Project using TRADOS 5.5 Freelance

1. Setting up the project

irst of all, a folder called Trados Team 5 was created on Drive S, a shared drive on the University network, by the project manager (i.e., by the author), which consisted of various folders, each named after a Trados program (e.g., WinAlign, Workbench). Within them, subfolders for each language were created. The advantage of setting up the folders this way is to improve the general organisation of the team folder, and to avoid confusion between programs and/or languages. We decided to save all files on both Drive S and the Drive Q of each team-member to ensure data security, although version control problems could be a logical consequence of this kind of backup.

The source text (ST), called WinTest2, available on Outlook Public Folders on the University network, was downloaded by the project manager into the Team 5 folder so that the team members could access it at any time. Due to time limitations, the team was unable to meet and discuss the project workflow together, therefore a provisional workflow was sent by the project manager to all members by e-mail, providing an example of the procedure for this project.

Instead of moving an existing TM of WinTips1, WinTips2, and WinTest1 in Déjà-Vu, alignment of the ST and the target text (TT) was the chosen method for creating a TM because it is considered a typical workflow, as suggested in the Déjà-Vu User Guide.¹ The TT of WinTest1 was edited in Word, following the corrections made by the translation tutor, using the Find/Replace command in the Edit menu. Then a new alignment project for WinTest1 was created in WinAlign. The same procedure was followed for WinTips1 and WinTips2. All the STs and the TTs were double-checked, and then the three aligned documents were saved as a project on Drive S and exported in a .tmx file, since that is a standard TM exchange file format. ² From Workbench, a new TM was created with Multiple Translations unselected as default, which means that Workbench does not allow different translations for a duplicate source.³ That file was imported into the TM and the contents were checked in the Maintenance window.

To create a Workbench TM in Japanese:

The team created a MultiTerm termbase called Trados 5 and defined the termbase definition based on each language's characteristics, such as appropriate fonts for Double Bytes Character Set (DBCS) (e.g., SimSun for Chinese and Mincho for Japanese), part of speech, gender, etc. It was decided that only definitions in English should be inserted, because this is a localisation project and any term in a target language should signify the same as English. User IDs, passwords and input models were set up for team members, allowing them to edit only the necessary fields for their own target language, in order to avoid unexpected and erroneous editing of existing entries.

As a first step in populating the termbase, the alignment file saved in .tmx extension was opened in ExtraTerm and maximum two-word terms were extracted.⁵ Using the Concordance and also referring to WinTest2, important terms were validated, and then exported to a .txt file using the Export Wizard.⁶ The text file was easily imported into the team termbase by the terminologist. As for the lexicon of WinTest2, a monolingual term extraction project was created in ExtraTerm. Since ExtraTerm is able to recognise different word forms (e.g., print (v.) and printer (n.)), the most frequent word form in a term was selected depending on the context shown in the Concordance window. All new terms were validated and exported to the destination (i.e., the team termbase), then, finally, from the team termbase, they were imported by the terminologist. To search for missing entries in Spanish and Japanese, i.e., entries that were added by other team members, a filter was defined by adding Spanish and Japanese with criterion [!*] in the Filter Definition window. When a term with no Spanish or Japanese equivalent was found, an equivalent term was manually filled in, making full use of all keystrokes to facilitate adding and editing entries.

Instead of translating WinTest2 from the beginning, the ST was analysed against the existing TM using Analyse from the Tools menu in Workbench. The advantage of doing this is that it creates the Unknown Segments in an .rtf file so only a small amount of the ST must be be translated. Each time the Set/Close Next Open /Get (ALT [+]) command was selected, the source and target segments were added to the existing TM. During the translation, unfamiliar terms were added into the team termbase manually (for Japanese) or using Copy to Clipboard (for Spanish).

Then WinTest2 was opened in a TRADOS 5.5 template in Word, and the Translate to Fuzzy was carried out. The Translate to Fuzzy command was selected rather than Translate in the Workbench Tools menu because it was obvious that the TM contained all the target segments and Workbench was able to perform all 100% matches automatically. Conversely, the Translate function is used to give freelancers access to the data that is contained in TM and MultiTerm according to Workbench Online Help.⁷

Then, a spell-check was carried out in Word. Although it took time for Word to search only for the target segments among many other source segments and segment delimiters and external tags, it was efficient to do it before the Clean Up because this command works both to produce the TT and to update the TM. Other small changes after translation were also made in Workbench using the Concordance in the Tools menu for spot editing, or using the Constraints in the Maintenance menu and the Source and Target Segments in the Global Changes window.⁸ Although switching between several windows could lead everything to go wrong and confining operations was not so simple, it was necessary to do it in order for the TM to be consistent.

There are several strengths that are considered common to most Trados programs.

Various file formats are supported in Trados software, although in this project only a few different formats were used. In fact, different components exist for different file formats (e.g., TagEditor for HTML, PageMaker, etc.).

