Use Trados TagEditor to edit format paintings on itd files

It is still difficult to edit format paintings on itd files for many translators and editors. It is pretty sad that it's very hard to change the order of format painting on itd files with SDLX eidtor. Using TRADOS TagEditor, however, you can edit format painting as you want. To do this, I normally take following steps:

1. After editing, I check spelling and consistency issues on the file and, save the file after make sure everything's fine.
2. Click "Exchange" on the SDLX control pad. The Exchange dialog box is popped up.
3. Choose converting SDLX files to TRADOS TagEditor files on the drop-down list.
4. Drag the itd file that you want to convert to the TagEditor file to the window and click OK.
5. Now you can see the ttx file on the same location and all format paintings on the itd file is displayed as tags on the ttx file, so you can edit these tags and change orders of these tags. Save the file once every thing's fixed.
6. Chose harvest translations from ttx file to itd files on the drop-down list on the Exchange dialog box. Drag the fixed and saved ttx file to the window and then click OK.
7. Now you can see the format painting order has changed on the itd file as you want.

This might be complicated to use for some people but it's the most available measure to use for now.

The World Is Flat

"The World Is Flat" I finally finished this book. It took me about almost 4 years to finish this book after I bought it.

Basically this book is for Americans. The author, Thomas L, Friedman, tries to demonstrate that world is flattening and show readers, especially Americans, the way how to prepare the future in the context of 11/9 that is represented as a evidence of creating a better world that gives more opportunities of successful and valuable lives to more people around world.

 One question followed me after I closed the book. "Is the world still flattening?" and "Is it GOOD?"
 
What do you think about it?

How to start the day

Tones of emils in your outlook inbox are waiting for you and your boss orders you to do something right now. You just need a couple of minutes to take a break and organize all the things to do today. The one thing I use is to make a "to do list" on the little piece of paper and delete one by one as I complete. I just hope the speed I complete each tasks would be faster than speed the new task is added on the list.

Yes, it's totally conveyer belt job in the office. The only difference is you are working with the desktop PC instead of the real conveyer belt.

IBM Translation Manager

If you have ever used IBM Translation Manager at least once, you would not understand why IBM keeps using this complex tool for some of their localization works.

I proceeded two IBM projects these days and I am not good at this application yet. I know I will get used it some day later but I strongly believe if someone use it for any translation project, it will freak him/her out.

Please let me know any advantage of using IBM Translation Manager if there is any one knows it.

Another feedhack? Dont' worry. Just say "Thank you."

The client’s feedback generally provides correct information about entire context of the translation contents. Normally staffs on any progress of localization project respect, accept and try to implement client's feedbacks to generate better quality works and ensure the improved work for the next project. But sometimes there are some inconsistent feedbacks from the same client for same issues among similar projects. Any project manager, linguist or translator might be frustrated on this situation and confused about the issues. In this case, some project managers, linguists or translators can be trying to discuss the inconsistency of feedback and it can be sometimes a little bit aggressive. And we know this doesn't look good.
To avoid this uncomfortable conversation between the vendor and client about feedback issues, I think of following rules to comply with:

1. Do not be nervous to get client's feedback on your projects. Giving and receiving feedbacks with your client is a very natural and necessary process to improve the final quality of the localized contents.

2. Do not express that you are uncomfortable with the inconsistency of the client's feedback. All you have to do is asking again about the issue comparing with the previous feedback in the similar case. It gives the client’s that you are properly confirming and following the client's feedbacks, and I know actually you are.

3. Do not turn on your client in anger even if you don't agree with the client's evaluation on your work if you are not crazy. Tell your clients that you respect the client's decision and then politely suggest your alternative options.

4. Sometimes clients are not satisfied with your work and ask you the reason of the result. Every unsatisfied works has always its reason such as lack of appropriate resources, short turnaround schedule or immature project management, or sometimes your client don't even understand the quality of the work and just see the change logs from the out-put contents made by their in-house reviewers or third part reviewers. Whatever, you should be honest to your client and tell them what you think of as a reason of the unsatisfaction and why it happened. All the resolutions start from here.

All these rules come from one thought: be honest and try to keep communicating with your client. We know we and our clients are not 100% prefect, and so they do.

A little tip for converting TMX to TXT for Trados TM using SDLX

Sometimes I receive TMX files as TM or glossary files. For more convenient use of TMX files, we want to convert it to .txt or .csv files. Here is a little tip to convert TMX file to Trados txt file using SDLX.

First you need SDLX installed on your system and TMX file to covert.

1. Launch SDLX and click Maintain on the SDLX launch pad.

2. Create new SDLX translation memory which is currently empty.

3. Import TMX file to this empty SDLX translation memory.

4. Now the SDLX TM has all the translation information of TMX file. Export all these information to Trados txt format.

See? It's a piece of cake!

Google Translator Toolkit: conclusion

I felt that it is very easy to learn and use Google Translator Tookit, so you might  master this tool by yourselves. I would say, however, the most attractive advantage of Google Translator Toolkit is that it's free to use all the basic fuctions such as TM, glossaries, co-work by sharing the translation with other users and MT technology. I know there are still many obsticles that Google should handle to improve the tool's feature and complete the product to make users want to pay there money for more use. MT translation is still far from acceptable quality of translation and the tool does not supprot many file formats that are widely used accross the industry and it is not providing convenient bilangual format of translation file.