SDL Trados Studio 2014 – The Manual

Mats Linder has just published the new updated version of his Trados Studio Manual.

The new version of the manual (expanded from 345 pages for Studio 2009, to 385 pages for Studio 2011, and now to 430 pages) has been updated to reflect the changes from Studio 2011 to Studio 2014. As previously, it comes in two version: a clean one and one in which the changes from the previous version are highlighted; this is very useful for those who want to skim through the manual to see what has been changed and added to the program.

The manual is sold for USD 49 (Euro 38) to new users, and at a discounted price of USD 24 (Euro 19) to those that are upgrading after buying a previous version of the manual. In any case, a reasonable price for a very useful resource.

I highly recommend the manual both to new users of Studio and to those who already are familiar with it: the manual is thorough, clearly written (unlike SDL’s own help files), and independent.

The manual is provided in pdf format, but it is also ready for printing (for those who don’t mind killing a few extra trees): it comes with a substantial table of contents and a very complete index.

A suggestion I have for Mats is to consider publish future editions as a true e-book: this would be useful to the increasing number of people who use e-book readers and tablets, as it would then permit such features as increasing the font size as necessary.

You can purchase the full-price version of the manual from www.TradosStudioManual.com. If you already purchased a previous version, you upgrade it from the Upgrade to 2014 page.

Special offer for Xbench

Until November 29, ApSIC is offering Xbench, its super-useful terminology and QA tool, at a 50% discount.

While the 2.9 version of Xbench is still free, I highly recommend upgrading to the professional version (3.0): it supports more file types and offers useful additional QA tests.

Above all, by paying for the pro version you help ApSIC actively support and further develop one of the very best utilities for translators.

You can purchase Xbench at www.xbench.net. For more information on how Xbench can be useful for translators, see my presentation (now slightly out of date).

How to search on multiple PDF files at the same time

There is a customer of ours that always sends multiple PDF files for reference, together with .itd files to translate.

Since the PDFs illustrate the mechanical maintenance procedures described in the translation files, being able to search the PDFs to find the correct illustrations is essential. Searching each of them separately would be time consuming (and tedious). Fortunately, there is an easy way to search numerous PDFs all at the same time. Using Foxit Reader (an excellent free tool, much superior to the bloated Adobe Reader), just hit Ctrl+Shift+F to open the search pane,

select the All PDF documents in radio button, browse for the folder where you have saved your reference PDFs, select the appropriate checkboxes, and hit Enter.

Foxit Reader will display all the files (and location in the files) where your search terms are to be found.

Common cover message errors

Every week I receive a number of messages from freelance translators, offering their services.

Most of those who send these messages usually fail to distinguish themselves, and fail to make any positive impression.

Take this message I just received:

Hello,[1] 

I am [Name redacted] from Italy. I am an Italian native experienced translator and proofreader. I translate from English to Italian and via versa[2]. I have worked for several translation agencies, translating various fields[3], it would be a real pleasure for me working with you as freelance translator, so I am sending this cover letter and the enclosed resume to introduce myself and my skills and experiences[4] to you. 

My rates are flexible and negotiable[5] depend[6] on the subject of the text and the urgency of the task. I look forward to working with you in the near future.

Now: what's wrong with this?

