Do you see your comments here?

If you have written a comment here in About Translation, and you do not see it, let me know: another blogger told me that her comments never appeared here.

I never delete a comment just because it is critical of something I wrote. The only comments I erase are those that are clearly spam (along the lines of “excellent post, come and see my web site at xyz.com”).

Comments to older posts go through moderation (to cut down on spamming), but I normally publish them within a few hours. Comments to recent posts should appear immediately, unless they are caught by Blogger’s spam filter (but I check the quarantined comments often, and allow all those that are not spam).

So, if you do not see your comments, write to my gmail address (RSchiaffino {at} gmail.com). When you write, include the text of your comment, and tell me which post it refers to: if I cannot find your comment among those waiting for moderation, I’ll post the comment myself, mentioning that you sent it. I’ll also try to see with blogger’s technical support if anything can be done to prevent comments from disappearing.

New on About Translation

In the past few months I have made some changes to this blog: a new template, which I hope you find more legible (no more dark blue text on a lighter blue background), easier to distinguish tabs on top, and a new background image (it’s a photo I took of an old diplomatic letter).

The most important change is the “Quick Tips” section in the sidebar: I’m using Twitter to micro-blog about interesting tools, books, sites I find, or stray thoughts. I’m still not accustomed to the Twitter format – 140 characters is very little room for a post, but it should be enough for these quick jottings.

First CTA event of the year: goals for 2011

I’ve just returned from the first CTA event of 2011.

Due probably to the cold weather and icy roads, there were just nine of us, this time. We discussed our goals for 2011: things such as how to expand our business, which kind of customers to target, and so on.

The CTA is going to be very active this year:

• On January 22nd we’ll have our belated holiday party (the deadline for registration is January 14: you can register on the CTA Website).
• In February I will give a presentation on XBench and on its many uses for translators.
• The big even will certainly be the CTA mid-year conference, which will be held on May 14, in Boulder, in a really spectacular location.

… and of course there will be several more interesting events.

Happy New Year

Best wishes of a Happy and prosperous 2011!

Merry Christmas!

Best wishes of a Merry Christmas to all!

Issue # 0 of FreelanceMag has just been released

Issue # 0 of FreelanceMag, “the first magazine dedicated to translation and to the freelance translators community” has just been released. FreelanceMag will be published both on paper and online.

I was contacted a couple of weeks ago, and asked to contribute an article. I didn’t have time to writing something new, so I contributed a post I had published here some time ago: “A marketing kit for translators”, which has now been titled “Marketing Tips for Freelancers” in the new magazine.

You can get Issue # 0 for free from the FreelanceMag Website.

You can freely distribute this first pdf issue of the magazine:

Please do not hesitate to distribute the PDF issue to all your contacts to help us getting known in the industry.
Please also note that we offer free advertising in our magazine to people/companies who subscribe to the one-year paper version of FreelanceMag.

The quality of SDL (paid) technical support

Last year, for the first time, we decided to pay for SDL technical support.

We did this mainly because the maintenance agreement includes the upgrade to the next major version - we calculated that by upgrading all our licenses to the current version by the April 15 deadline for the discount pricing, and by paying at the same time for the one-year maintenance agreement, we would get Trados 2009 at a convenient price.

So far the quality of paid support has been generally good: accurate and quick response in helping with the installation and licensing of the various components, good suggestions (in general) about how to overcome certain problems (e.g., the suggestion about how to use Trados 2007 with Office 2010), some less than good suggestions (suggesting that in order to speed up downloads one should disable firewall and antivirus is not what I would call a good idea), and one thing we really appreciate: almost all our support tickets are apparently handled by the same person, so we don't have to explain everything again every time we open a ticket (tellingly, it was not our favorite support person who suggested we disable antivirus and firewall to speed up the download).

Things that I find should be improved: the web interface for entering support tickets is overcrowded and clunky. The quality of the articles in the knowledge base seems to be hit or miss: there are many helpful articles, but my impression is that a non-technical user would be at a loss.

Overall, I would give SDL tech support a B+ grade (higher than the grade I would give to SDL's software, as a matter of fact)

SDL: please get some bandwidth!

