Showing posts with label references. Show all posts
Showing posts with label references. Show all posts

Dec 13, 2016

The irregularities of regular expressions in #memoQ


Sometime back in the time-distant swamps where memoQ evolved, regex mysteriously became part of the software's virtual genes. It was unclear, exactly, which third-party engine or bacterial life form had been its source, and solution developers were often at a loss to know which advanced syntax would work or not unless they tried (and very often failed).

Many of us begged and pleaded for some kind of definitive documentation of allowed syntax for memoQ's regular expressions, which are an important feature for filtering (in recent versions), segmentation rules, special text import filters, autotranslatables rules and probably a few other things I've forgotten. But begging, threats - even bribery - led to no useful reference information, just some useless suggestions to read beginner's tutorials for other dialects somewhere on the Web.

Then, quite by accident, I learned yesterday that Kilgray uses the engine in Microsoft's .NET framework. Doh. Who'da thunk? Now, at last, I can get some definitive syntax information to help me solve more sophisticated problems for legal reference formats and other challenges in my translations with memoQ.

Even with accurate syntax guidance (at last!!!), regex development with memoQ is often not a simple matter. The integrated editors are often useless, especially for things like complex autotranslatables, where the bad feature of changing the order of rules after an edit can kill a ruleset. (It was long claimed by Kilgray Support that rule order does not matter, which is patently untrue. They simply did not look at the right test cases.)

Good code of any kind should usually be documented to facilitate maintenance. This is simply not possible with the editors for regex integrated in memoQ. So instead, I do all my rule-writing work in an external editor (such as Notepad++), where I can add extensive <!-- comments so I know what the heck I did when I have to revise the rules later --> and import the rulesets for testing into a memoQ project with appropriate test data included as "translation" documents. The hardest part of this workflow is remembering to enable the imported ruleset I want to test under Project home>Settings>Auto-translation rules; often I forget and think I really screwed up until I go back to the settings and mark the checkbox by the rules to test. Keep a lot of carb sources at your desk when you do regex work. Your brain will need them.

A lot of memoQ users think that regex is irrelevant to their working lives, but for hardcore financial and legal translators at least, this is an entirely mistaken idea. Correctly constructed rules can save much time and a lot of frayed nerves dealing with citations, dates, currency expressions and more, and the rules also decrease QA time while increasing accuracy.

I have quite a number of custom rulesets I have put together for my work and for some colleagues and clients. Regex is hard shit, no matter what anyone tells you. I have programmed computers in a host of languages since 1970 more or less and used to be known for a good memory for syntax rules, but I find regex so non-intuitive at anything more than a very basic level that if I use it only a few times a year, I have to re-learn it nearly every time. That's no fun. So the key to mastering regex is not to learn it. The massahs usually don't know sheet about workin' the fields, but if they are going to survive in this competitive world, they'll know which specialist to put on the job and reward him or her appropriately. Get to know a competent consulting specialist for memoQ regex, like colleague Marek Pawelec, and let that person's expertise save you many hours of typing and QA, not to mention undetected errors.

Kilgray also established a Professional Services department at last not long ago, and that team can also help you with these and other problems for optimizing the use of translation technologies. This is very often a better option than using consultants primarily focused on SDL solutions who do a bit of memoQ on the side, because even the best of these are often not really aware of the best approaches to use, and the consequences of this are sometimes dire. Are they at the memoQ wordface nearly every day, dealing with a wide range of challenges that push the technical envelope of the software to its limits? Or would they really rather do a beginner's workshop for SDL Trados Studio 2017 and show you all the cool features that memoQ has had for years and they probably never learned very well anyway? If it's not the first case, caveat emptor no matter the source.

Oct 22, 2013

Complex dictionaries in memoQ LiveDocs

One never knows when a good idea might come up. This one isn't particularly original, in fact it's probably bleedin' obvious to the memoQ LiveDocs cognoscenti. I think it's drifted in and out of my mind a few times, but I never gave it much heed until a friend contacted me shortly before midnight with a slightly urgent question about what to do with an "XML terminology" that a client had sent. It turned out to be an SDL MultiTerm XML export but without a definition file. She wanted the data conveniently available in memoQ. Oh, crap, I thought. This could be a long night. Kilgray has added such capabilities to its qTerm server application, but the Fußvolk who use memoQ desktop versions don't have that option right now. And I shelved my XSLT efforts for this some time ago because nobody seemed seriously interested.

But then she said something about a "Word file". It turned out that the client had made one of those nice RTF dictionary exports that MultiTerm can produce and which was also the target of my XSLT work a year ago. This was exactly what I planned to make for her if the XML proved to be loaded with synonyms and term metadata. It was.

