teams, IT teams, 3rd party developers who provide plugins and more.  In addition to this we often have other projects on the go and many of the teams worked on the new sdl.com website which also went live this week, AND everyone did all of this while having to work isolated from their colleagues while working from home.  Quite an achievement and I certainly feel proud to be part of this SDL team, and not just because of how well they all work together.

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The “Old Farts Language Code Club”…

The Old Farts Language Code Club! This is a new club, inspired by a comment in the SDL Community from a prospective member. I’m not sure yet of the age at which you can qualify for membership, but in addition to the age requirements, which may have stringent rules to prevent any young whippersnappers from joining, it’s essential that prospective members have a good grasp of the language codes used in Trados Studio. I’m also not sure of the demand, so I may open a waiting list that could include anyone who already makes good use of the language codes in Trados Studio but isn’t an old fart yet!

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Wot! No target!!

The origin of Chad (if you’re British) or Kilroy (if you’re American) seems largely supposition.  The most likely story I could find, or rather the one I like the most, is that it was created by the late cartoonist George Edward Chatterton ‘Chat’ in 1937 to advertise dance events at a local RAF (Royal Air Force) base.  After that Chad is remembered for bringing attention to any shortages, or shortcomings, in wartime Britain with messages like Wot! No eggs!!, and Wot! No fags!!.  It’s not used a lot these days, but for those of us aware of the symbolism it’s probably a fitting exclamation when you can’t save your target file after completing a translation in Trados Studio!  At least that would be the polite exclamation since this is one of the most frustrating scenarios you may come across!

At the start of this article I fully intended this to be a simple description of the problems around saving the target file, but like so many things I write it hasn’t turned out that way!  But I found it a useful exercise so I hope you will too.  So, let’s start simple despite that introduction because the reasons for this problem usually boil down to one or more of these three things:

  1. Not preparing the project so it’s suitable for sharing
  2. Corruption of a project file
  3. A problem with the source file or the Studio filetype

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A business resolution for 2019…

There are three things that have stood out for me this year.  The first is how much support SDL have provided to their users to make sure they are able to work successfully with their investment.  The second is how little many users are aware of this, and the third is just how many users have used Trados for a decade or more and were not aware of what a support & maintenance contract can bring you.  This last one has been the biggest surprise to me as I’ve spoken to people who thought a support contract was more than the cost of the software; to people who thought it was support only and to people who didn’t know SDL provided any support at all!  So, one of my resolutions for 2019 will be to try and make sure that all our users are more aware of how to get help, even if they don’t want to purchase a support & maintenance contract.  So, I’ll cover these things:

  • Support & Maintenance Contract
  • SDL Community
  • The Customer Experience Team
  • The SDL AppStore Team
  • The SDL Marketing Team
  • Training
  • Customer Experience Program

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