Yeah, it's kind of a lame long form of TAUS Widget (hey, you try to come up with clever headings for all these articles), but still, it's rather fitting. I recently talked to Yan Yu, one of the folks behind the development of the TDA (TAUS Data Association) online search engine as well as the Java-based widget that gives you access to the same data on the desktop. Much to my (and his) surprise, the widget is used by only a very small number of people compared to the total number of hits the site receives. The only reason for this that I can think of is that folks just don't know about it. Well, after reading this article you will.

Let's start at the beginning. What is the TDA?

The TDA is an association of mostly large corporate translation buyers who originally came together to pool their translation memory data to better train their machine translation engines. To make statistical machine translation work, you need a lot of high-quality data, and even industry giants like Oracle, Microsoft, and Adobe did not have enough data on their own to get the results they hoped to achieve.

So, rather than semi-secretively pooling their data to train their MT engines, they decided to open the data up to the public -- not as translation memory data, mind you, but as a terminology resource. (If you want to get to the data as TM data, you can become a TDA member, contribute your own data, and download some other data for your own use.)

The terminology search site is open for everyone (you only have to register -- and sell the birthright to your first-born -- just kidding) and it really is very helpful -- provided that you work in the subject areas that are covered by the data donors, which are still mainly to be found in the IT industry as well as the public sector (EU and UN data).

The cool thing is that you can prefilter the data according to language pair (duh), subject matter, and client. Once you enter a term and the filtering criteria, you will get all hits that contain your term with some metadata (origin, etc.), information about the original translation direction, as well as a field that allows you to enter problems. At the very top you will also get a list of "computed translations" based on probability data derived from the underlying corpus.

(A gripe that I've raised in the past has changed for the better: you no longer have to make a choice between "British English" and "US English"; if English is either source or target language, you can now just select "English" (and therefore include data from the EU along with US-based sources).)

Anyway, all this is available on the website for a browser-based search, but you can also have it on your desktop with the TAUS Widget, a little Java-based application. You still need Internet connectivity to use the widget, but you might find it a lot less intrusive than an open browser window that I find way too easy to close by accident. If you close the widget by accident, it will still remember your last settings so you don't have to modify them again when you reopen it, and the search is blazingly fast even though it looks through a corpus of more than three billion words.

I also got Michael Farrell, the maker of über-search tool IntelliWebSearch, and Yan's team talking to each other, so we may soon be able to use IWS to search the corpus -- expect more news on that in one of the next few newsletters.

Lastly (and almost completely unrelated), the website of Yan's company, Spartan Consulting, has an interesting document that compares the GlobalSight and Idiom WordServer systems. Yan and most of his team used to work for Idiom before it was swallowed by SDL, and he is now actively involved in the GlobalSight development and implementation.

For months now I've been planning to write a series of reviews of books published within the last year or so that deal with the many different aspects of translating. Here are some of the books that I've assembled over the last few weeks, along with the first review in the series:

• Corinne McKay's How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator
• Chris Durban's The Prosperous Translator: Advice from Fire Ant & Worker Bee
• Judy and Dagmar Jenner's The Entrepreneurial Linguist: The Business-School Approach to Freelance Translation (Judy and Dagmar are the lovely twin sisters from Vienna and Las Vegas. I can't think about them without remembering with embarrassment my sleep-deprived question of Dagmar at the ATA conference in Denver: "Are you an only child?")
• John Yunker's The Savvy Client's Guide to Translation Agencies: How to Find the Right Agency the First Time
• And last but not least, the book that is covered in today's newsletter: Alex Eames' Business Success for Freelance Translators: How to Build and Run Your Own Freelance Translation Business.

Most of you are familiar with Alex. He has been around for a long time, maintains the largest-circulation newsletter e-mail list for translators, and successfully wrote and marketed How to Earn $80,000+ a Year as a Freelance Translator. A few years ago Alex withdrew himself from the public eye for a while, but he has now come out with new editions of his newsletter as well as this latest edition of his book.

It's no coincidence that the title of the book has changed. In one of the most interesting chapters of this book ("Domestic Wisdom"), Alex tells us that there has been a real change of mind and heart for him since the release of the early editions. Though the current edition is still about how to build a successful career as a translator, he warns us that there's clearly more to life than making money, advice that I can very much appreciate.

This book has a distinct cheerleader feel to me. It's almost as if Alex is standing on the sidelines and cheering us on, urging us not to give up and assuring us that we can do it. Part of his technique is to give us very practical and hands-on advice on what to do and what not to do as a freelance translator. This ranges broadly from how to write a brochure, a cover letter, and a résumé, to how not to answer the phone when client calls come in (don't have your kids answer the phone), how to answer the phone ("after three rings and with a smile"), and how to avoid burnout.

At first glance it might be easy to dismiss this as something for newbies to the business, but after reading through it a second time (I read through an early version a few months ago) I realized how much Alex has to offer even for the seasoned translator.