And then... I thought... why not just throw this in LiveDocs as a "monolingual" document? And thus a nice way to make complex glossary data available without importing it into a termbase was (re)born. Of course stuff like this has been going on for ages with Archivarius and other search tools. But not so much in an integrated way with CAT tools. Here's a quick visual tour of the process and the end result:


Here's the RTF file and a peek at the financial term data it contains. Not a chance I can parse that beast for a termbase! So I picked a LiveDocs corpus and clicked Import document and chose the RTF file:


I lied and said it was "German". Well, that's partly true and in this case, the end justifies the means.


A few minutes later, this dictionary was available in an ordinary concordance search, its entire content indexed as "source" text. To see the context, I right-click on the concordance hit to open the document saved in the LiveDocs corpus.


And here it is. I can do further searches within the document using Ctrl+F (Find). The English definition can be copied from here if I feel like doing that.

Now I know what I should do with that huge trilingual fire safety dictionary that's been kicking around my reference folders for the past 10 years... once again, LiveDocs made my day.

Feb 9, 2010

Agriculture & dairy terminology dictionaries

As a former small hobby farmer in Oregon and translator of agricultural texts, I can't resist a good dictionary - or even a bad one - related to agriculture and food production. These fields often have very specialized terminology, and the terms in English often vary by dialect (UK, US), so it isn't always easy to find the right expressions eve if you do have a reasonable grasp of the field. Despite the key role that agriculture plays in the international economy, this is also not an area overloaded with multilingual dictionaries like, for example, IT or engineering technology.
In many ways, the publisher Elsevier seems to play the role that VEB Verlag Technik Berlin did in the old GDR. The publisher distributes many specialized dictionaries which often appear to be the only ones of significance in their field. So it is with agriculture too. When haunting the used book options of eBay with my preconfigured searches, I have managed to net two useful volumes for a total of about 20 euros, which otherwise would have cost me the price of a plane ticket to visit family in the US: the International Dairy Federation Dictionary of Dairy Terminology and the Dictionary of Agriculture. I bought the former on a whim, simply because I like to collect dictionaries, but it has found practical use in a number of projects translating about cheese making, yogurt and milk hygiene. The second volume stays close to my knee when I'm doing combines and forage harvesters or other related topics. To be honest, I would have gotten full value out of these at the retail price, but I'm glad to have saved what I did. There are so many things to be found there that can often be found nowhere else. Internet glossaries cannot cover everything, especially if you don't know enough to filter the noise.

In any case, for colleagues active in these areas and the relevant languages, I can recommend these as backup resources to accompany good prior knowledge of the fields:

Title: International Dairy Federation Dictionary of Dairy Terminology (Second Revised Edition)
Publisher: Elsevier Science B.V.
Languages: English, French, German, Spanish
ISBN-10: 0444896449
ISBN-13: 978-0444896445
Year published: 1996
Cost: about € 120 new through Amazon.de

Title: Elsevier's Dictionary of Agriculture
Publisher: Elsevier Science B.V.
Languages: English, German, French, Russian, Latin
ISBN-10: 0444500057
ISBN-13: 978-0444500052
Year published: 2000
Cost: about € 155 used to € 230 new through Amazon.de

Feb 8, 2010

Aerospace dictionary bargain (DE/EN)

Although we've got a rather extensive library of German/English translation dictionaries and other reference works, I haven't been satisfied with its coverage of aerospace topics. Up to now the best I've had has been a Lufthansa dictionary and a bunch of general technical ones (the infamous Ernst and a dozen others). Then I found a copy of Roderich Cescotti's Aerospace Dictionary with Aerospace Definitions in an online auction. The price was right, so I thought I would risk a few euros. On Amazon.com the book sells for USD 125; one vendor there offers a copy for nearly USD 300. The regular price on Amazon.de is about 95 euros (around USD 140 at current rates).

It finally arrived today. I was pleased to see that the content is tagged according to subfield; if this dictionary had been on my shelf last summer when I did a big translation on helicopter canopies, all the helicopter-relevant terms would have been clearly labeled as such for my convenience. The first half of the dictionary is a decent DE>EN and EN>DE dictionary like most. The second half has both German and English monolingual sections which give detailed explanations of individual terms. We can't all be aerospace engineers, and this is very useful to help me understand some of the concepts. If a term listed in the first half of the book has a definition in the second half, this is indicated in the dictionary entry.

