Trados Studio Workshop at the ATA Conference in San Francisco

I will be teaching a 3-hour, intermediate/advanced-level Trados Studio workshop at the ATA Conference in San Francisco on November 2. The workshop is part of the Advanced Skills & Training (AST) Day that takes place on the Wednesday right before the actual conference starts. Note that you must also register for the conference in order to attend the workshop.

 

The main topics covered are:

• Translation memory management (import, export, translation memory fields, filters, and translation memory QA)
• Quality assurance and customizing QA settings, including the use of regular expressions
• File type settings and advanced editor features, such as auto-propagation and display filter using regular expressions

Participants are also encouraged to submit in advance their own questions and requests for additional topics.

For registration and additional info, see the ATA Conference website (note that the discounted early registration ends on 9/23). If you have any questions about the content of the workshop, feel free to contact me directly.

I will also be demonstrating Trados Studio as part of “The CAT Show: Demos by CAT Tool Users (Déjà Vu, memoQ, Trados and Wordfast)” presentation on Friday afternoon (11/4) from 3:30-4:30. The purpose of this demonstration session is to make it easier for potential users to compare these four tools and put their questions to  experienced users.

If you are coming to the conference, be sure to check out the NCTA Conference blog for local info and tips (including the NCTA Pre-Conference Tour de Marin bike ride on Tuesday!).

 

Intermediate Level Trados Studio 2015 Workshop in San Francisco

I will be teaching a full-day, intermediate level Trados Studio workshop in San Francisco on March 12th. This full-day workshop is aimed at those who have some knowledge and experience of working with Trados Studio but who want to learn its more advanced features.

The main topics covered are translation memory and file management, file type settings, Auto-propagation, AutoSuggest, Studio verification tools, project preparation and the use of the SDL OpenExchange applications. The number of OpenExchange apps keeps growing and it’s getting more and more difficult to stay up-to-date with all the new functions and features available through these apps.

In addition, several “performance-enhancing” Studio tips and tricks will be shown. Participants are also encouraged to submit in advance their own questions and requests for additional topics.

For registration and additional info, see the NCTA website (note that the discounted early-bird registration ends on 2/27). If you have any questions about the content of the workshop, feel free to contact me directly.

Trados Studio 2015 Workshop for Beginners in San Francisco

I will be teaching a full-day, beginner level Trados Studio 2015 workshop in San Francisco on November 14th. For registration and additional info, see the NCTA website. If you have any questions about the content of the workshop, feel free to contact me directly. We don’t organize these workshops that often anymore, so if you want to learn the basics of Trados Studio in an encouraging and friendly workshop environment, this is your chance. Don’t miss it.

I will also give a presentation at the ATA Conference in Miami on November 6th. The topic is Termbases and Term Recognition: The Next Best Thing in Trados Studio. For details, click here.

Trados Studio Workshop in San Francisco

I will be teaching an intermediate level Trados Studio workshop in San Francisco on September 20th. The main topics covered are translation memory and file management, Studio verification tools, and the use of the SDL OpenExchange applications. The number of OpenExchange apps keeps growing and it’s getting more and more difficult to stay up-to-date with all the new functions and features available through these apps. One of the main goals of this workshop is to help you to find those Studio apps that are the most useful for you and get them (and you) organized so that you can actually use them in your daily work.

In addition, several “performance-enhancing” Studio tips and tricks will be shown. Participants are also encouraged to submit in advance their own questions and requests for additional topics.

For registration and additional info, see the NCTA website. If you have any questions about the content of the workshop, feel free to contact me directly.

Trados Studio Workshops and Presentations

Oakland (California): I will be teaching a beginner level and an intermediate level Trados Studio 2011/2014 workshop at the CFI (California Federation of Interpreters) Conference in Oakland (CA) on October 13th. For details, see http://www.calinterpreters.org/2013-trados/.

San Antonio (Texas): I will also be giving two Trados Studio related presentations at the ATA Annual Conference in San Antonio on Friday November 8^th: (LT-5) Dealing with Tags and (LT-7) Six Things to Make You a Better Trados Studio User. I’m hoping to see many of you at the conference!

CSV File Type – A Hidden Feature

To be perfectly honest, it’s not really hidden anywhere. I just never paid any attention to it even though it has been there since the version 2009. In my own defense, I have to say that I have not translated CSV (Comma Delimited/Separated Text) files for many years. Anyhow, I came across the CSV file type settings the other day when I was looking for good examples for the next intermediate/advanced Trados Studio workshop here in San Francisco  (Dec 1^st) to demonstrate how to use the file type settings in general.

Obviously the CSV settings are important for those of us who happen to translate CSV files but what caught my attention was the possibility of utilizing this file type for a couple of other purposes: translating partially translated Excel files and converting bilingual Excel files into translation memory. This is possible because the settings allow you to also bring the existing content from the target-language column to the target-language column of your Studio file. You just need to tell which column is the source and which one is the target (see the screenshot below).