I've recently had to download several large files from SDL (we finally got round to install Studio 2009, now that some customers are asking that we use it).
I found the download from the SDL site extremely slow.  I checked, but the problem was not on our side: downloading even large files (e.g., the complete Open Office installation package) completed in just a few minutes from other sites. Nor was it a transient issue: when I saw how painfully slow the download was, I aborted it, to try again the next day... and the next one. No changes, even after opening a support ticket to complain about it (the very dubious suggestion from SDL was to disable my firewall and antivirus software. As I have no desire to also download malware I decided not to follow their suggestion).
In the end I bit the bullet and downloaded all files: it took some seven hours in all, but the download eventually completed.
Now I'm again downloading something from the SDL site: a mere 18 MB for the UE auto-suggest English Italian files. A download that should take just a few seconds took more than five minutes to complete.
SDL is clearly not paying enough for bandwidth.

Actually, no, I won't excuse the mass e-mail

A certain biggish translation company always sends me urgent requests for my availability. Unfortunately, they are always sending the same message at the same time to other translators as well...

Hi sorry please excuse the mass e-mail :). We have an urgent draft translation request. Pls see details below and sample file attached and let me know if you can take this job.

Dear project manager,

I understand, of course, why you have to resort to mass e-mail (translation spam, in other words): you have to find a translator desperate (or inexperienced or gullible) enough to work for the pitiful budget you claim you have (but I do wonder if that is true), or the low rates you offer, and rash enough to accept your kind of deadlines. I imagine that you don't actually expect to receive high-quality translations with this approach.

And that is the main reason I won't excuse the mass e-mail: constantly sending urgent requests for translation to all and sundry, as you do, clearly signals that your company sees translators as interchangeable cogs in your machine, that you think any translator is as good (or as bad) as any other, that such things as education, experience and specialization really don't matter, that the only thing that matters in your model is to find someone (anyone) available for cheap at a moment's notice, and too bad about the quality.

I have to wonder if your customers are fully aware of what you do with their translations. Do they know that they may get their translations quickly, perhaps, but that what they are getting is likely of poor quality? Are they aware that to find a cheap translator with your mass e-mails you are often sending your customer's files to many translators who won't translate the document, in addition to the one who will get the assignment? Is this really in your customers' best interests?

If you need me for a project for which you think I am the most appropriate translator, I'll be happy to send you my quote for the job; otherwise, please refrain from contacting me: I am tired of having my inbox clogged with your (and your fellow project managers) translation spam.

Best regards,

Riccardo

How to run Trados 2007 with Word 2010

Supposedly, Trados 2007 (the last "classic" version of Trados) does not work with Word 2010: since Office 2010 was released after Trados 2007, Trados does not detect the new version of Office.

SDL, however, provides a workaround. I have tested the fix with Word 2010 on a Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate machine, and it does work, as you can see from this screenshot.

The workaround is neither guaranteed nor supported (as the SDL article makes clear). But since it seems to work, it might extend Trados "classic" usefulness on newer machines.

For detailed instructions, see the following instructions (suggested by SDL's original article: "SDL Trados 2007 Suite toolbar compatibility with Microsoft Office 2010", article # 3359):

To use Trados 2007 toolbar with Microsoft Office 2010, hook up Word 2010 with SDL Trados Translator's Workbench 2007, as follows:

1. Make sure that Trados, MultiTerm and Microsoft Office (Word, Outlook, etc.).
   are not running
2. Find the file Trados8.dotm in the folder C:\Program Files\SDL International\T2007\TT\Templates.
3. Copy Trados8.dotm into the following folder:
• Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\[USERNAME]\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\Startup\
• Windows Vista or Windows 7: C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\Startup\
• If the folder already contains a Trados8.dotm file, overwrite it
4. Find the file MultiTerm8.dotm in the folder C:\Program Files\SDL\SDL Multiterm\Multiterm8\Templates\.
5. Copy MultiTerm8.dotm into the following folder:
• Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\[USERNAME]\Application Data\Microsoft\Word\Startup\
• Windows Vista or Windows 7: C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\Startup\
• If the folder already contains a MultiTerm8.dotm file, overwrite it. 

Start Microsoft Word 2010. You should now see, and be able to use, Trados's Workbench or MultiTerm from Microsoft Word 2010.

Update

I've updated this post, adding the above detailed instructions, since the link to SDL's article was not working properly.