The dictionary isn't cheap as noted above, but it's a worthwhile investment if you do work in this area. It's even more worthwhile if you get it cheaper, which you can. I paid about 20 euros on eBay.de for it, and I see many copies of it there listed regularly on the German eBay site (eBay.de), most at a "Buy it now" price under 40 euros that includes shipping.

Here are the basic data on the book:

Aerospace-Wörterbuch / Aerospace Dictionary
ISBN 10: 3613021943
ISBN 13: 9783613021945
Year published: 2002 by Motorbuch Verlag
Hardcover, 1 volume
555 pages
Weight: 1.224 kg
Languages: English, German

My favorite legal dictionaries (DE<>EN)

Once in a while in a relationship, it's nice to check and see if both partners are still on the same wavelength. That's important I think both in business and in private life. So I wandered into the next office and asked the love of my life what the "best" German/English dictionaries in our library are (from the standpoint of real usefulness for our work). Without hesitation she named "Dietl/Lorenz" as #1. It seems that she and I are still in tune with one another, at least as far as dictionaries are concerned :-) This set of dictionaries is used frequently when we translate contracts, patents or other material of a legal nature. In fact, I usually find these volumes more useful than a specialist patent dictionary like Uexküll, which has some questionable English entries (at least from an American perspective). There are, of course, other legal and commercial dictionaries out there, some of which we have, other merely the objects of lust but not in the current budget, and plenty with which I wouldn't do more than start the barbecue.

Please note that new versions have been released in recent years; DE>EN in 2005 and EN>DE in 2009. A lot of the copies in circulation are older editions.

The basic data for these great references are as follows:

Dictionary of Legal, Commercial and Political Terms (Volume I, English to German)
(Wörterbuch für Recht, Wirtschaft und Politik, Bd.1, Englisch-Deutsch)

# Hardcover: 943 pages
# Publisher: C.H. Beck Verlag; Edition: 6., completely revised (January 2009)
# Languages: English to German
# ISBN-10: 3406441122
# ISBN-13: 978-3406441127
# Size: 25.6 x 17.7 x 5.7 cm

Dictionary of Legal, Commercial and Political Terms (Volume II, German-English)
(Wörterbuch für Recht, Wirtschaft und Politik 2. Deutsch - Englisch: Einschließlich der Besonderheiten des amerikanischen Sprachgebrauchs. Mit erläuternden und rechtsvergleichenden Kommentaren: Band 2)

# Hardcover: 899 Seiten
# Publisher: Beck Juristischer Verlag; Edition: 5. A. (22 June 2005)
# Langiage: German to English
# ISBN-10: 3406480675
# ISBN-13: 978-3406480676
# Size: 25.6 x 17.8 x 5.6 cm

First-rate dictionary for logistics (DE-EN)

I'm not a logistics expert, nor do I actively seek translations in this area. But logistics is often an important part of various projects, and I have a good friend working for a freight forwarding company who has sought my assistance for various projects over the past decade, so the field is not entirely unfamiliar to me. I bought this dictionary when it first appeared to enable me to help my friend polish his CV and cover letters when he was between jobs, and it has proven very valuable since then on projects such as quotations for shipping, manuals for special lifting equipment for military tanks, shipping and handling instructions and more. We also own and use the companion volume (EN>DE), which is useful when editing some of the crazy English my friend and his colleagues in various countries produce. When I have my doubts that an English term used is legitimate, I have a quick look i the EN>DE volume and I'm often surprised. Logistics terminology can be pretty nuts. Even with a great dictionary like this, it's good to know someone in the field who can tell you whether your apparently plausible translation really reflects usual usage.

When I looked on Amazon.com, I was quite surprised to see that the dictionary was no longer available through Amazon, though a number of vendors sell it via links there, starting at about $88. However, Amazon.de has plenty of copies listed at 64 euros and links to other vendors selling it new starting at 55 euros. I bought my copy ages ago for 60 euros and a week later found another on eBay that I grabbed for 10 euros and gave to my friend as a birthday present. It's worth the full price.

A customer review on Amazon.de stated:
Don't let the unprofessional design of the cover fool you - this is the most comprehensive dictionary and the best currently available on the market for the field of logistics. Its sole disadvantage is that, because every term only vaguely related to logistics is listed, the book is relatively thick, heavy and bulky.

I disagree with the comment on bulkiness - the volumes are no bigger than most of the good standard dictionaries in my library, and quite a lot smaller and lighter than many. It won't fit in your back pocket, but except for my favorite welding dictionary, I can't think of a worthwhile reference that will.

