| 1. Translating Images (Premium Content) |
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Most graphic formats (including .jpg, .gif, .bmp, .tiff, and various others) don't contain text. This is true even if it appears to be readable text because the text is nothing more than pixels (little colored dots) on a virtual canvas. While they may form shapes that represent letters, these have nothing to do with the editable letters or words you deal with in a text editor.
Short of recreating these kinds of graphics from scratch, you will need to get your hands on the "source files." (Yes, I know that clients hate to be asked for those, but it usually helps to mention that otherwise they will have to pay ten times as much.)
Most .jpg-, .gif-, .bmp-, or .tiff-like files were created in a layered file that included one (or several) layers with real, editable text. Since they were most likely created in Adobe Photoshop, they will have a .psd extension and can be opened in, well, Adobe Photoshop. The nice thing is that Adobe offers a low-priced version of its program which is more than adequate for translating the text layers that need to be translated. Or you can also use GIMP, a powerful open-source image editor that allows you to work with .psd files, though it may not be particularly user-friendly.
This all may not be good enough, though. Especially if you have a large number of graphics and/or a translation memory database that contains much of the translation embedded within the graphics, you will not want to perform the translation "manually." In this case you can use a number of tools, including the ones from ECM Engineering or Transmissions, that allow for the extraction of text from .psd files into RTF or XML formats. These formats can be processed in TEnTs tools and afterward re-inserted.
More often than not, we don't have access to the source files and have to go through frustrating re-creation or manipulation processes with the graphics. To ease at least some of that (translator) pain, there are a number of management applications for images. Just last week Pablo Muñoz uploaded his little Image Localization Manager as an open-source tool to http://sourceforge.net/projects/ilmanager/. It's a nifty little tool that allows you to quickly browse folder and subfolders for graphics that are displayed nicely within the tool, determine which contain localizable content, create a list of those image files, and (manually) enter the source text. This can then be exported into a file that you can translate in something like Excel or, if you want to view the graphic as you translate, in Image Localization Manager. Of course, when that's done, the translated text and the graphics have to be passed on to the desktop publisher -- but as translators, that's not our worry!
The Image Localization Manager is very much like the Globalization Image Assistant -- including the descriptive but tedious names -- with the exception that ILM is free. (The only functional difference that I was able to find between the tools is that the GIA also offers the viewing of several layers of animated graphics.) |
| 2. A Shortcut to Remember (especially if you're a Vista user) |
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Q: What was the most well-known shortcut in the Dark and Gloomy Windows World?
A: 2 x Ctrl+Alt+Delete.
Remember those truly dark and scary Windows 95, 98, and ME days? Oh, how often did I have to push that keyboard shortcut to restart my computer?! Truth be told, I haven't done that for a while. It's not that I haven't crashed with applications here and there since starting to use Windows 2000 and Windows XP (Windows Vista is unfortunately a whole different story . . .), but the operating system has been relatively stable. Plus, an application crash typically does not warrant a system reboot anymore. Still, the Ctrl+Alt+Delete shortcut is still an honored favorite when you want to view the Task Manager to find out what in the world is making the system so sluggish. (Of course, you could also start the Task Manager via a right-click command on the Taskbar, but who wants to aggravate the looming carpal tunnel syndrome by over-using the mouse?)
Still, there are two problems with this shortcut: If you use your right hand to do something else -- such as holding a phone receiver or playing with your cat -- it's hard to push that combo unless you have enormous hands. And on Windows Vista it brings up a whole menu of options that you need to sort through to choose your Task Manager -- lots of wasted effort.