1.  Translating partially translated Excel files

Sometimes I get partially translated Excel files for translation. The missing translations (= empty cells) are here and there throughout the target-language column. I usually sort the file so that all the empty cells are together and I can copy all the matching source cells at once to a new document which I then translate. After translating I copy the translations to the empty target cells and sort the file back to its original order.

One downside of the above method is that I won’t see any of the previously translated material in Studio and I need to keep the Excel file open as a reference. Now, if I saved the file as a CSV file and opened it in Studio, I could see all the existing translations and utilize Studio’s search functions and the Display filter which could be very useful. I can also lock all the existing translations so that I don’t accidentally change them (see the “Lock existing translations” setting in the screenshot). The translated CSV file can then be opened directly in Excel and saved as an Excel file. Note, however, that the conversion from Excel format to CSV is not always a good idea because you can lose some information, such as all the formatting.

2.  Converting bilingual Excel files into translation memory

This makes it easy to convert bilingual Excel files to a Studio memory. Just save the file as a CSV file, select the suitable CSV file type settings in Studio and open the file in Studio. While the file is open in the Studio Editor, you can run a spell-check, QA verification or anything else you want before saving it as a SDLXLIFF file which you can then import to an existing Studio TM. Note again that all the formatting is lost when the Excel file is converted into CSV format.

All the above also applies to tab delimited text files and there’s an identical file settings page for this file type.

Trados Studio Workshops in Los Angeles and San Francisco

Los Angeles: I’ll be teaching beginner and intermediate level Studio workshops at the CFI conference in Los Angeles on October 5th. For details, see http://www.calinterpreters.org/conference/schedule.

San Francisco: I’ll be teaching a beginner level workshop on November 10th and an intermediate/advanced level workshop on December 1st in San Francisco for the Northern California Translators Association (NCTA). For details, see http://www.ncta.org/displaycommon.cfm?an=7.

If you need any additional info about the workshops, let me know.

Tools for Translation Quality Assurance

You might be interested in this webinar that I will be teaching on Monday (Sep. 10) titled “Tools for Translation Quality Assurance – What Every CAT Tool User Should Know About Quality Assurance”. It will include an overview of QA functions in Trados Studio (and memoQ) and a little bit about regular expressions as well. In addition, I will show how some stand-alone translation QA tools, such as Verifika and ApSIC Xbench, function.

For more information or to register, visit: http://www.ecpdwebinars.co.uk/events_89171.html

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Quality Assurance and Translation Memory Maintenance

You might be interested in this workshop that I will be teaching next week in San Francisco. It’s not a Trados workshop but will cover some Trados Studio QA and TM maintenance issues and many other topics (such as regular expressions) that we all should know.

The workshop will give an overview of QA and TM maintenance functions and tools, and illustrate how they can improve translation productivity and quality when used properly. The main topics covered are:

1. Translation QA

• Built-in QA functions in CAT tools (such as Trados Studio, memoQ and Wordfast Pro): features, setup and use
• Stand-alone QA tools, such as QA Distiller, ErrorSpy, CheckMate and Xbench

2. Translation memory maintenance and QA

Built-in functions in CAT tools (such as Trados Studio, memoQ  and Wordfast Pro) for editing, searching, filtering, importing/exporting TMs

• Stand-alone TM maintenance/QA tools, such as QA Distiller, ErrorSpy, CheckMate and Xbench
• Editing translation memories in text editors, such as UltraEdit

3. Use of regular expressions in QA functions/tools

• How to create your own regular expressions

NOTE: Even though Trados Studio, memoQ and Wordfast Pro are used for many of the examples and demonstrations during the workshop, most of the workshop content is not tool-specific and can be applied to any modern CAT tool.

For more information or to register, visit: http://www.ncta.org/displayconvention.cfm?conventionnbr=11323

Webinar on Converting/Translating PDF Files

PDF seems to be one of the most popular Studio-related search terms that bring readers to my blog, and all the PDF-related articles are among the most frequently visited ones on this blog. So, obviously there’s a lot of interest (confusion?) in this topic. As I have mentioned in the earlier articles, the best approach is to convert the file to a more suitable format (such as Word or Excel) using a real PDF conversion tool rather than opening it directly in Studio, even though Studio 2011 does the conversion much better than Studio 2009. It’s also important to remember that only text-based PDF files can be converted in Studio – it does not convert graphics-based PDF files, such as faxes.

If you want to know more about this topic, you might be interested in a webinar I will be teaching on December 7, titled Working with PDF Files – Part 2: Tools, Tips and Techniques for Converting and Translating PDF Files. It’s not a Trados Studio webinar but it will discuss the problems in translating PDF files in general and what types of tools and methods there are for converting PDF files. In addition, I will also show how to use LogiTerm AlignFactory to align PDF files for creating translation memories.

And in case you are wondering what happened to the Part 1 of the webinar series, it will be on November 30^th and the title is Working with PDF Files – Part 1: Using Adobe Reader/Acrobat. Good webinar if you want to know more about Adobe Reader/Acrobat but not related to the topic of converting and translating PDF files.