|
1. Tool Vendors, Unite!
|
Here is something that I wrote awhile back:
This past week I have been simultaneously
working on two very large projects -- one day on this one, the next day on the
other, then on the first one again . . . you get the idea. One is in Trados
TagEditor and the other in Star Transit. I don't particularly mind
working in either of them. In fact, I have enjoyed the different environments
of these particular projects with excellent termbases and TMs -- if it weren't
for the keyboard shortcuts! It is sooo frustrating to get your fingers used to
one set of keyboard shortcuts and then switch to another tool where the
shortcuts are completely different -- and actually often perversely do the very
opposite of what you want to do.
So, here is my plea:
TEnT vendors of the world, allow us to customize keyboard shortcuts!
Or even better --
and I know I'm asking for the quasi-impossible here -- agree on an exchange
format for a settings file for keyboard shortcuts so that it can be exported
and imported between different products.
At last year's ATA
the same issue was independently raised, so the Translation and Computers committee
asked the tool vendors to work on ways not only to allow for the customization
of keyboard shortcuts (many of them already do that), but also to allow for the
possibility of saving current keyboard shortcuts into an external file -- most
likely an XML file -- and at the same time being able to load a file with the
settings from a different program, thus allowing for true exchangeability.
(BTW, the latest
version of Wordfast has already made the biggest steps in that direction
-- you can already load different schemes for keyboard shortcuts.)
To achieve this
exchangeability of shortcuts two things need to be done (aside from the
application-internal changes that the vendors need to work on): an exchange
format needs to be agreed upon as well as a list of features that are common to
(almost) all tools. I sat down last week and tried to come up with a first stab
at such a list. Here it is, and I would love your feedback. (Please don't be
frustrated with the awkward wording -- I tried to be as inclusive and
politically correct as possible.)
·
Start the translation of a segment by activating it and querying
associated linguistic assets.
·
Start the translation of the next segment by activating it and querying
associated linguistic assets.
·
Start the translation of the next untranslated or fuzzy segment by
activating it and querying associated linguistic assets.
·
Save current data to the terminology repository.
·
Save segment to the translation memory/bitext repository.
·
Join/expand segments.
·
Split/shrink segments.
·
Save translation asset.
·
Close translation asset.
·
Open translation asset.
·
Search for highlighted term/phrase in translation memory/bitext
repository ("concordance search").
·
Search for highlighted term/phrase in terminology repository.
·
Start spell-checking.
·
Save translation asset in original file or export translation asset to
original file format.
·
Copy source to target segment.
·
Enter terminology match.
·
Enter match from translation memory/bitext repository.
·
Enter non-linguistic placeable.
·
Start find process in translation asset.
·
Start replace process in translation asset.
Again, please let me
know which common features I have overlooked or which should not be included in
this list.
|
| ADVERTISEMENT |
|
Take the fast lane with AlignFactory
Align with speed and accuracy and increase the performance of your existing
tools. Automate your document alignment process. Correct segments with the
built-in alignment editor. Produce alignments in TMX format, with or without TM
attributes, in LogiTerm bitexts format or in HTML without language tags.
sales@terminotix.com -- www.terminotix.com
|
2.
Microsoft Sees the Light
| |
So often Microsoft has been charged with merely copying and re-packaging
features of other tools and operating systems into its own products. And
rightly so. But here is an -- albeit small -- example where others are running
behind. Microsoft's browser Internet Explorer versions 7 and 8 have a
cool little feature called "Quick Tabs." Just by pressing Ctrl+Q you can view all of your open
tabs at the same time, making it a lot easier to find your way through the
jungle of websites you might have open at the same time. Neither Chrome,
Safari, nor Opera have this feature, and while there are several
add-ons for Firefox that emulate this behavior (see here, for instance),
I have noticed that the more add-ons I've installed for Firefox the more
sluggish it becomes.
And while speaking of tabs in browsers: Maybe it's just me, but when I
wanted to close all tabs but one I always went through the painstaking job of
closing all the other tabs manually -- which can be kind of frustrating. What I
never realized was that all the browsers that I looked at have a right-click
command for each tab that says something like "Close other tabs" -- a
much easier way.
|
3.
Kuramachina?
| |
In my conference
presentations I love to show images of bygone translators whom we tend to elevate
as translation heroes -- just to question whether it really is wise to have
heroes from hundreds of years ago who worked in circumstances that have very
little to do with ours. (On the other hand, the story of the Afghani men above makes
one wonder how much progress has been made since the days of the Bible translators
Wycliffe -- whose bones were burned by the church -- and Tyndale -- who was
strangled and burned.) Clearly, however, most of us work differently than these
heroes of old.
One image that I
love to show is of a proud-looking Kumarajiva, one of the great
translators of Pali scriptures into Chinese. And what do you know, just as St.
Jerome has turned into a patron saint for the modern translator in the form of Jeromobot,
Kumarjiva has gone through a similar development and is now Kuramachina.
What I did not anticipate
was that Jeromobot and Kuramachina apparently had a thing or two to say to one other.
But you can see the result for yourself.
|
| 4. Catalyst, the Next | |
Translation.com/Alchemy Software are poised to introduce the latest
installment of Catalyst, the localization tool pioneer. Aside from
expected improvements to its existing features, it will come with a number of
new features that will be interesting to see and evaluate.
