A computer newsletter for translation professionals

I know I'm repeating myself when I say that I really like the folks in our profession. We have a lovely mix of passion and geekyness (and I don't really mean the tech-geek-kind-of-geekyness, more the interest-in-languages-and-enjoying-to-work-in-your-pajamas kind). We feel so strongly about who we are and what we do (though we sometimes forget that what's true and good for me might not be true and good for my colleague).

Every once in a while, someone from within our midst comes up with something so clever that it makes us proud of who we are while at the same time presenting us to the rest of the world in a manner that really changes perceptions. No, I'm not talking about Found in Translation -- though that's exactly what we strived to achieve -- but about the video that Erik Skuggevik and Iver Grimstad of the Norwegian Association of Literary Translators produced. I assume that many of you have already seen it; if so, be sure to pass it on to more of your friends and family. If you haven't seen it, you'll be thankful for this newsletter.

Since the early days of browser-based translation environment tools (TEnTs), I've been interested in how they approach a reality that virtually everyone faces: we are not always online. I'm not necessarily talking about Internet outages, but about times when we're traveling or sitting on the beach (which, in my particular case on the Oregon coast, may not be one and the same).

Nowadays, most translation environment tools have some kind of server- or online-based component. Depending on the configuration of your client, it's typically access to the translation memory and/or the termbase that requires an active Internet connection. If you don't have an Internet connection, it's usually relatively easy to inform your client that you need an exported version of the TM or termbase so you can work offline.

It's a little different when it comes to tools that rely solely on the Internet. In tools such as XTM Cloud, Wordbee, MemSource, and Wordfast Anywhere, you actually work in an Internet browser on the cloud-based translatable file in a bilingual format that allows you to translate and connect with the required resources.

The vendors of these tools have found various solutions to give you alternatives to working offline.

In a way, Wordfast Anywhere had it the easiest. First, it's very closely integrated into the overall Wordfast infrastructure. So it's not surprising that it's possible to download the translation file (and the TM and termbase) as either a bilingual Word file for translation in Wordfast Classic or as a TXML file for offline translation in Wordfast Pro. The only problem here is that while Wordfast Anywhere is a free tool, you'll have to own a paid license for Wordfast Classic and Wordfast Pro.

The makers of MemSource also had an easy path set out for them. While their TM and termbase were always cloud-based, the translation interface and file were not. Originally they used an MS Word-based interface, they then moved to a (free) platform-independent desktop tool, and they only fairly recently began to offer a browser-based interface. It's not surprising then that in MemSource it's very easy to switch and back and forth between the desktop and browser-based interfaces via an XLIFF file export and import (XLIFF is the exchange format for translation files). It's interesting that their XLIFF file for offline work not only contains all the translatable strings but also all necessary matches from the translation memory and termbases, so there is no need to also download the TM and termbase separately.

The folks behind Wordbee offer an export to the XLIFF format at any time during translation as well. Unlike MemSource, they don't offer a specific desktop-based environment, but they encourage the use of any third-party translation environment tool that supports the XLIFF format (this is essentially any and every tool). This all works very seamlessly, but there are no TM or termbase entries within the XLIFF file; those have to be exported separately.

XTM quietly rolled out an offline tool last April (the XTM team prefers to do things a little more subtly than some of their competitors -- after all, they are based in London). And it's this offline tool that prompted this article because I really like its concept.

Strictly speaking, it actually is not a tool but a macro-enable Excel worksheet that automatically opens in Excel after you download it (note that you'll have to have MS Excel 2007 or higher; OpenOffice/LibreOffice is not compatible). But even though it's based in Excel, all you'll see after you open the file is a translation table without any Excel ribbon or other indications of what program this is. What you will be delighted to see is that are all of your translation memory and termbase matches are right next to the target segments as suggestions (they're automatically contained within the file), and you'll notice that there is a whole new set of shortcut keys to move around. (The most important ones are revealed by hovering over the icons in the upper right-hand corner. All are visible in the short manual that can be opened by clicking the Help button.)

Most of us don't like to perform translation work in Excel, but the typical awkwardness of data entry in Excel is no longer a problem here since you can navigate quite smoothly within your project.

There are a few minor problems, such as the spell-checker that's not automatically set to your target language or the right-click menu that's deactivated in the current cell you're working in. And one problem is more than just "minor": You can't open another Excel file while working in the XTM Excel file (that's especially frustrating since many of us have a lot of supporting information within other Excel files).