So here's the alternative: How about Ctrl+Shift+Esc? It can be done with one hand -- even a child's hand -- and in Windows Vista it bypasses the annoying options menu. |
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| 3. Clearing the Temp Directory (Premuim Content) |
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Yes, the \Temp directory -- the directory where Windows stores temporary files -- needs to be emptied every once in a while, and there are several manual and half-automated ways of doing this. Here is a little trick that will take care of that for the rest of eternity. Open Notepad or another text editor and type the following:
del /s /q "C:\Documents and Settings\<yourname>\Local Settings\Temp\*.*"
In Windows Vista the path is:
del /s /q "C:\Users\<yourname>\AppData\Local\Temp\*.*"
Of course, you need to replace <yourname> with your user name and make the appropriate changes if you have a non-English system. Then you need to save the file with a .bat extension (how about nomoretemp.bat) and put the file or a shortcut to it in your Startup group (Start> All Programs> Startup). Now it will run each time you log in to your Windows account, and your temp directory will be emptied.And if you don't want the added time it takes to delete the content during startup, you can also leave the file sitting on your desktop and double-click on it whenever you get bored. It would be sort of the digital counterpart to nose-picking, but for a good cause. |
| 4. INDEPENDENCE! |
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In just a few days I will be returning to the U.S. after a year in exciting Berlin. As a grumpy German, I was rather looking forward to avoiding all the 4th of July independence celebrations -- and I would have succeeded, had it not been for the new U.S. embassy's flashy July 4th inauguration here in Berlin, and some upstart voices from nearby Hungary issuing their own "Declaration of Independence."
I'm talking about Kilgray, the maker of MemoQ and "a pioneer among translation technology providers," who half-seriously and half-tongue-in-cheek issued the following declaration:
We, the Signatory Parties believe that technology is crucial to translation and localization service providers. We think it is not an advantage for a company to buy their technology from and depend on one of their competitors. We believe that companies operating both as language service and language technology providers have a vested interest in providing two-tiered offering. They are bound to keep the most competitive and comprehensive translation technology for themselves, and only release a restricted version to the market. Thus language service companies who buy technology from a competitor cannot be as competitive and productive as those who buy technology from an independent company.
On July 4th, 2008 we have signed this Declaration of Independence that we see as a positive charter of rights for our customers. We hold the statements below to be irrevocable, because all translation service providers are created equal, they have certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Foundation, Operation and the Liberty of choosing the right Translation Technology Provider.
It continues with this:
It is extremely unlikely that the Signatory Parties will find themselves as part of a company owned by a service provider.
In the event we become partly or entirely owned by a language services provider, we warrant that within five years from signature we will return the license fee on request to any LSP who purchased in the year previous to any acquisition.
And finally, the declaration ends with an invitation to "fellow technology providers to join us in signing this Declaration of Independence."
As amusing as this reads, at its core it is a serious assurance to potential customers that there is no intent to sell the company (á la the sales of Trados or Idiom to SDL). In fact, Kilgray is not the only company to make this kind of statement. Across issued a press release titled "Across Systems Stands Alone As Only Remaining Independent Provider for Translation Management Software." And Atril, Déjà Vu's maker, issued its own "Declaration of Independence" in which it "reiterates its commitment to maintaining its position as the leading independent translation technology vendor." (I'm always amused by the liberal use of terms like "only," "pioneer," and "leading" in such statements.)
But it's true! We do need independent tool vendors. And the good thing is that it's up to us, the customers, to make that happen! It's our dollars and euros (and rubel and yuan and yen) that decide who has the liberty of staying independent and which dependent tool makers can maintain their position. |
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| 5. Awakening Veterans |
It's amazing that we can talk about veterans when it comes to TEnTs -- tools that have only been around for the last fifteen years or so. With IBM's Translation Manager's demise a few years ago, there are only three tools that can still claim the title of veteran: Trados, Déjà Vu, and Star Transit. Trados' updates and tool developments are hard to miss, Déjà Vu's next major upgrade is in the works -- with at least one very exiting feature -- and Star Transit's long-awaited major upgrade to the NXT edition is planned for . . . I was almost going to write "this summer," but I was just informed that there actually is no official release date yet. However, that may be good because the last thing we want to see happen is a debacle like the one with Transit's version 3.0 (imagine Windows ME or Trados 5.5), which had to be replaced quickly with the current and lovely version XV.
