Trados Limitations and Textboxes

This week I've learned that I hate embedded and grouped text boxes in Word. Why do I hate them? Well, Trados apparently does not pick up text that are embedded in text boxes when you attempt to translate the file in a tagged word format. If you use Tag Editor it hides the text between formatting tags, and the text in the boxes are not editable. Solution, SDLX actually picks up the text for text boxes that are grouped, but it ignores embedded boxes. By the way, text in embedded boxes show up as live text, they don't get picked by SDLX, and there is no option to have it pick up or extract the text. Therefore, the best was is to try and copy and paste the text into a word file, ignoring the boxes and hoping you copied and pasted all the text correctly. So, if you must use Trados, be careful of the grouped and embedded text boxes, you'll be missing a few words if you don't.

Google and Iphone: Proofing and Editing on the GO!

Recently, I discovered Google Docs. Yes, Google has created a web based document creation tool. Essentially, you can create text documents (ie MS Word Style), Spreadsheets with formulas and charts, and presentations (ie Power Point). Google has created a web based version of Microsoft Office Home Basic. You also have the ability to open up PDFs in Gmail without having a Reader. These features may not make a whole of difference to people with desktops or laptops, but with an Iphone, it changes the whole ball game. Now you can open up a PDF, (copy and paste text, if you have the new 3GS), and edit the text in Google Docs. You can view/proof PDFs, make comments in the text editor, create a spread sheet of terms and send it to your Desktop Publisher for corrections. If you need to create a presentation or add a new slide, simple create one.

Oh, and with the wireless printer app, you can print the PDF. You can upload a word, ppt, excel file from your computer, save it on your google account, edit it on your Iphone, and make the world go round. You can save the files as .doc, .xls, .ppt, or aPDF and open them up on computer later on, or send it to someone with a computer and they can open it up as well. Here's a video about Google Docs:

Corporate Wisconsin Article

The blog is not dead. I've just been busy. I apologize for the lack of posts last month. To kick things off, Catherine wrote an article for Corporate Wisconsin. You can read it here. It's actually on the main page of their website under the "My View" column. It's an interesting article that provides some ideas on the current export climate for businesses.

Answering the Need for Translation

The question: Should I translate my website and my marketing material? arises every time a company explores venturing into a new market. Is the cost of translating and localizing marketing collateral going to pay off with market share in the future? is another question that looms over the heads of International Sales people in their attempt to justify their translation budgets for their material. This article, written by Don DePalma, covers some important things to factor in when considering translating and localizing content from marketing collateral to user interfaces and online help. Here's an excerpt from the article that I think address the questions above. Read the full article here


Excerpt: Global Strategies: Watch Your Language

Written by Don DePalma

Monday, 01 June 2009

Buyers want products they can understand
This need to localize isn’t unique to consumer products; it crosses a wide range of goods and services. At Common Sense Advisory, we have long tracked this product requirement. In 2006, we asked 2,430 consumers in eight non-English-speaking countries about their language and usage preferences for Web sites. The answer was unequivocal: they wanted information, user interfaces, and payment methods that they could read, use, and understand, not English.

More recently, we extended this inquiry to corporate software buyers, both the kind you use on your desktop at work and the heavy-duty enterprise solutions that power supply chains, financial institutions, and corporate operations. This time, we asked 351 buyers in eight non-Anglophone countries about their buying preferences.

We think this survey has broader implications for global sales and should be interesting even if you don’t buy or sell software. Think about the things you do buy or sell. They are marketed either online, in-person, or in the mass media, so the marketers have to attract the prospective buyers’ attention in selling propositions that make sense to them.

Think office equipment, machine tools, anything you might drive or fly, medical devices, and a bunch of other gear. Then consider what makes up these products. Each has an electronic user interface, comes with lots of documentation, and may require post-sales technical support. In many ways, from initial marketing to post-sales support, these products are similar to software.

To measure the localization requirements for business products, we selected a cross-section of countries around the world, aiming for a representative mix of markets for which companies frequently adapt their products (France, Germany, Japan, and Spain), attractive developing markets (China and Russia), and locales for which English is often thought to be sufficient for most offerings (Sweden).

Global TM

This week ICD started tweeting, and we started to follow Renato Beninatto, famed translation industry expert and President of Common Sense Advisory. He tweeted about the future of the Global TM (Translation Memory). Basically, it's the idea of combining multiple translation memories from different vendors and create a shared TM. Access can be granted to both vendors and clients who agree to share their memories. Now, that sounds like it should bring about fair market competition between translation companies. For example: If translation company A and B are bidding on the same project they would have the same competitive edge when it comes to the translated content, but the winning bid would come down to the translators cost. That's when the problem arises for translators. The price war has already begun, and with a global TM, translators will have to beat each other based on prices because that becomes the sole variable for translation cost. Then the question of quality becomes an issue.

The other problem arises with proprietary content. TMs are the clients proprietary material, and if they entered into an agreement for a Global TM, then their translated materials would be shared with their competitors. I'm not sure how this will effect instruction manuals, but it could be a problem for marketing literature with catchy tag lines and phrases. You certainly don't want your prized tag line that your marketing gurus spent hours coming up with duplicated or beaten by a competing company. It only takes a couple words to have a best seller.

Will the Global TM succeed? Maybe, if limits are placed on the exchange of translated content, and on access provided to companies that agree to share their memories. Smaller translation companies will also feel the pain as they will be less competitive if they don't participate in the Global TM.

ICD Tweets!

Our twitter account is up and running, check out the RSS feed on the right or 'tweet-in' at http://twitter.com/Trans2Evolve

Is XML easier to Translate?

I've always been a proponent of XML content. I think it's faster to get things translated, and with a CMS it alleviates unnecessary emails and creates a translation work flow. However, there are a couple of fundamental problems in XML construction that you should address before setting up a translation work flow. One common problem is using CDATA sections.

Problem:
It's a very bad idea to use CDATA sections to separate
database content from database structure if you want to translate this content. CDATA sections make it impossible for third party tools to parse/separate the text and tags/elements within the CDATA sections. CDATA sections are designed this way because they are explicitly used to hold text and tags to prevent parsing. This makes it almost impossible for third party tools like Translation Memory Systems (TRADOS/SDLX) to parse the text and tags within the CDATA sections. TRADOS/SDLX exposes the CDATA content for translation without further parsing. Therefore, you get all the tags as "real text".

Solution:
You should considers using name spaces instead by placing the database structure, XML into it's own name space and have the database content in a second name space (or have it without a name space). SDL TRADOS Snippet might be a more or less usable workaround here, but it limits the tags you can "hide", and text within CDATA sections that are not closed will be hidden as well.

I hope this helps those of you out there who use XML as a content editor, or are planning to send XML files for translation. It's always a good idea to communicate with you translation vendor, or potential translation vendor when they are bidding on your project. Work together on finding ways to solve potential structural problems within the XML file. You certainly don't want unnecessary content translated, and this will allow you to preempt any exporting problems you might face with deleted or missing tags when you want to publish your translated content.