Still, I like the idea, and I'm sure that some of these problems will be fixed in later versions. (By the way, if you don't have access to the right version of Excel, you can also generate and download an XLIFF file within XTM instead.)

And why is all this so relevant? Well, in a way these tools are the trailblazers of what we will all be doing in the not-too-distant future: working within our browsers. It's important to see how they manage it, especially in cases where some workarounds are needed. 

Note: I avoided including Google Translator Toolkit in this list, though it is also a completely online-based translation tool. That's because I don't see this as a widely used professional translation tool. If you think otherwise, let me know. (And regarding its offline capabilities: there are none.)

I recently talked to a translation technology developer who mentioned as a side remark that since translators are often not computer-savvy, they probably are not really good about backups either. I agree in general that many translators tend not to be super computer-savvy, but I was a little irked by the remark and told him that I would poll my Twitter followers.

Here are some of the responses:

@cdmellinger: I now use both on- and off-line backups. NDAs and confidentiality concerns make me wary to move exclusively online.

@Tesstranslates; Yes, I backup on a local drive less often, relying on the cloud most of the time.

@aevy1981: I used Mozy for a few years and switched to SugarSync last year. Computer died and did not lose a minute of work. Love it.

@GoldsmithTrans: I've used Carbonite for 3 years now

@BrancaVianna: I use Carbonite for home PC, Macbook and iPad. Never again worry about where my interpreter's glossaries are.

Ha! In your face, my friend. Not all of us might be computer geeks, but we're not stupid either.

I've written a lot about tools to align with (i.e., tools that allow you to convert source and target texts into a bilingual translation memory), and I feel a little sheepish that I have so far overlooked one that's really quite powerful. Here is how the developer describes it:

Doesn't sound so bad, does it?

The tool in question is LF Aligner, an open-source tool developed by András Farkas (make that "Farkas András" in good Hungarian etiquette). It can be downloaded right here.

As András says, it really is not very flashy but it has some great features that you won't find in its commercial counterparts, most importantly the linguistic backbone. This backbone consists of a total of 32 languages (all the EU official languages except Irish Gaelic and Maltese, as well as Croatian, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Norwegian, Russian, Swahili, and Turkish), permitting the automatic generation of dictionaries in any combination of these languages. (And it's those dictionaries that help the tool to decide how to match segment pairs.)

The second outstanding feature is that it's very easy to get to EU documents and align those. All you need to do is enter the corresponding document number or date into the user interface of LF Aligner as well as the language combination, and the alignment is performed without you ever having downloaded any of the documents manually. Once the automatic alignment is completed you can accept it as it is, or you can open a basic alignment editor in which you can make corrections.

The other file formats that are supported include TXT, DOC(X), RTF, HTML, TMX, and PDF. For the PDF format, an internal conversion to TXT is performed and often the results are better if you perform that conversion within Adobe Acrobat or a similar program manually. The tool stores no inline codes (codes that are generated to reflect formatting, etc.) for any of the supported formats.

Since TMX, the translation memory exchange format, is one of the supported formats for alignment input (as well as output: the resulting translation memory can either be produced in TMX, Excel, or text format), András describes a clever way to support any file format that is supported by your translation environment tool. For the formats that are not directly supported, he recommends the following:

• Import the source file into the TEnT.
• Copy the source over to the target side.
• Send that to a temporary translation memory.
• Export a monolingual (source-to-source) TMX file.

If you do the same with the target file, you can then align the two resulting TMX files with LF Aligner.  (You can actually find detailed information on how to do that with specific tools like Trados and Wordfast in the readme file.) Aside from being able to work with any kind of format with this method, you can also improve match rates because the segmentation of the two TMX files that your TEnT produces will be the same as the segmentation of the actual translation project. In addition, depending on your translation environment tool, you might also be able to import many source files and many target files at one time and merge them before you create the temporary TMX file.

This last process might be especially important since one of the weaknesses of the tool is that batch alignment (alignment of many files all at once) is presently only possible through writing some manual commands. Even though they're documented very clearly in the accompanying readme file, I know that this is something that many of us don't like to do.

But here is the good news: The first "planned feature" is "Windows GUI program for convenient batch alignments."

I like that.

The program is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, but it only offers its helpful graphical user interface in the Windows version.