Basic data for the dictionary:

* Hardcover: 803 pages
* Publisher: Cornelsen Lehrbuch (January 2001)
* Language: German & English
* ISBN-10: 3464494365
* ISBN-13: 978-3464494363
* Dimensions: 23.3 x 17 x 3.7 cm

This one is definitely worth buying new or putting on the eBay watch list!

ES-DE-EN-IT-FR dictionary for art conservation and restoration

A few years ago we were asked to do an interesting translation for a small local museum in Germany which was applying to the Getty Museum for funding for some restoration projects. It wasn't an area that I was deeply familiar with, but I've haunted museums all my life, and I was particularly fond of the artist whose work was the subject of the project, so we took the job on with great anticipation. However, it quickly became apparent that ordinary reference resources and information available on the Internet were deeply inadequate for the task ahead. The chemical side of the text wasn't an issue, but the special vocabulary of the world of art conservation/restoration was not easy to discover.

Fortunately I had a few connections. My favorite professor from college days, a specialist for organic chemistry, was a scientific advisor to the Getty Museum who helped to establish its conservation institute after his retirement in the 1980's. I contacted him to ask if he could question his acquaintances at the Getty and find out if they had terminology resources available. They recommended the Diccionario Tecnico Akal De Conservacion Y Restauracion De Bienes Culturales: Espanol-aleman-ingles-italiano-frances, which was fairly new at the time and not so easy to get. We managed to acquire a copy, which helped us enormously in the project. In the meantime I can find the dictionary at a reasonable price on Amazon. Don't let the Spanish title scare you off; it's perfectly easy to use for persons competent in German, French, Italian or English as well.

Here are the basic data for the reference work:

# Hardcover: 1128 pages
# Publisher: Akal Ediciones Sa (August 22, 2006)
# Language: Spanish
# ISBN-10: 8446012278
# ISBN-13: 978-8446012276
# Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.6 x 2.4 inches (23.9 x 16,8 x 6.1 cm)
# Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds (1.9 kg)

Old gold from the GDR

Throughout the early and mid-80s I spent a lot of time on the "wrong" side of the Berlin Wall, where despite the best efforts of certain elements to complicate my life, more often than not I met the "right" kind of people. Today I live in the former East Germany, in a small town near Berlin, where I am in most respects happier than in any other place I have lived before. One of the things which I always found notable in the GDR was its standards of education; my friends and family in the "old" federal states may cling to their prejudices, but I note that many "impossible" things from the east such as 12 years to complete pre-university education are now the cornerstones for reform. And the west has a looooooong way to go to catch up on child care!
My first trips to East Berlin were to buy books, usually technical dictionaries for German, English and Russian. As a poor student living off a small allowance I found that ten marks for a high quality Russian/English dictionary at Das Internationale Buch was a lot friendlier than 120 DM for the same book in Saarbrücken. The old days of the screwy command economy had plenty of low points surely, but the quality of literature and technical references was not among them. I'm much in awe of the reference works for forestry, agriculture, hunting, dog training, etc. translated from Czech and Slovak by my neighbor Oskar Kasperl, and the many ancient multilingual glossaries I've collected, which were produced in the 1970's and 1980's, will keep their honored places on my reference shelf. They are not perfect, and often they are outdated, but they cover subject areas which are often very difficult to find terminology resources for. From the publisher VEB Verlag Technik Berlin, some of the resources I am fortunate to have include

  • Technik-Wörterbuch Hydraulik/Pneumatik (hydraulics/pneumatics) in English, German, French, Russian, Spanish, Czech, Polish and Hungarian
  • Technik-Wörterbuch Spektroskopie/Spektralanalyse (spectroscopy / spectral analysis) in English, German, French, Russian, Spanish, Czech, Polish and Hungarian
  • Technik-Wörterbuch Technische Akustik (technical acoustics) in English, German, French, Russian, Spanish, Czech, Polish and Hungarian
  • Technik-Wörterbuch Vakuumphysik/Vakuumtechnology (vacuum physics and technology) in English, German, French and Russian
& alia

Most of these were collected from eBay.de for just a few euros or acquired inexpensively from used bookstores and street vendors. As older translators and engineers retire or pass on, the contents of their libraries become available, and it is worth panning these streams for gold nuggets like those I've found.

May 8, 2009

Amper Translation Service: high information density

I'm a sucker for blue, so even if I didn't like Carl Carter's site I would probably like it. The web site for his company, Amper Translation Service, represents an interesting approach to design and an attempt to pack a lot of information in a little space. The content is very good: Carl knows his business, does it well and is refreshingly articulate, and that is reflected in the way he presents his services on the site. But the need to scroll on most pages bothers me a bit; it gives me a bit of a claustrophobic feeling at times. The site might benefit from a more open design that ditches the scrolling field. And the use of frames - something I used to be very fond of for my own web site - has the disadvantage that one cannot bookmark pages of particular value for fast reference.