And unlike some of their competitors, Star has been releasing service pack after service pack that not only contain bug fixes but really a host of new features. Just this week the new Service Pack 23 was released with additional support for InDesign CS3 and WordArt objects as well as a number of other things. The previous service pack added support for Quicksilver 3.0 (Quicksilver is the successor of the venerable Interfleaf) and FrameMaker 8.0 (see here for a full list). There's certainly nothing wrong with adding features at no cost.
I've also had a chance to look at the upcoming NXT version -- I could only find a public German document that gives some screenshots -- and I think it looks very promising. Any user of Transit will immediately notice a radical change in the interface -- it's got a ribbon-like toolbar and it's much more visually oriented with colors and several other button and tool bars -- but it also supports the translation of DLLs and EXEs (thus potentially trespassing into the market of localization tools), and it allows for real-time previews in PDF and HTML formats. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on this once it's ready. |
| 6. Some Take It to Heart |
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Speaking of a new look, the new version of Heartsome -- which is due out within a couple of weeks -- certainly does not disappoint in this respect. Not that a new look in itself is a positive thing, but in this case it makes a big difference for the logic of the workflow.
Rather than having four relatively immobile panes within a window for translation memory matches, there are now five independent windows (Translation Panel, TM Matches, Quick Translation, and Terminology, as well as a detached menu and tool bar). These windows can be configured to your heart's content. I particularly like the much improved context view of the Translation Panel, which in itself contains six panels (source and target for previous, current, and succeeding segments).
The terminology component has also received a greater emphasis, which in turns makes the Quick Translation feature -- a way to "repair" fuzzy matches by adding inline codes or combining data from the translation memory and terminology database -- more valuable.
Not surprisingly for Heartsome, the latest versions of standards are supported, including XLIFF 1.2 (remember that all files are internally converted to XLIFF for translation purposes); the latest version of SRX, the segmentation exchange standard; and GMX-V, the standard measurements, including for word counts. Project setup has become easier with the possibility of simply dragging a file into the application so that it can be converted to XLIFF.
The TMX Editor (the TM maintenance program) feels stable and well-designed -- I have often used its predecessor to edit TMX files that were generated by other programs, and I'm sure that I will continue to do this here. I was disappointed with the batch alignment that was heralded as a much-improved feature -- it was hard to see long file names of files tobe aligned, and I eventually crashed with the program -- but I have come not to expect much of TEnT-internal alignment features, anyway.
Heartsome will come in a number of different editions: The Ultimate edition now offers in-context matching (comparable with Trados' Exact Match or Déjà Vu's Guaranteed Match features) and the possibility of machine translation integration. And the Professional will differ from the Personal edition in its support of SRX rules customization and support for underlying database servers (see below).
One thing that annoyed me no end with the old version was the continually lost connection with the Java engine when there were problems with a setup in the Environment Variables in Windows. (Don't ask, but believe me, it was annoying!) Fortunately, this seems to be a thing of the past. Yesterday I could not start the old version before I once again fixed the Environment Variables, but the new version started up right away.
Overall, there are many obvious benefits to Heartsome -- platform-independence, a fairly small footprint on your system, a good choice of underlying database servers (Internal, MS SQL, MySQL, Oracle), and a very pleasant "feel." But what it has not been able to shake off is the slightly geeky feel that I think it will probably always keep. The developers would have been wise to organize some of the trizillion options the tool offers into dialog boxes that only the more advanced users will ever access. However, if you are willing to put up with that, it is certainly an interesting and powerful tool.
Within a week or so you can admire a video of the new version at TranslatorsTraining.com, so I won't go into too much detail here now.
And, well, it would be odd not to mention it: If you look at Heartsome's presentation alongside Swordfish's on TranslatorsTraining, it is hard to miss the uncanny similarity. The reason, of course, is that the former developer of Heartsome is now developing his own tool -- Swordfish -- to a large extent on the same code base. It will be interesting to see how this will play out and what different paths the two tools will take from here on out. |
| The Last Word on the Tool Kit |
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