Network options are available in Workbench and MultiTerm to be used in large-scale projects involving many languages and translators, as exemplified in the user ID and password in MultiTerm. Workspace is a standalone application that is designed for project management and, from this, anybody can check the current procedure in the task list, and can also have access to other programs.

A program's settings can be freely defined by a user, e.g., the termbase definition in MultiTerm; and its display can even be changed, e.g., vertical or horizontal positioning in WinAlign. The structure and symbols in the setting of each component are for the most part commonly used (e.g., "!" means "not" in the settings of Export, Define Filter and Constraints in MultiTerm and Workbench); therefore, once a user has learned them in a program, s/he could apply them to other programs.

It is worth mentioning some specific points that arose during the project.

When translating the Unknown Segments, the text was presented out of the layout of the original document, which caused difficulty in choosing an appropriate translation. Especially in this project, the ST has a two-column part: "to do this" in the left column and "try this" in the right one, though in both sections the source-language sentences have the same structure: the imperative form. However, in Japanese it was necessary to differentiate the structure of both sections. During the Translate to Fuzzy, the translation had to be changed because it turned out to be wrong after the rendered translation was placed in the contextualised layout.

When performing a translation in Japanese, Workbench proposals were sometimes too complicated to choose from. Translating into Japanese seemed more complicated than into Spanish due to the difference of syntax between English and Japanese, which is wider than between English and Spanish. For example,

Copy the appropriate files      to      Briefcase	Copy the appropriate    files to Briefcase.
es: Copiar los archivos apropiados a Portafolios.	ブリーフケースに適切なファイルをコピーします。 Buri-hu Ke-su ni Tekisetsuna Fairu wo Kopii Shimasu.

In this example, the Spanish segment reads in an order parallel to the English one, while the Japanese segment has a totally different word order. In Workbench, dictionary proposals appear just above the source-language word shown by a red line. Therefore, when producing a Japanese translation, the last dictionary proposal should be selected and put in the first place. Using keystrokes (ALT +[←][↓][→]) was a slightly complicated process and it was sometimes easier to render the translation directly, as if there were no dictionary proposals in the TM.

Trados has separate applications for different parts of a translation process: MultiTerm for terminology management, Workbench for translation memory, and Word for editing environment (the same format as the ST). This fact raised several difficulties as follows:

• Since Word is the editing environment, it is important to set up options appropriately in Word.⁹ Especially in the View tab of the Options from the Tools menu, field codes and other formatting marks should be properly selected so that hyperlinks and all hidden text in the Trados template can appear.
   
• It is also essential to use the same input methods, as well as font settings, throughout MultiTerm, Workbench and Word. In Spanish translation, some Spanish renderings were typed accidentally by English input method, since English input method was thought to be sufficient as long as the TT did not contain accented letters or ñ. Nonetheless, this caused confusions for Word in carrying out spell-checking, because some Spanish segments were considered as English and therefore Word offered some suggestions that were English terms.¹⁰
   
• Copying a Japanese entry from one program to another (e.g., from Workbench into MultiTerm) was not successful, though English and Spanish were done using the Copy to Clipboard. This is possibly related to the fact that both Word and Workbench work with MS-IME, whereas MultiTerm only works with NJ Star.
   
• To switch several windows and perform a command efficiently, all the keystrokes should be remembered and fully used, e.g., one keystroke leads straight to the command, while two or more clicks are necessary when using the mouse. Nonetheless, it should be borne in mind that careless keystrokes could lead to an unexpected command.

During the course of translation, these components (besides NJ Star for Japanese translation) were running at the same time, which resulted in some difficulties: too many screens to check,¹¹ too much time to launch the programs, risk of malfunction in their interaction or even problems in the display, which could, in the worst case, lead everything to go wrong. Although the Fix Document command is available in Word, it was not always successful and it was sometimes necessary to reboot the computer. The starting order of the components is, therefore, fundamental and accidentally closing the window of a component must be avoided.

In this project, there were both time limitations and restricted resources. However, it highlighted some of the strengths and weaknesses of Trados in a practical team translation. For better team management, it would be useful to get access to Workspace, considering its characteristics in systematic management of all team members.¹² This multilingual translation project, dealing with non-European languages, proved very complex in terms of the configuration of the languages of the programs.¹³ It was shown that Trados is a sophisticated but complex software, as discussed above. Although the potential of Trados was not fully realised in this project, a greater expertise of Word could contribute to overcoming some of the difficulties encountered in this project.

Atril UK Ltd., 2000, Déjà-Vu User Guide, East Sussex.

Microsoft, International Wordlist

TRADOS Ireland Ltd., 1994-2002, Trados Specialist Guide , Dublin.

TRADOS Ireland Ltd., 1994-2002, Translator's Workbench User Guide, Dublin.

TRADOS Ireland Ltd., 1994-2002, Translator's Workbench Online Help, Dublin.