And there are a lot of good resources here. Links to dictionaries, articles and all kinds of other useful stuff. When I rummage around the site I keep discovering more useful links or other things that I wish I had known about earlier. That's one of the real highlights of the site and make it worth a leisurely browse. I love the calming colors and tasteful graphics, and I have returned to the site time and again in the year and a half or so that I've known Carl, because I find it useful and learn from it even if the navigation drives me a bit batty at times.

In my experience, this is also a highly professional small agency, the sort I prefer to work with. The company profile is similar to many other agency clients that I prefer: personal in approach, competent, scrupulously honest and concerned with adding real value in its role as an intermediary. There are only a few editors that I really respect for checking German to English translations and Carl is one of them. He's British, and my opinion (based on experience) of most British editors checking American texts is one that cannot be expressed in polite company, but he's a refreshing exception and has even taught me a thing or two about American grammar. Fancy that. In any case, our collaboration on patent abstracts has been a great pleasure. No compromise on quality and absolute, friendly courtesy is a combination that will score with me every time.

Mar 29, 2009

German/English hunting terminology

Since our Wire-haired Vizsla, Quodians Aristos, joined the family a bit over a year ago, I've developed a growing interest in hunting dogs and hunting. A Deutsch Drahthaar will most likely be joining Aristos in the household in the next few weeks or months, and later this year I'll start studying for my German hunting license. This isn't something I had anticipated doing before; hunting is not part of my family tradition, and I'm the sort who is more likely to try to save whales and hug trees. At the same time, I have seen the unfortunate effects of hunting bans from California to Berlin, where the efforts of well-meaning animal protection advocates lead to cougars munching small children and joggers and dangerous wild boar wandering around in city traffic.

The German approach to hunting licensure has a very healthy part of intelligent wildlife and habitat management in it. And dogs represent a vital part of the efforts to ensure a humane hunt as well as track animals injured on the roads, for example.

Because of my new interest, I've been doing a lot of reading of German texts on hunting and kynology. Despite being reasonably fluent in German, I have encountered a lot of new terms which I have to look up or ask others to explain. There are also some interesting translation projects under discussion which will require a good mastery of Waidmannssprache. So with that in mind, I've done a bit of research on possible online and offline terminology resources, which is listed below for the benefit of anyone with similar interests or needs.

Hardcopy dictionaries:

Elsevier's Dictionary of Nature and Hunting in English, French, Russian, German and Latin.

Elsevier's Dictionary of the World's Game and Wildlife in English, Latin, French, German, Dutch and Spanish With Equivalents in Afrikaans and Kiswahi.

Wörterbuch der Weidmannssprache für Jagd- und Sprachfreunde - A monolingual German book explaining hunters' terminology

Wörterbuch der Weidmannssprache - Another monolingual German book explaining hunters' terminology


Online glossaries:

Jagdwörterbuch - a nice little lookup tool that shows "normal" German, the English term and the special German hunting terminology.

Waidmanssprache - A monolingual German reference explaining hunters' language.

WebTerm hunting dog terms
- A fairly sophisticated taxonomy of terms in German and English. I think it uses MultiTerm Online, and it doesn't work very well with the Firefox, though all functions seem to be OK with Internet Explorer.

Jagd und Wild Wörterbuch - Sloppy but possibly useful. There are serious problems with the English spelling and capitalization in the octolingual glossary. The sorting function is nice. This looks like another one where Internet Explorer may be necessary; I looked at it in a Firefox tab too, and the scroll bar wasn't visible and sorting didn't work.

The other resources I found were too awful to list. If anyone else knows of good terminology resources for German in this area, I'd like to hear about them.

Jan 25, 2009

Compendium of Translation Software, 15th edition

The Compendium of Translation Software (15th edition) has just been released as a free PDF download. This 129 page reference aims to provide a comprehensive overview of basic data on computer-based tools for translation and the support of translation processes. It includes information on tools for machine translation, machine-assisted human translation, project management, word counting, invoicing and more.

Looking at the entries for software I use, I note that the information is not completely up to date. Current versions are wrong in some cases or supported formats are missing. However, it's a good place to start, and if you are looking for a tool with support for a particular language, this is a useful research tool.