1. Generic salutation. It tells me this is part of a mass e-mail campaign (i.e., spam) and that is not addressed to me or to my company. A message with such a salutation most likely goes straight to the spam folder: If the writer cannot be bothered to address it to a specific person or at least to a specific company, why should the recipient be interested in reading it?
2. English to Italian and vice versa. The writer says she is an Italian native, and claims to be able to translate not only from English into Italian, but also from Italian into English. Translating into a language you are not a native speaker of is usually the mark of the amateur. There are exceptions (such as people who are really native speakers of two languages, and even a few non-native speaker who do have the exceptional ability to translate into their second language at a level indistinguishable from a native speaker), but these are very few and far between.
3. Various fields. The purpose of the cover letter is to entice me into opening the résumé. I might do so if the message indicates a specific field I'm interested in. "Various fields" tells me absolutely nothing.
4. Skills and experiences. Again, a missed opportunity for distinguishing herself from all other wannabe translators. Which skills experiences? The message doesn't say, so once again I have no reason to open the résumé.
5. Flexible and negotiable rates. This translator writes "flexible and negotiable". I read "I'm a doormat, please step on me". There is probably no better way to indicate that one is not a real professional than saying from the beginning that your rates are negotiable. This translator is in effect negotiating against herself. (Hint: translation companies are usually more than ready to ask new translators to lower their rates. Don't help them do so by indicating from the beginning you are an easy mark!)
6. Grammar errors. The writer claims to be able to translate into English, but then cannot even write correct English in her cover message. This not only undermines her credibility as an Italian into English translator: it also casts a shadow on her English into Italian skills. 

Remember: the main purpose of your message is to entice your prospect to open the attached resume, or to ask for more information. To do that you should distinguish yourself from other translators. Make your message stand out from the rest: indicate some specific skill or experience, address you message to a specific person, write in a way that clearly show you know your business.

Concordance blues

CAT tools' concordance features are usually more helpful to translators than fuzzy matching, especially in the long run - I consider my translation memories as a growing treasure that I can search to see how I translated something in the past, and for that it doesn't matter if the segments are not similar enough to suggest a fuzzy match.

But sometimes the way concordance works in some CAT tools leads me to wonder whether CAT tool programmers realize that when we search for a match in our translation memories we are not looking for a completely different word.

For example, if I'm trying to find whether or not I had previously translated "rocking strip" (a piece of a thrust bearing), getting a reminder of how I previously translated "backing strip" (the strip of paper that covers an adhesive) is worse than useless:

it just wastes time, without helping me one bit.

The example above is from Studio 2011, but I've seen similar mismatches in other translation tools. (Before anybody comments: no, I've not enabled the "character-based concordance search" for this - or any other - memory.)

I'd really like to know why CAT tools' programmers think providing this kind of results could be helpful: what's the rationale behind them? Has any translator asked for this type of matching? Would it be helpful for certain languages? (If so, shouldn't it be enabled only for those languages, and not for all of them?)

Java problems in Multiterm

Once again, Multiterm is suffering from Java problems: it seems that the latest updated to Java (7.45) creates various problems with Multiterm (for more details, see article 4956 in SDL's knowledge base)

While SDL has been very timely in signalling the problem, and in publishing a workaround in the KB article, saying that this is not an SDL-created problem (as SDL representatives are saying for example on ProZ) is, I think, disingenuous.

Yes: the actual problem is caused by Java, so it is ultimately Oracle's fault, BUT

• It is SDL who decided to use Java - so it is SDL who is responsible for using Oracle's unreliable and/or defective technology.
• It is SDL who keeps on using Java - despite previous instances of problems caused by Java: as far as I can see SDL fine-tunes their tools to a specific version of Java (7.25 in this case), and then they cross their fingers and hope that the next version released by Oracle won't break Multiterm.
• When (not if) such problems happen, SDL have little recourse but to recommend to uninstall the latest Java version, and reinstall the previous one. This may bring back the Multiterm functionality, but, presumably, at a cost: if the new version of Java has been released to solve newly-discovered vulnerabilities in the previous version, SDL is asking its customers to stay open to said vulnerabilities.

This, to put it mildly, is not a "best practice" (though SDL claims it as such in their KB article: "Step 3: Follow-up for Best-Practice to avoid the question to install Java 7 Update 45 again.").

My questions:

• Why does SDL keep on relying on Oracle's defective technology?
• What is SDL doing to permanently solve these recurring issues?

