Tips

Machine translation systems often amaze us with the quality of their product, both brilliant and horrible. Mr. Translator by Tencent, for instance, made a fool of itself.

Quote:

As of today, the biggest issue about machine translation lies in reproducing the syntax of the source language in the sentence in the target language. But people do it in another way. We decode the phrase meaning in the source language first and then encode the meaning using the target language.

Generally speaking, the underlying issue of machine translation systems in their current state is failing to work with the meaning. When they give a wonderful text, it is no sign of their excellence in translation. It is the sign of their excellence in imitation. Hence, there is a question of whether it is just to recognize an imitation system as artificial intelligence.

If you use WordFast Pro 5.6 or another version older than Wordfast Pro 5.12 and try opening TXLF files generated in the new version, you may get the following error message:

Attribute ‘gs4tr:uuid’ is not allowed to appear in element ‘file’

It takes place because earlier WF versions can’t recognize this attribute. To solve this problem, you can download and install a new 5.12 version. But there is another bypass solution.

Open the TXLF file in the text editor Notepad++, use the search function (CTRL+F) to find “gs4tr:uuid,” and delete the attribute together with its number and the redundant space as shown in the screenshot. Click the Save button and close the file tab.

After this, the file opens in WordFast 5.6, and no error messages appear.

Let’s assume you have a Word file containing a lot of email addresses, like this one:

(All names, addresses, and phone numbers here are random.)

You have to translate this text in Trados Studio. You create a project, and the text there looks this way:

However, as you can see, the text includes a very big number of email addresses that don’t need to be translated. If you “translate” them and confirm each segment one by one, it will take much time. But there is a way to copy them to target and confirm them all in no time.

Let’s take advantage of the distinctive feature of email addresses, that is the at sign, @. We have to find and filter out all the segments containing this sign. To do this, go to the Review tab on the ribbon and enter this sign in the Search field. Since we’re looking for it in the source language only, it’s important to select In Source in the search pane:

Press the ENTER key. The work pane will feature only the segments containing the @ sign, that is, in our case, email addresses:

Now click the cell with the number of the first segment (2), scroll the list to the end, and click the cell with the number of the last segment holding the SHIFT key. All segments will get highlighted:

Now go to the Home tab and press the Copy Source to Target button. 

What’s left is confirming all the filtered segments. To do this, highlight them all again, right-click the number of any cell, and change the status to Translated:

Then, go to the Review tab again and reset the filter with the Reset Filters button:

That’s how we’ve got all the email addresses copied to target cells and all the segments containing the addresses confirmed.

This method can be used for filtering and confirming any segments if they have a distinct feature that can be used for filtering.

We already know how to quickly convert straight quotes into guillemets (chevrons) in Trados Studio and memoQ. Sometimes you get to do this not in the “cat” (that is not in the CAT tool, a computer-aided translation tool) but right in the so-called “monotext,” i.e., the text in the target language in Word.

The easiest way is to use regular expressions that are indispensable in such cases.

In Word, press CTRL+H. The Find and Replace dialog window appears:

Press the More >> button there. Additional parameters will appear in the dialog window:

In this window, select the Use wildcards check box; it turns on the mode of regular expressions. Next, enter in the Find field: request "([!^13]@)", and in the Replace field: code «1»:

Like in Trados Studio and memoQ, this replacement should not be performed blindly. The text may contain unusual cases or simply mistakes, and blind autocorrect will “miss.”

In other words, pressing the Replace All button is reasonable only if you are 100% sure that all straight quotes in the text are actually used as quotes (and not as inch marks, for instance), that all of them are in pairs, etc. Generally, it’s better to go through all the cases one by one pressing the Replace button and checking whether the replacement is correct. Usually, there are only a few quotes in the text.

When you work with texts, it’s desirable to have two monitors. According to studies, the second monitor allows for productivity gains averaging 25-30%.