Here are some typical entries:

Déjà Vu Version: X 7.5.303
Company: Atril Software
Category: Translator workstation; Translation memory system
Languages: any
Requirements: Pentium III 600 MHz; Windows98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/Vista; 256MB RAM
Input: Word 2.0 and higher, PowerPoint, ASCII, RTF, SGML, HTML, XML, RC, PageMaker, Interleaf, FrameMaker, JavaScript, QuarkXPress, VBScript, Adobe InDesign, BIF, EBU STL, GNU GetText
Feature: includes example-based machine translation techniques, supports TMX, integrates with CATALYST, and SDL Trados TM
Note: various editions: Editor, Standard, Professional, Workgroup
Price: € 490 (Standard), €990 (Professional), €2250 (first licence for Workgroup)
Source: http://www.atril.com

MemoQ Version: 3.0
Company: Kilgray
Category: translation workstation, translation memory
Note: compatible with TMX, TTX
Price: €450
Source: http://www.kilgray.com/

SDL Passolo Version: 2007
Company: SDL International
Category: Localization support tool
Languages: any
Requirements: PC 486; WindowsNT/2000/XP; 16MB RAM
Features: designed for software localization; Translation Simulator for checking for translation problems
Price: contact company
Source: http://www.passolo.com/en/home.htm; http://www.sdl.com/en/products/products-index/sdlpassolo.asp

Translation Office 3000 Version: 8
Company: Advanced International Translations
Category: Translation support tool
Note: accounting tool for freelance translators
Price: €159
Source: http://www.translation3000.com/translators.html

Nov 30, 2008

Training resources

Things at the Universität des Saarlandes have certainly changed since I was an exchange student there more than half a lifetime ago. At the time I was impressed by the wonderful liberal arts, language and archeology courses; now these have largely been gutted I'm told to make way for everything having to do with computers and technology. In 1981 the teaching in computer science there was so hopeless (and the cigarette smoke in the classroom so thick) that I gave up on those courses and learned to read Sumerian inscriptions instead.

Things might be different if I were a student there today. In the areas of language and translation technology, the university seems to be a real center of excellence. Part of the services it provides to the wider world is an excellent resource web site for instruction in translation, localization, language technology, project management and many other issues important to professional translators. This free material is useful not only to instructors but also to autodidacts. Check it out at: http://ecolotrain.uni-saarland.de/index.php?L=1. The material is available in four languages: English, German, French and Spanish.

Advice for DVX users working with Trados projects

There is a lot of information available in the discussion lists and online forums on how to use Déjà Vu X (or other tools) to do projects involving Trados uncleaned files. Yet the questions still come up frequently. (I wonder about some people's research skills, though language barriers do complicate matters in our international profession.) In the past I have put together a few summaries of Trados-related procedures to assist my colleagues or educate clients. These are currently being revised, expanded and collected in a larger opus on small-scale project management which I hope to complete sometime next year. In the meantime, here are links to the existing information for those who may need it and haven't found it elsewhere yet.

Handling Trados projects for MS Word and RTF files in Atril's Déjà Vu X

This instruction set shows one approach to translating DOC and RTF files when the client wants the work done in Trados but for technical or personal reasons one prefers to do it in DVX. Some common problems and possible solutions are also discussed.

Translating SDL Trados TTX Files in Déjà Vu X

This guideline describes how to translate the standard TagEditor format (TTX) using Déjà Vu.

Proofreading and editing Trados projects with Atril's Déjà Vu X

This five page overview shows how to use DVX to simplify the often onerous task of proofreading uncleaned Trados files.

Nov 26, 2008

German-English dictionaries for welding and soldering

I'm often asked to recommend German-English dictionaries for various subjects, since my partner and I are fanatical collectors of references in many areas. So from time to time I will discuss some of the references that have proven very useful in practical work and perhaps a few that haven't.

The Dictionary of Welding by G. R. Lohrmann is one of those bargains I found on eBay. I think it cost me three euros or so there. Amazon.com (the US site) wants $51 for the dictionary. I think I got a much better deal, but I've gotten so much use out of the dictionary in the four years I've had it that it would have been worth it to pay the full price. Which, by the way, is much less if ordered from the German Amazon.de site :-) The dictionary is small - my hand just about covers it - but in translation jobs involving welding equipment and procedures, it has come through for me most of the time. There are about 5000 terms in the German to English part and another 6000 in the English to German section without a lot of filler. The cover, by the way, is not hardback, despite what the American Amazon link says - it's vinyl. All the better for sticking the thing in your pocket if you want to take it with you for a construction site interpreting job or some such thing. Published in 1998, the book is a little dated, however. According to the publisher's web site, a new edition is planned for release in September 2009. I definitely plan to get it and maybe put my old copy back on eBay.