On the developer side, support of Microsoft Silverlight's WPF
format should be the most interesting, but there are a number of things that
look attractive from the translator's point of view as well, chief among them
the support for the termbase exchange format TBX and the so-called ezType
technology. I have not seen ezType in "action," but this is what Tony
O'Dowd, Alchemy's president, wrote to me about it:
As the translator works
on a segment we monitor what he's typing. Since he can already choose a TM hit (...)
we do not look in the TM, we look into the glossary and the original source
text. We found this to be very fast and very accurate, especially when working
with web-based content that repeats a lot of the source text in the target
segment (i.e., measurements, price info, product numbers, place names, road
names, restaurant names, hotel names . . . the list is endless.) Using ezType
technology, it is really quick to construct the target using a combination of
TM lookup, source and glossary predictive text (courtesy of ezType) and new
translations.
This sounds interesting (though I don't quite get it, to be
honest), but we should have a video of the new version of Catalyst alongside
the latest version of SDL Passolo, its main competitor, on our TranslatorsTraining site in
a couple of weeks. Just as we did with the TEnTs, we gave the localization tool
vendors files that needed to be translated and exact instructions on how to do
it within the range of the abilities of their respective tool. The result will
be a totally straightforward compatibility comparison for those who already
know what localization tools do, and a great introduction into what
localization tools actually do for those who don't quite know.
|
| 5. Party on in Budapest | |
MemoQFest, the user and translation
conference put on by the makers of MemoQ, is turning out to be a very
interesting event with a number of great speakers who will touch on topics that
go far beyond MemoQ-centric issues and encompass the future of the
translation industry as a whole. If you happen to be close by or want to enjoy
Budapest in the spring, it would be great to see you there.
Also, the CEO of
Kilgray -- the company behind MemoQ and MemoQFest -- Kis Balázs, has recently co-written and published a book
on translation and computers: A fordító számítógépe. Since my Hungarian is virtually
(and literally) non-existent, I cannot say much about it aside from the fact
that it is a very handsome book and focuses mostly on Trados and, you
guessed it, MemoQ. But knowing Balázs, I am sure that it is a fine work.
|
| 6. Menu Acceleration |
In all versions of Windows
prior to Windows XP, Windows menus used underscores (as in File)
to indicate Alt key shortcuts. For
folks who don't like their mice, these "menu accelerators" can save a
lot of time and trouble: It's much faster to press Alt+F and then A
than to take your hands off the keyboard, grab your mouse, and click File,
Save As, and then go back to the keyboard to enter a filename. And you
didn't even have to memorize these shortcuts; they were always displayed on the
screen.
By default, however,
current versions of Windows hide the underscores until you press and
release the Alt key. Unless you
think to press the Alt key, you
won't even know that the shortcuts are available, or which menu functions have
them. To make Windows display accelerators by default, on XP
right-click on the desktop (you can quickly display the desktop by pressing
WinKey+M), select Properties> Appearance> Effects, and unselect Hide
Underlined Letters. On Vista, open the Control Panel, select Appearance
and Personalization, and then select Underline Keyboard Shortcuts and
Access Keys in the Ease of Access Center. Scroll down and check the
box under Make It Easier to Use Keyboard Shortcuts, and then click Save.
While some applications are not governed by this Windows setting, others
are and your fingers will thank you.
|
7. Yet Another Survey .
. .
|
|
This one is titled The Use of Terminology Management Systems Integrated to TEnTs and asks a
lot of interesting and important questions. We all know that the terminology
component is typically the most under-used component in a TEnT (as compared to
the translation memory component, spell-checker, or quality assurance
facilities). The authors of this survey, two professors from the University of Ottawa,
seem to also assume that, but want to find out more about the specifics of why
that is the case and what other terminology resources are being used instead.
This survey is not for the faint-hearted, and it had better not be done
early in the morning when your brain is not quite with it yet. It asks complex
questions and a lot of them, but at the end you are immediately rewarded by
being shown the results of other respondents so far. This gives you a good idea
of how your colleagues deal with terminology. For instance, you will discover
that less than 40% use the terminology component of their TEnT all the time, or
more than 70% are not familiar with the more advanced features of their TEnT's
terminology component.
What I missed in this survey were questions
about the architecture of TEnTs and whether translators feel that using the
terminology component is well integrated into the workflow. In my opinion, this
is one of the major reasons that terminology work is so often overlooked: it
just requires way too much effort to enter the data, and the immediate benefit often
seems nebulous. Ironically, Déjŕ Vu provides the best case in point with
its rewarding way of handling terminology. While it has a lot less complex terminology
database component than some of its competitors, its users actually use it
faithfully because data can be entered extremely easily, and with its assemble
feature the benefit of terminology data quickly becomes apparent.
|
| The Last Word on the Tool Kit |
|
If you would like to promote this newsletter by placing a link on your website, I will in turn mention your website in a future edition of the Tool Kit. Just paste the code you find here into the HTML code of your webpage, and the little icon that is displayed on that page with a link to my website will be displayed.
Last week this
reader added a link:
www.cttic.org (Canadian Translators, Terminologists and
Interpreters Council)
© 2009 International Writers' Group | |