It’s nice translating or editing on the computer with two displays: throwing a CAT-tool on one monitor and dictionaries with the reference on the other and having a blast. But what should you do if there is no second monitor and the only one you have is too small? Quite a common situation for a translator, particularly a freelancer.

The classic size for a laptop screen is 15 inches. If the screen is smaller, it’s extremely inconvenient to work with; if the screen is larger, the laptop turns out to be too heavy and “ravenous”: its battery dies after a few hours of work.

Let’s consider the working process in Trados Studio and find out what can be sacrificed for the sake of the enlargement of the work pane and how to hide unnecessary elements of the user interface that take up too much space.

The “unprepared” Trados Studio on the 15-inch display looks something like this:

As you can see, the work pane here takes up only about one-third of the screen. It is enough for seven segments only. It’s too small for full-fledged activity; too much space is occupied by other elements.

Let’s free some space for the work pane. First, hide the ribbon by pressing CTRL+F1:

The ribbon is minimized, and there is more space: the work pane holds 10 segments now. When needed, you can show the ribbon with the help of the same key combination—CTRL+F1.

Now it’s time to minimize the project navigation pane on the left. To do this, click the minimize arrow at the top right corner of the pane:

The navigation pane is now narrowed but still functional. Its text has been turned into icons. Thus, the work pane occupies the bigger part of the screen, and the number of visible segments has increased to 12. Two simple commands allowed us to make it almost two times larger.

There is also a more radical way of enlarging the work pane (no, we’re not going to sacrifice the font size). Press F11:

Trados Studio goes into a special mode when only the work pane is actually displayed. The rest, including the translation memory, termbase, concordance windows, the ribbon, and even the Windows taskbar, are hidden.

Since this mode displays only the text and hides all additional elements, it is handy for editing, final self-proofreading before submitting the file when nothing should distract from the text.

To exit the mode, press the same F11 key.

Not so long ago, Protemos, the developer team of which also includes creators of ChangeTracker, has released a new project management system Protemos.

This online service is designed specially for running a translation business. Protemos is a record and process management system designed for freelance translators and translation agencies. It is simple and free for freelancers.

Protemos allows creating an organized database with clients and vendors, monitoring job execution and financial aspects of the business, keeping records, and analyzing results of the activity.

Sign up and get started

To sign up, go to the official website www.protemos.com and press the registration button:

You can import your client list from an Excel file. After this, you can find the client you need by the first letters of their name, code, email address, or status.

In several months, you may find useful the function of report creation that allows assessing results of your work.

The Protemos version for freelancers allows:

• to keep a client database with necessary information;
• to register every potential and real project, link it to a client, enter the price and deadline for a job;
• to store project-related files in the cloud;
• to automatically generate price offers (quotes) and invoices, to send them to the client directly from the system;
• to register all the received payments and control payment deadlines;
• to automatically generate statistics on clients and orders: how your profit has changed during a certain period, which clients bring you the most profit, what is the dynamics of billing and payment, etc.;
• to export any table to Excel.

The Protemos system optimizes the process of solving administrative issues and saves time. It is a much more flexible and reliable way to keep records than Excel and Google Sheets. The simple intuitive interface and flexible price policy allow it to compare favorably with the competitive products.

The system is constantly being improved, and its developers will be grateful for comments, suggestions, and ideas that will help make Protemos as useful and user-friendly as possible.

More details can be found on the website www.protemos.com and on Protemos social media profiles, such as Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/protemos.

In summary, Protemos lets you manage your freelance activities in a simple but very helpful way. This approach is definitely much more flexible and reliable than using Excel spreadsheets alone. It may also be preferable to other competing products in terms of the interface and price (remember, it’s free for freelancers).

This system allows a freelancer to streamline project management activities, freeing up more time for actual translation work.

Moreover, Protemos developers are gathering feedback to make Protemos even more of what users want. The Protemos team would love to hear your ideas. Just sign up at www.protemos.com, try the system, and send us your feedback.