The same publisher (DVS Media) also offers the Dictionary for Electronic Soldering by Mikhail Kudish- its availability seems to be better on the German Amazon siteor from the publisher, but I find this dictionary less valuable. Its production values are much worse - it is just a long typewritten vocabulary list in alphabetical order, the quality of the binding (paperback) is worse and the material is already 18 years old. It's probably due for an update or at least a serious DTP facelift. Still, if you need a German-English soldering terminology, this is probably it. General engineering/technical dictionaries will have the basic terms, but probably not as much specialist detail as you'll find in this reference.

Nov 25, 2008

How To Reduce Your Localization Cost by Up To 40%: 30-minute Speed Primer For Translation Buyers

This is another little masterpiece from Robert Kloiber at Academy Translations in Australia.

The guide is 16 pages long, and like the other one (the guide to technical writing for translation), it is well-written and easy to understand for persons of any level of technical sophistication. It is a superb overview and learning tool for end customers, agencies and translators on how to approach the process of localization and what one's expectations should be. There are a few gaps in the current version - for me most notably the no mention of test scripts for reviewers to follow when checking an interface (as opposed to automated test scripts) and nothing about virtual machines as a testing environment - but all the information presented is spot on for establishing effective, efficient localization procedures and saving time and money. Translators who are considering getting into localization or localization consulting should have a careful look at this. (I won't get into the marketing issues involved in this - that's another can of worms.)

Robert tells me that he has other useful guides, which will be released "on a drip feed" on his blog (which is a work in progress at the moment). If they are of this quality, they are worth watching for!

Nov 24, 2008

How To Write For Translation: The Essential Technical Writer's Guide

I discovered this 36-page PDF gem while visiting the relaunched web site of an Australian partner of mine, Academy Translations. It's available as a free download through a little request box in the sidebar.

The booklet is a nice, concise overview of important issues, not a detailed technical treatise on how to write. As such, it is also an excellent reference for others involved with documentation and translations projects... including translators.

Some of the advice to technical writers, such as the controlled use of language, is just as valuable to translators as it is to original authors. I long ago gave up hope that more than a small fraction of the people writing the technical documentation I translate will follow these principles. There are a few delightful exceptions, but very often I find five synonyms or more in a source document, which good technical style and clarity would require to be reduced to a single term in the English translation. Or the writers fail to understand the proper use of lists, with bullet lists used to explain key ordered sequences, followed by similar instructions in an ordinary paragraph, where the steps are no longer immediately recognized as distinct. Although I often use other methods, I think the style advice for writing documentation is very good.

The booklet also discusses design aspects, such as the use of authoring software, appropriate templates, text formatting and allowing for text expansion, and the importance of style guides and terminology glossaries are expressed. As far as style guides and glossaries are concerned, anyone who translates much is aware that too many clients do not provide such material, and that source documents are often very inconsistent in both respects. Taking this from a translator's perspective, I see it as an opportunity rather than a liability. Keep your own short style guide handy, and submit it for approval as part of a quotation. This is likely to have one of two results, both of them positive:
  • the client will accept your suggestions, probably be grateful for them, and you will look like a pro or
  • the client will provide the style guide information that should have been given to you in the first place.
In the case of a software manual where the names of buttons are written in various ways (Cancel, "Cancel", Cancel, Cancel, , Cancel, etc.) in the same document, I expect the first reaction.

When glossaries are not provided by clients, they have long been part of the "add-on business" or extra service I provide. Depending on the scope, budget and schedule of the project, a terminology project sometimes precedes the translation itself. At the very least, a glossary of terms I want the client to be aware of for purposes of review and possible discussion is submitted with the delivery of the translation. These lists often become the start of the previously neglected corporate terminology.

The guide goes on to give advice on collateral and marketing material, including tips for DTP programs used to produce such material.

Writing online help is covered, with similar issues to conventional documentation (style guides and terminology).

Web site translation issues and tools are presented, and the final sections (which are much too short) cover brand issues and what to do when thnigs go wrong.

The guide is certainly worth its price and more. I found it a refreshing read in exactly the sort of clear, simple style it encourages. Most importantly, it got me to thinking again about what I do right in my work and where my attention should be focused for improvement.