Much of what he writes about is client relationship and communication. When Alex says "focus on customers, not on yourself," he means it, and it's this spirit of -- dare I say it -- servanthood that I admire most in his book. This does not mean that Alex recommends being a pushover in your relationship with clients. Just the opposite: he describes how to negotiate the highest possible rate; how to reject clients who display less than professional manners, whether in pricing, payment practices, or unreasonable demands; and how to get paid for services you provide that go beyond the agreed-upon scope of work.

But he also demonstrates that maintaining a client by maintaining a good relationship simply makes a lot of economic sense (how much time, money, and effort does it cost to find a new client once you lose one?). Economics are vital, starting from the time when you decide to start a business as a freelance translator (do I have enough in the bank to survive the first few potentially lean months?) to curtailing yourself when too much work comes in at some point (how much work can I accept so that I can still deliver good work and maintain good relationships with a client?).

Here are some tidbits emphasized in the book that I thought were particularly interesting:

• Never use a free and very unprofessional-looking email address such as Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo -- and certainly not Aol -- for work purposes (I couldn't agree more!)
• Write your own Terms & Conditions document that you send to your clients (I made a note to self on that)
• Make sure that you have an Errors & Omissions insurance policy (not sure that I agree with that one)

Alex would admit that his strength is marketing and not the technical side of translation, so he is wise enough to pass his readers on to other resources when it comes to discussing things like translation environment tools. 

I'm not a big friend of the clipart used throughout the book. It feels to me that this interrupts the flow of the text rather than helping it, but I recognize that this is only a personal preference. (And I know that many of you probably have the same objection to my constant parenthetical  remarks. . . .)

Overall I think this is an admirable book, both in terms of the author's honesty and integrity as well as for the wealth of wisdom on how to market yourself and build a successful business as a freelance translator.

As I was writing this newsletter -- one of the rare times I actually work in Microsoft Word -- I marveled at one of the nice treats the Microsoft engineers hid just for you and me in this new version of Microsoft Office. I realize I wrote about this in a previous newsletter, so this is just for those of you who didn't get to read that edition or skipped over that article because you were still working within an ancient version of Office 2000.

If you own an English, German, Chinese, or Japanese version of Microsoft Office, that's the language that you'll get for all the menus -- oh, sorry, "ribbons" -- dialogs, error messages, and other user interface controls. You do have more than one spelling and grammar checker installed with your particular language version of Microsoft Office (here you can check what kind of spelling checkers are included with what language version of Office), but if you are intent on using a spelling language that is not covered by your language version, you'll have to look into purchasing an additional language pack. This is, unless you are a user of one of approximately 60 "minor" languages (I just recently learned that the politically correct term here is "languages of limited diffusion"), in which case you might find a link to a free download of an LIP (Language Interface Pack). This includes the ability to run Office in that language and use the spelling checker and sometimes even a help system and templates in that language.

If you're not one of those blessed "lesser diffused" people, you can purchase an additional language pack (which includes the ability to run Office in an additional language plus proofing for three or four languages) and you can even choose to buy and install it right from within any Office program by selecting File> Options> Language where you can find the respective link.

In previous versions of Office, Microsoft also offered a Multi-Language Pack that included all supported languages, but this is presently only offered to corporate accounts. Last time I wrote about this I promised that I would try to talk to some folks at Microsoft to convince them that there is a market for users who use a large number of languages (that would be us). I've given it my best try, but unfortunately I haven't been successful at persuading them to offer this product for everyone. I'll have to keep at it. . . .

But to come back to the hidden gem in Microsoft Office: though I do have an English version of Office 2010 with an additional (and paid) German language pack installed, even if you haven't purchased a language pack it is still possible to have the so-called "ScreenTips" (previously called QuickInfo -- the tidbits of information that you get when you put your mouse cursor on any item in the user interface) displayed in any of the many supported languages. For the language geeks among us it's certainly fun to have Korean or Thai or Serbian ScreenTips displayed -- even if it might jeopardize our understanding of the program -- but for the rest of us it's a nice exercise to have one of our other working languages displayed in the ScreenTip. To access that feature and to download the respective language, simply select File> Options> Language in any Office program.

I like cats. In fact, I really like cats. Unfortunately, I'm the only cat lover in my family, giving my cat and me a slightly precarious position in our household. And even though I know my wife will read this as an admission of feline disappointment, I will admit here and now that I'm frustrated about my cat having lost its ability as a good mouser. He used to be awesome. There was hardly a morning when we didn't have a dead mouse, rat, snake, bird, lizard, bat, or gopher waiting for us outside the front door (typically with its head chewed off). Now? Maybe two birds a month! All this means is that I'm getting increasingly desperate to find justifications for keeping our very neurotic cat.

That was a long (and shockingly personal) introduction for something that really has nothing to do with it at all, aside from the "mouse" part. Most of you know that I'm not a great friend of the computer mouse. It tends to interrupt the communication between me and my keyboard, and if there's any way to do something with a keyboard shortcut that can otherwise only be done with a mouse click, I'm typically game for it. One area that I used to completely overlook in trying to eradicate the use of my mouse was in starting applications. I never even questioned the use of the Windows Start menu, and though I realized that I could awkwardly maneuver through it with keyboard shortcuts, it seemed so much easier to do it with a mouse.

