Tips

• Microsoft decided it is high time to change their default font. In ancient times, it was Times New Roman, since 2007—Calibri, now there are five new fonts at once, and Microsoft is pondering which to prefer.
• Google Lens will soon get a new useful feature, automated translation of the text on screen captures. Users will be able to translate it instantly or send it to the pre-installed Google Translate.
• Starting from Android 12, it will be possible to automatically localize applications for Android. This should come in handy for small companies and indie developers. Nothing is said about the quality of such translation.

* * *

And about cats.

• XTM has improved video operations: XTM Cloud 12.7 now features a preview of video subtitles. They can be translated in real-time; to do this, you need to provide the link to a video on Youtube or Vimeo and assign a subtitle file to it. The new version is much more user-friendly: you don’t have to switch between video and text all the time, there is no need for rewinding the video to find the right fragment, you can instantly see whether the text fits the allocated space, etc. Currently, it is a beta function; it will become standard in XTM Cloud 13.0.

Another piece of news: XTM Mobile 2.3 has been released.

• A post about translating subtitles on the Smartcat website. They speak of Smartcat in the second part of the article, and the first part is dedicated to several third-party applications. This is what it looks like.

Smartcat has also introduced a preview for Microsoft Word documents, here they show how it works.

• Multiple updates in CrowdIn. There are so many that they deserve a separate post. Here are some of them:
• CrowdIn + Intercom integration has been realized to facilitate help text localization.
• Issue Notification Manager now enables sending scheduled notifications.
• The auto-approve option for editors has been added.
• ModernMT support has been added.
• Java Play Properties and Java Properties XML files can now be edited.

When your translation performed in Word with Trados (to be exact, Translator's Workbench) is finished, you create a translated file that contains the translation. I. e., you eliminate the source text and leave the translated text (target) only. This operation is called “cleaning”, as you “clean” your file from source, leaving the target only.

Usually, you do it using the Translator's Workbench: you select Tools > Clean Up, then you choose the Word files, press Clean Up. Translator's Workbench deletes the source text and so you get the translated files.

But sometimes something goes wrong and Translator's Workbench fails to clean the files. This usually happens if there are problems with segmentation in the file you are cleaning. Or, you try to clean the files of Word 2007 and higher (.docx files). Or, you need to clean the file from source on a PC where Trados is not installed at all. Then, the following trick helps.

1. Usually, you see only visible text in Word, like this:

You see the translated text only, while the source text is present in the file as well, but it is hidden. To see the source text, you need to make hidden Word text visible: press  button on the Word ribbon or press CTRL+SHIFT+8 (just 8, not F8). You will see something like this:

2. To get rid of the source text is in fact to get rid of the hidden text. This can be done right in Word, without Trados. To do this, press CTRL+H to open Search and Replace dialog window, then press More, then press Format button > Font > Hidden:

Then, press OK and Replace All.

This command deletes all hidden text from a Word file, leaving only visible one — i. e., only your translation.

Modern CAT tools are doing their best to make translator’s work easier. For instance, they try to correct errors made by users. Some error types are considered extremely obvious by them and therefore corrected automatically without asking users for the permission to do so.

Driven by the desire to help, however, “cats” tend to do more harm than good adding errors to the text automatically instead of correcting those made by users.

It is sad when the translator makes an error. But it is even more sad if the translator makes no error, and the program inserts it artificially.

Let’s look how the autocorrect function works in Word.

Choose in Word: File > Options > on the left panel of the dialog box Proofing > on the right panel AutoCorrect Options... (the screenshot is taken from Word of Microsoft Office 2013). The following dialog box appears:

Let’s see what these check boxes do:

• Correct TWo INitial CApitals. Seems logical. But if it is on, your GHz (gigahertz) will turn into Ghz etc.
• Capitalize first letter of sentences (or segments). Another good thing, but if the phrase is no separate sentence (for instance, being a list component) or  one sentence is split into several segments in the “cat”, the letters which are to be lowercase will appear as uppercase.
• Capitalize first letter of table cells. This is needed far too seldom; table elements are often written with the help of lowercase letters on purpose.
• Capitalize names of days. Indeed, in English names of days are always capitalized. Nevertheless, when you work with Ukrainian or Russian, this check box is useless.
• Correct accidental usage of cAPS LOCK key. There are lots of proper names which start with a lowercase letter on purpose.
• Correct keyboard layout. A dangerous function since it’s hard to notice when you’re typing a text in the wrong language. Moreover, it may work incorrectly in systems with three or more languages set.

Being familiar with this nasty side of the autocorrect feature, seasoned translators turn it off immediately after the installation of the program. We recommend that you do the same. Don’t entrust programs with the power of changing your texts automatically.

The main “problem” with this operation is not to perform the converting itself, but to find when the necessary button actually is :)

1. Select the table you want to convert into text, or just place the text cursor into any of its cells. On the ribbon, Layout menu appears. (It is missing when the text cursor is places outside of a table.)

2. Select Layout > Convert to Text.

3. A dialog box appears where you can choose how cells are divided in the resulting text: with paragraph signs, tabs, semicolons or some others (you can choose yourself).

Did you know? Just as you copy and paste the text itself, you can copy and "paste" its format. The only change is adding SHIFT key to the same shortcuts:

• Copy text: CTRL + C
• Copy format: CTRL + SHIFT + C
• Paste text: CTRL + V
• Paste format: CTRL + SHIFT + V

In other words, you can copy, for example, "COURIER NEW + bold + underlined," and then apply ("paste") this format to another text fragment.

Use this little but useful hint!

A Wordfast TM file has .txt extension. Actually, it is an usual .txt file delimited with tabs in a special way. Converting it into TMX format that allows TM exchange between all other CAT tools can be done in several ways. The easiest and quickest way involves Xbench (either free or paid version).

Step 1: Load your Wordfast TM into Xbench. There is a special file type Wordfast Memory there:

Do not forget to set the checkbox Ongoing translation.

Step 2: In Xbench, select Tools > Export Items, or simply press CTRL + R.

Export Items dialog box appears. Specify the settings in Output section: what languages are considered to be source and target, and the path and the file name for the .tmx file of the TM.

Press OK button. The .tmx file you get is the converted Wordfast TM.