Nov 21, 2008

Microsoft Terminology Translations

Since the disappearance of Microsoft's TM material from the FTP site a few years ago, a lot of us who translate material involving Windows terminology have been frustrated. The Microsoft Language Portal is, to me at least, a very inadequate substitute. Well, finally - following hints on a British translation blog - I managed to find a somewhat better replacement: the Microsoft Terminology Translations list. This is by no means as good as the old material, which was divided up according to product, so one could be reasonably sure of the scope of a term or phrase found. The current list offers no context whatsoever, so it is unclear whether a string applies to Windows Vista, XP or an older OS. Maybe the material available to MSDN subscribers has been updated to cover Vista now and covers this, but I presently have no access to an MSDN subscription, so I simply don't know.

After I downloaded the term list, it took me less than 5 minutes to get rid of the superfluous material and prepare the data for import into a TM or termbase. There are just under 11,000 complete pairs for German and English.

Nov 18, 2008

Saving a bundle on dictionaries

As anyone who has invested in new dictionaries for translation knows, the really good ones are seldom cheap. The leading references in fields like commercial or patent law, medicine, chemistry and physics often cost hundreds of dollars or euros. And despite the wealth of resources online, there are quite a few times when only a fool would deny the value of these "offline tools".

However, not only is it difficult for some translators to make the investment in building a substantial library - at least in the early stages of their careers - some valuable references are hard to find or can be quite expensive when acquired through specialist dealers in used books. When I looked for a certain volume on German-English watchmaking terminology a few years ago, most copies I found were well over USD 100; I got lucky that time and found a copy in excellent condition for about $25, but this will not always be the case.

The most valuable source of inexpensive or unusual dictionaries (both hardcopy and electronic) I have found so far is eBay. That may seem quite obvious, but I have been surprised to find that many colleagues have never looked there. (It can also be difficult to find interesting items by filtering out all the junk with the proper search terms and exclusions.)

The bargains can be superb. Just a few weeks after purchasing Cornelsen's logistics dictionary (Benz/Wessels) new for € 60, I got a new copy off eBay for € 10. Copies of the old standard "Wörterbuch der Industriellen Technik" (Ernst) that cost hundreds of DM can be picked up for less than I spend on lunch. One of the best dictionaries I have for industrial manufacturing and foundry technology cost me a whopping three euros. I could go on for pages listing the bargains I've found.

More important for me than mere price, however, is finding resources that have long disappeared from publication. Mathematics dictionaries that have not been improved on in 40 years, suddenly made available with the dissolution of a library or the disposal of a deceased translator's estate. Medical/technical dictionaries from the 1870's with terminology that is invaluable for translating documents from that period (which I have had to do for legal disputes). Even older dictionaries from the early 1800's that have great value for historical work. All of these available for what a current newspaper or magazine might cost me or just a little more.

It's important to check various eBay sites. For my language pair, I've found useful items on ebay.com, ebay.de and ebay.co.uk so far. Most of the good deals are found on the German site. One does occasionally encounter inconveniences with bids restricted to addresses in certain countries, but I change my address listing as necessary and if the seller won't be bothered with an international shipment, I have the books sent to friends or family who forward them.

German-English dictionary for environmental risk assessment and contaminated site investigation

While reading a discussion of the recent ATA conference, I saw a mention of a "new" environmental dictionary, Wörterbuch der Umweltrisikoprüfung und Altlastenerkundung (DE->EN, EN->DE) by George Lindemann. This was, of course, very interesting to me given that it's one of my favorite areas to translate and, despite the prevalence of Internet research in my work, I am a great believer in collecting as wide a range as possible of useful dictionaries in one's special subjects.

So I promptly made a "trip" to amazon.de and found the desired reference work. The price was reasonable - thirty euros - so I promptly ordered a copy. When it arrived a few days later, I was irritated to discover (from information on a postcard inserted in the book) that a hardbound version is available for just a few euros more (€ 38.50). The only edition available from Amazon was a paperback. The hardcopy version can be ordered from the publisher directly (Projekte-Verlag Cornelius GmbH).

Time will tell how good the dictionary is when I get down to real work with it; I don't refer to dictionaries often when translating for this subject. When I looked through the entries, they appeared well-organized, with an indication of the relevant domains. However, there do appear to be some gaps with regard to chemical terminology at least - a common synonym for dichloromethane (methylene chloride) was missing, and I suspect that will be the case for other, similar terminology. Not a problem for me - I'm a chemist, and I internalized several nomenclature systems ages ago, but someone with a different background may require additional references if such terminology is not familiar. (I have an opinion on whether these people should be doing chemical/environmental translations at all, but I'll keep that to myself....)

On the whole it looks like the € 30 was well spent; I expect to get at least as much value, probably more, out of this than a noted patent dictionary that set me back € 100 last year but fails to live up to its reputation.