Retro apps…

SDL Trados Studio is up to Studio 2017 which is the fifth major version since Studio 2009 was first released some eight years ago now.  During these eight years I think it’s fair to say we have seen less and less requirement for the old Trados features, yet despite that we do see some interesting tools making an appearance in the SDL AppStore that mirror some of the old functionality.  In fact some of these apps are quite recent and seem to have been driven by requests from users who miss some of the things you could do in Trados but still cannot do in the out of the box Studio solution.  So I thought it might be fun to take a look at some of these apps and if you are one of those translators who remembers all the good things Trados could do… and can I say forgotten the things it could not… then perhaps you’ll find these apps useful!

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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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The SDLXLIFF to Legacy Converter

#01This application, free on the SDL OpenExchange (now RWS AppStore), has been around for about a year and a half and is one of the most popular applications on there.  It was written by Patrick Hartnett and is incredibly useful in more ways than one.  In fact it’s so useful I have referred to it quite often and used it for working around other issues in many of the articles I have written… so why haven’t I written specifically about it here until now?  The answer is I have no idea… but I should have done!  What prompted me to write now is that Patrick hasn’t released many updates to this tool, mainly because it did what was needed from the start and has been a really reliable and useful application; but he has released an update this week.
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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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Identifying numbers in your analysis

Handling number only segments is a question that comes up a fair bit, and for a number of reasons.  Mostly it’s the more simple question of how to handle them at all; sometimes they are recognised and Studio can auto-localize them; sometimes they aren’t recognised and you need to work around this a little.  This question I’ve addressed a few times, so here’s a few links as a reminder.

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The ATA53 Studio presentation in San Diego…


As a follow on to the presentation I gave at the ATA this year, which was very well attended (photo courtesy of Wesley Budd) I thought it might be useful if I highlighted some of the things covered on the day.
The session itself was a little ad-hoc, deliberately so, because I wanted to make sure the content was relevant to the attendees, and because it wasn’t a getting started session.  So I covered quite a lot of material, that judging by the number of people furiously scribbling down in their notebooks could use a little follow up!
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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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