AutoSuggest Dictionaries from Smaller TMs

What to do if you don’t have enough TM content (at least 25,000 translation units) to create an AutoSuggest dictionary but you really, really want one? You can always check if there’s one available at Translationzone.com for your language pair. However, you might also be able to create one from a much smaller TM. Becky Blackley, a Trados Trainer colleague of mine, told me the other day one way to do it. Very simple method – why didn’t I think about it???

Anyhow, it basically involves creating a larger TM by removing definite and indefinite articles from the source segments and then combining all three (or four) versions (= 1. original TM, 2. TM without indefinite articles, 3. TM without definite articles, 4. TM without indefinite and definite articles) of the original TM into one which is now much more likely to have the required 25,000 translation units. Becky kindly offered to share her detailed instructions, and you can get them from right here Create an ASD from fewer than 25,000 TUs if you don’t want to figure it out based on my semi-cryptic explanation.

A Survey on Upgrading to Trados Studio 2009

I have a brief (3 questions) survey about upgrading to Trados Studio.  I will use the results as part of my ATA Conference presentation “Trados Studio – To Migrate or Not To Migrate“. The presentation is on October 27th, so please respond before that. Thank you.

Click here to take the survey

Finnish Spell Checker in SP3 and Editing Files Outside Studio

I got really excited when I noticed wavy red lines appearing under misspelled words after installing  SP3. However, I quickly realized that the spell checker did not know enough Finnish to be of any use. It couldn’t recognize most combined words or words with endings which is a pretty essential requirement for a Finnish spell checker. So, the excitement lasted about 30 seconds after which I turned the spell checking feature off.

However, there are some good news related to spell checking. I was told that the upcoming Studio 2011 version will include MS Word spell checker.

Another option to deal with spell checking and reviewing translations outside Studio is the new SDLXLIFF Convertor tool that should soon be available through the SDL Exchange program. You can basically export a translated bilingual file as a bilingual DOCX file (in a table format), edit  the file in Word, and then import the file back to the original SDLXLIFF file. This will then update the SDLXLIFF  file so that it reflects all the changes made in Word (incl. added comments).

The SDL Exchange program has a couple of other interesting tools as well, namely SDL TTX It (to batch convert files to TTX format) and Bilingual Preview Generator (which seems to do pretty much what the SDLXLIFF Convertor does except that it doesn’t import the edited file back to Studio). Anyhow, I had a chance to try out the SDLXLIFF Convertor tool and found it quite handy. In addition to helping me with the Finnish spell checking dilemma, it also makes it easier to work with editors who don’t have Studio. Now we just need a filter that can convert SDLXLIFF files to “old-fashioned” bilingual Word files and back…

Problems with File Types after Installing SP3

After installing SP3, I encountered some problems with Studio File Types. The biggest problem was that I wasn’t able to open any MS Office files in Studio in one of my computers. I contacted the support and they had two suggestions. First one was to replace my File Types folder in “C:\Users\[USERNAME]\My Documents\SDL Trados Studio” with the File Types folder in “C:\Program Files\SDL\SDL Trados Studio\Studio1”. That didn’t help, so we tried the second method which was to replace my Sdl.FileTypeSupport.Framework.Core.Settings.dll file with an updated version. That worked. I was told that this has something to do with clashes caused by “custom language cultures” used by some other applications. [Addition on 10/17: You can find more about this error at http://talisma.sdl.com/article.aspx?article=3387&p=1. The related error message is The type initializer for ‘Sdl.FileTypeSupport.Framework.Core.Settings.FontMappingSettings’ threw an exception.]

In my other computer, I was able to open all file types, but I was not able to access some of the PDF File Type settings. This got fixed by the folder replacement trick mentioned above. Another problem I had was that none of the QuickInsert buttons I had created earlier (in SP2) for Word files were listed in the QuickInsert list (Tools > Options > File Types > Microsoft Word 2000-2003 > QuickInsert). However, the buttons were in the toolbar and functioned correctly so I was able to use them but they just weren’t listed.  Anyhow, that’s a minor issue. I can either live with that or just recreate the buttons.

SP3 Is Here

Finally! Actually, I don’t know how long it has been there since I haven’t received an official notification of its release yet. Thanks to Shatimi’s response to my earlier posting, I checked my account again today. You can find it under “My Downloads” section of your SDL TRADOS account. Unfortunately, I won’t have a chance to check it out until next week because I will be on a training tour in Southern California. And I don’t think it would be the best idea to install a new version right before training…

[10 minutes after I wrote the above, the official notification finally came.]