A very special offer on QA Distiller

QA Distiller is a useful translation QA tool that lets you run a series of tests on various types of bilingual files, including Xliff (SDL Trados Studio and MemoQ), ttx (Tag Editor), and TMX.

QA Distiller offers a wider range of QA checks than Xbench or SDL's internal QA tools. When compared with Xbench, it does not have the very useful terminology functions that Xbench offers, but (besides the higher number of tests performed) it does have a useful advantage over Xbench: you can edit the incorrect segments directly from within QA Distiller.

On September 30 only, on the occasion of the International Translation Day, QA distiller is offered at a very special price: 100 Euro instead of the regular 1000 Euro (so a 90% discount).

The link for the special offer is www.qa-distiller.com/anniversary. Other useful links: a flash demo of the tool, the on-line help file (use Firefox to display the online help: I had problems displaying it in Chrome) and a series of FAQs.

A quick Xbench trick

When using Xbench as a terminology reference tool, in many translation applications you can select the test you want to look up by highlighting it, then using the Ctrl+Alt+Ins hotkey to invoke Xbench and send that text to Xbench's source search box (or Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to send that text to the target search box).

In certain applications, however  (for example in SDLX), these hotkeys do not work: if you highlight some text and press Ctrl+Alt+Ins Xbench appears, but in the search box you get the last content of your clipboard, instead of the text you had highlighted.

The workaround is to highlight the text to search, use Ctrl+C to copy it to the clipboard, and only then use the Ctrl+Alt+Ins (or Ctrl+Alt+Backspace) hotkeys.

Remember that most hotkeys can be changed in Xbench: if you do not want to use Ctrl+Alt+Ins and Ctrl+Alt+Backspace - for example because they are already used by another application - you can change them in the Settings window (Tools -> Settings -> Layout & Hotkeys).

For more information about Xbench and how it can help your translations, a good place to start is my presentation, which you can download from the Xbench tab above.

Say no to the ribbon: an open letter to SDL's Paul Filkin

Dear Paul,

I’m writing to you as you are the best advocate for translators at SDL. 

We have heard that Studio 2014 will adopt a ribbon interface. If there is still time (and there is, since the program is still in beta) I urge you, and all at SDL, to reconsider this decision.

The ribbon interface in MS Office has been a disaster, in the opinion of most power users – we’ve had to spend unnecessary long hours to find out where all familiar commands had been hidden away.

In MS Office, at least, third party developers have been able to return something similar to the familiar menu as an add-on to the program. Since, however, SDL has a much smaller market, I doubt that there will be any similar solution available to us.

I therefore urge you, and SDL, to concentrate your efforts not on an unnecessary, unwanted and harmful novelty like a ribbon interface, but rather on spending development resources on actual improvements to the program – you could, for example, finally start to do something to improve the serious defects still present in your fuzzy-matching algorithms, or perhaps work on the broken auto-propagation feature.

Best regards,

Riccardo Schiaffino

Switching spell-checker in SDL Trados Studio

I normally prefer to use the Hunspell spell checker in Trados Studio: I can set the various parameters from within Studio (instead of having to change them in MS Word), and I don't mind that Hunspell normally flags more false positives - I actually prefer that to MS's sometimes more permissive approach.

There are, however, times when you need to change the spell checker used - for instance, if the language version used in a project is not supported by your default spell checker.

This happened to me in a recent project: the customer had set it as English to Italian (Switzerland), instead of the normal Italian (Italy). Hunspell does not have a spell checker for Italian (Switzerland), so Studio was not performing any spell checking at all - if you selected the Tools menu you would see the spell-checker option grayed out.

In such instances the workaround is simple: just go to Tools > Options > Editor > Spelling, and select the other spell checker.

In my case, I switched from Hunspell to MS Word's, and I was able to check my project. In other instances you may try the reverse (selecting Hunspell when you normally use the MS Word spell-checker). This is useful, for instance, if your installation of MS Office does not come with the spell-checker for a certain language.