Then, the other day, my calculator broke. (For readers under the age of 30: "calculators" are single-task devices that people used to use to perform calculations that you now do with your smartphone. Those old folks really used to do crazy things! Imagine this: people even used to wear watches -- also a single-task device!) It drove me nuts to have to click numerous times before I could start the Windows Calculator program until I realized that there is a much easier way. Starting with Windows Vista, programs are very easily started by pressing the WinKey -- the key with the Windows logo on most keyboards -- (which opens the menu formerly known as Prince Start menu) with your cursor already blinking in the search field. Type ca, press Enter, and the Calculator opens. Type exc, press Enter, and Microsoft Excel opens. Type fire, press Enter, and Firefox opens. You get the point. While there may be ways to more quickly open very often-used programs, this is a very cool and super-quick way to access those rarely used and well-hidden programs.

And another strike against the evil mouse!

(While we're on the topic of clicking vs. typing, you've read my rants about finger-brains forever. It turns out I was right all along, as Wired magazine attests: Your Fingers Know When You Make a Typo.)

At the recent ATA I had a long talk with a frustrated translator who felt helpless in tackling what seemed to him an insurmountable task: how to process existing glossary data from many and various sources and formats so that it can be imported and used within a translation environment tool. This particular translator had hundreds of glossaries in Excel, Word, and PDF files and was extremely frustrated that the translation environment tool vendors didn't seem to be more forthcoming in helping translators to bring that kind of data into the terminology components of their tools.

I understand his frustration, but at the same time it's also important to understand the difficulties that the tool vendors are facing. Given the many different formats and ways the data could be stored, it is virtually impossible to provide reasonable instructions for processing that kind of data that would be applicable to more than exactly one of the many possible formats.

Here are two ways to tackle this kind of dilemma. One is to use tools that allow you to access unstructured data. Unstructured data would be data that does not follow a regular kind of formatting to allow for easy access. Tools that allow for these kinds of data searches include indexing tools, such as Archivarius 3000 (thanks to Naomi de Moraes for this tip), or even the indexing capabilities that are included with the latest version of Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Or you could use more translation-specific tools with similar features. Those would include tools like LogiTerm, Multitrans, and the latest version of memoQ. The common denominator of these tools is that they have a least one feature that allows you to process any kind of regular or irregular text in a large number of types of documents and files.

However, if you have ever needed to import glossary data into a translation environment tool that can only process structure data, you will need to be creative in finding a way to convert the data into a format that is commonly accepted by tools like that. What virtually any of these tools accepts is a text format with the different entries for every record separated by either a tab or a comma (these are known as comma-separated value -- .csv -- files or tab-separated value files, typically with the extension .txt).

If your data is contained in an Excel spreadsheet, the process of bringing it into a comma-separated value format is as easy as selecting Save as and choosing the right kind of format. If the data is contained in a table within Microsoft Word, the process is a little more complicated. You can either choose to highlight and copy the table and paste it into an Excel spreadsheet or, if that's not possible, you can try to convert the table into text. In Word 2003 and below, select Table> Convert> Table to Text, and in Word 2007 and above, select Layout> Convert to Text (note that these options are only available if you have the table highlighted) and then select Tab or Comma under Separate text with. Once you're finished with that, you can simply save the file as a .txt file.

If you have more than one table in your Word file, you should make sure to combine these tables before you do the conversion, otherwise you would have to individually convert each of the tables. Combining the tables is as easy as deleting spaces between them -- if they all have the same number of columns and generally follow the same format -- and as difficult as normalizing (i.e., making them all of one format) the tables before combining them. Once your various tables are combined, you should be able to convert them to delimited text and save them as a text file with the above procedure.

As far as glossaries in PDFs go, there is yet another layer of complexity. Assuming that the text is not image-based (as it would be if scanned from a dictionary or a paper-based glossary), there are a number of right-click menu options available in the paid versions of Acrobat once you select the text in the PDF file: Copy As Table, Save As Table, Open Table in Spreadsheet. These table options can be quite handy when trying to convert text into a table format but are by no means perfect. If you are running into problems with these options, you might also want to try to convert the PDF into a Word file rather directly into an Excel spreadsheet or use one of the specialized programs that were mentioned in the last newsletter -- but really this is its own topic, and it would lead too far to discuss all the ins and outs here.

Just a couple of important reminders, though. A complex termbase is, well, complex, which is one of the reasons that it took so long to develop the termbase exchange standard TBX. So, what you will typically have in a Word document or Excel file really is "only" a glossary with source and target term, possibly some definitions, and maybe some grammatical data, but none of the relationships between records or conceptual data that you can find in more sophisticated termbases. If you are planning to use the glossary in a termbase within a translation environment tool, it is very important to consider this: don't have more than one entry per source or target field. If you do have several target entries for one source, I would strongly recommend creating several entries so that you can make use of the automatic or semi-automatic term insertion features that most tools offer nowadays.

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.

Here is a reader who recently loaded the code:

www.spanishtrans.com

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