Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: Where to find/download Translation Memories/Glossaries?
Poster: Christine Andersen
Post title: Get someone to help if necessary - use the Align feature
Aligning is using a source text and a translation to create a Translation Memory. It may be useful, but it may not.
It is one of the slightly more advanced features of CATs, but if you already have some reliable and relevant texts and translations, you can convert these into TMs.
The system reduces the texts to segments and matches the ones in the source with the ones in the target. If you are translating similar texts later, they may be useful, at least in what is called the Concordance.
(Highlight a word or phrase in the source and press F3, and you will see any earlier occurrences of the same word or phrase in context. This can be very useful when it does not turn up in matches, because you can see how it was translated earlier.)
Alignments need to be checked manually, so they take time, and you may not reap a lot of benefit. You have to select the documents very carefully, and be sure they are VERY similar to the ones you will be working on. Otherwise you might just as well start translating and your Translation Memory will build up as you go.
One thing is important: Collect them all in a central memory, or a system of central memories for each subject area. Add these to your projects when you set them up, and click the setting to allow them to be updated. You can add your own 'collection' memories to clients' packages too.
At the end of each project or session, when you have proofread your text and corrected the errors, click on Batch Tasks and Update Main Translation Memories.
Otherwise your work will still be fragmented, only stored in the separate projects, and you will not accumulate anything.
Glossaries in Excel format can easily be converted for Multiterm, to use with Trados. There is an App called Glossary Converter in the SDL App Store, and it works like a charm.
So if you have any good glossaries, you can start with them.
Topic: Where to find/download Translation Memories/Glossaries?
Poster: Christine Andersen
Post title: Get someone to help if necessary - use the Align feature
Aligning is using a source text and a translation to create a Translation Memory. It may be useful, but it may not.
It is one of the slightly more advanced features of CATs, but if you already have some reliable and relevant texts and translations, you can convert these into TMs.
The system reduces the texts to segments and matches the ones in the source with the ones in the target. If you are translating similar texts later, they may be useful, at least in what is called the Concordance.
(Highlight a word or phrase in the source and press F3, and you will see any earlier occurrences of the same word or phrase in context. This can be very useful when it does not turn up in matches, because you can see how it was translated earlier.)
Alignments need to be checked manually, so they take time, and you may not reap a lot of benefit. You have to select the documents very carefully, and be sure they are VERY similar to the ones you will be working on. Otherwise you might just as well start translating and your Translation Memory will build up as you go.
One thing is important: Collect them all in a central memory, or a system of central memories for each subject area. Add these to your projects when you set them up, and click the setting to allow them to be updated. You can add your own 'collection' memories to clients' packages too.
At the end of each project or session, when you have proofread your text and corrected the errors, click on Batch Tasks and Update Main Translation Memories.
Otherwise your work will still be fragmented, only stored in the separate projects, and you will not accumulate anything.
Glossaries in Excel format can easily be converted for Multiterm, to use with Trados. There is an App called Glossary Converter in the SDL App Store, and it works like a charm.
So if you have any good glossaries, you can start with them.