And if you want to say thank you to András, you might want to stop by his site. 

Terminotix announces the launch of LogiTerm 5.5 on December 1st. The new features are listed in the last Terminotix's newsletter.

Terminotix confirms that WeBiText will remain free.

Download the last update of the Terminotix toolbar from Terminotix's website.

Want to align documents for free online? Try YouAlign.

Some time back at a conference in London, a fellow translator shared with me and everyone else in earshot that she was done using Twitter as a professional tool. She claimed to have invested way too much effort and time with virtually no return. (I assume that I could have overheard a similar discussion about Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, Google Plus, or any other social network.)

I've been thinking about this ever since, wondering how much I've benefitted from my investments into social media (which are pretty much limited to a very active presence on Twitter and much less active participation on LinkedIn). To make it short: I have benefitted and continue to benefit. A lot.

Twitter in particular is the fastest place to gather current, relevant information that is important to me, because I can trust that one of the folks I follow will post it. Twitter is also a phenomenal way to get my message out. Most of the time I share tidbits that I find interesting or informative (think of it as a bona fide shared bulletin board of virtual sticky notes). At other -- much less frequent -- times I can even tweet something a little less altruistic. More often than not, my followers read my tweet and then retweet it on to their followers as well. Twitter is also a great place to forge relationships with colleagues and, just as important or maybe even more so, with potential clients and influencers who can open doors to interesting opportunities. For me it hasn't been a place to find regular translation jobs, but I have found plenty of opportunities that go far beyond the regular two- or three-day engagement.

There are many, many places where you can find information about what to do and what not to do on social networks, but I would suggest three considerations as an over-arching strategy for translation professionals.

First, pre-determine what you want to achieve on any or all of these networks. For instance, if you "just" want to build relationships with colleagues, you might want to engage yourself within certain Facebook or LinkedIn groups. If you also want to interact with the outside world, you might want to use Twitter and a slightly different strategy on LinkedIn, Google Plus, or Facebook.

Next, specify how much time you want to spend every day. For example, I have found deep involvement in some of the discussions on LinkedIn too time-consuming, but my Twitter activities easily fit within, say, 20 minutes a day.

Lastly, decide if and how you plan to separate your private from your professional life (yes, yes, many translators can only dream of a private life...). I tend to un-follow folks who make a regular habit of sharing their dinner plans or levels of fatigue (they're always tired and overworked anyway!), but others seem to like it. Essentially, you determine who will follow you by what you share and how you share it. Your very close translator-buddies are most likely going to follow you either way, but the idea of social networking as a professional is to make that circle larger by having others see what you have to say as well.

Where to start? Look at some folks who are successfully using one or more of those media. See what they have to say, who is following them, and whom they follow. And for Twitter, be sure to check out Jeromobot, the patron saint of the modern translator. ;-) 

MemoQ came highly recommended to me by a translation agency colleague and it does live up to that.

It allowed me to do a huge job as Trados 2011 package and to deliver it back as a Trados 2011 return project with a big dictionary.

So I will be purchasing memoQ shortly -- congratulations on an excellent software."

Edward Hartley, translator

Download the full-featured trial version, register for the free online training, and attend our educational webinars. Learn more right here. 

I'm excited to be going to a couple of conferences in the next few months where I will be talking and teaching workshops. It would be great to see some of you. The first one will be on September 26 and 28 in Buenos Aires and Rosario, and on October 18 and 19 I'll be in Freiburg at the TriKonf 2013.

Also, please note that my last newsletter contained an error: I incorrectly mentioned that the price per word charged by PageanMT is $.002. It is in fact $.0002. Math was never my strongest discipline - I apologize.

Quite a while ago (edition 207 to be exact), I wrote about Mats Linder's Trados manual and recommended it as a great resource for Trados users. Mats has continued to work on it ever since and it's now in its third edition (with a whopping 100 pages more than the first edition). You can find all the necessary information on Mats' website.

And lastly, reader Jean-Marc Tapernoux sent me a document in which he details how to use the Word Frequency Counter Advanced tool to extract subsegments from a document so that they can be pretranslated and then used as a basic translation memory. This is especially helpful when you have a document where certain phrases are repeated over and over again.

This process is similar to what Déjà Vu offers with its "Lexicon" feature or what you can do with Dave Turner's PhraseMiner. 

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© 2013 International Writers' Group