Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What is the easiest-to-use tool for large Word documents with tables, figures and text boxes?
Poster: Samuel Murray
Post title: @Eric II
[quote]BNN Medical Translations wrote:
With a CAT tool, if at any point I have technical troubles that are impeding my progress on a document with a tight schedule, I can just export the work so far to a .docx file and the result will be just like the source document, so that I can continue on Word itself as usual, right? [/quote]
Nope. By the time you get to the technical difficulties, it's too late. By that time, you can't export to DOCX anymore. So if you're worried, you should export to DOCX every ten minutes or so, so that you always have a DOCX version in which you've lost less than 10 minutes of work.
The problem with some/many of these tools is that exporting to DOCX isn't a simple operation. Exporting to DOCX is meant to be the final step in the process, and not a method of creating backups.
[quote]It won't horribly break the formatting or anything if I need to go back to translating on Word in an emergency? [/quote]
These CAT tools (unlike WFC) can either export the file or they can't. And if they can't, that's called a "technical difficulty". The tools can't export partially. I mean, they can export a partial translation, but they can't export a partial file.
[quote]On the other hand, Maija said that MemoQ at least doesn't. [/quote]
You can run into trouble with all tools. The trick is learning how to avoid the trouble (not always possible), and you do that by becoming an expert at the tool by following forum posts about the tool closely.
[Edited at 2017-08-16 21:21 GMT]
Topic: What is the easiest-to-use tool for large Word documents with tables, figures and text boxes?
Poster: Samuel Murray
Post title: @Eric II
[quote]BNN Medical Translations wrote:
With a CAT tool, if at any point I have technical troubles that are impeding my progress on a document with a tight schedule, I can just export the work so far to a .docx file and the result will be just like the source document, so that I can continue on Word itself as usual, right? [/quote]
Nope. By the time you get to the technical difficulties, it's too late. By that time, you can't export to DOCX anymore. So if you're worried, you should export to DOCX every ten minutes or so, so that you always have a DOCX version in which you've lost less than 10 minutes of work.
The problem with some/many of these tools is that exporting to DOCX isn't a simple operation. Exporting to DOCX is meant to be the final step in the process, and not a method of creating backups.
[quote]It won't horribly break the formatting or anything if I need to go back to translating on Word in an emergency? [/quote]
These CAT tools (unlike WFC) can either export the file or they can't. And if they can't, that's called a "technical difficulty". The tools can't export partially. I mean, they can export a partial translation, but they can't export a partial file.
[quote]On the other hand, Maija said that MemoQ at least doesn't. [/quote]
You can run into trouble with all tools. The trick is learning how to avoid the trouble (not always possible), and you do that by becoming an expert at the tool by following forum posts about the tool closely.
[Edited at 2017-08-16 21:21 GMT]