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Need support - to boost up my sagging moral
Thread poster: Vito Smolej
Vito Smolej
Vito Smolej
Germany
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English to Slovenian
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Jul 5, 2006

a source segment in a TagEditor



PS: my street guerilla tactic to counter this insult: separate text (to the left) and tags (to the right).

[Edited at 2006-07-05 19:42]

PPS: on the second thought, plain text without any tags - as a roadblock so that they will go back and correct this BS in the source first.

[Edited at 2006-07-05 20:33]


 
Yolande Haneder (X)
Yolande Haneder (X)  Identity Verified
Local time: 16:38
German to French
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funny thing is... Jul 5, 2006

How do you split the translation between the tags if your translation does not have the same amount of letters?

 
Vito Smolej
Vito Smolej
Germany
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"How do you split the translation..." Jul 5, 2006

I'll check with the agency ;\

 
Astrid Elke Witte
Astrid Elke Witte  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 16:38
Member (2002)
German to English
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That's a beauty Jul 5, 2006

Super, Vito, now I know why I don't like Tag Editor. I am allergic to it, anyhow. I have already had the problem of just one or two words between tags, and trying to split up the translation between the tags.

Have fun with your assignment!

Astrid


 
Ralf Lemster
Ralf Lemster  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 16:38
English to German
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What about the source file? Jul 5, 2006

Hi Vito and all,
A real beauty...

PPS: on the second thought, plain text without any tags - as a roadblock so that they will go back and correct this BS in the source first.

...which appears to be the source of the problem. TagEditor can only include a tag where there is one in the source, after all. (Out of interest - what type of source file are we looking at? Taking a guess: DTP?)

Cheers, Ralf


 
Philippe Etienne
Philippe Etienne  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 16:38
Member
English to French
Lemme guess... Jul 5, 2006

Abstract art?
Could be even more gorgeous with tags expanded!
The source editor is definitely THE king of formatting...
I sympathize.
Regards,
Philippe


 
Antoní­n Otáhal
Antoní­n Otáhal
Local time: 16:38
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English to Czech
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Do you have a source file? Jul 5, 2006

It looks as a typical result of a pdf-to-word conversion by an OCR program. If I were you, I would have a look at what the tags actually are (I always have the full text of tags in Trados to see hwat is going on); and then I would probably delete them (they usually say that the kerning etc. is just a bit different inside of words, and bear no useful info whatsoever). In my beloved Transit, I can delete tags by type (say, run find and replace the tag with an empty string, but to play it safe it ... See more
It looks as a typical result of a pdf-to-word conversion by an OCR program. If I were you, I would have a look at what the tags actually are (I always have the full text of tags in Trados to see hwat is going on); and then I would probably delete them (they usually say that the kerning etc. is just a bit different inside of words, and bear no useful info whatsoever). In my beloved Transit, I can delete tags by type (say, run find and replace the tag with an empty string, but to play it safe it is better to run it manually to see each instance before actually deleting it). Cannot recall is you can do it in Trados...

Antonin
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Viktoria Gimbe
Viktoria Gimbe  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 10:38
English to French
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Looks like FrameMaker Jul 5, 2006

I've had stuff like this before - although not to this extent.

By the way, usually, the problem is not TagEditor - it merely displays the tags already in the document. Looks like FrameMaker.

What I do in such cases is delete lots of tags. Often, there are tags that instruct the program that the letters between them are bold. But they put the friggin' tags around EACH LETTER instead of just around the word. Lots of useless tags most of the time. They are usually safe to
... See more
I've had stuff like this before - although not to this extent.

By the way, usually, the problem is not TagEditor - it merely displays the tags already in the document. Looks like FrameMaker.

What I do in such cases is delete lots of tags. Often, there are tags that instruct the program that the letters between them are bold. But they put the friggin' tags around EACH LETTER instead of just around the word. Lots of useless tags most of the time. They are usually safe to delete.

So, to those who wonder what you do if the number of letters/words in the source is not the same as in the target, don't you worry. Expand those tags and if they're all the same, chances are you can safely delete them - just make sure there's one left before and after the sentence/word.

Vito, how about making a neat wallpaper with the sceen cap?:D:D

[Edited at 2006-07-06 03:18]
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heikeb
heikeb  Identity Verified
English to German
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My deepest sympathies! Jul 6, 2006

But I'm afraid I still can't stop laughing...

I've seen quite a bit of those in some of my texts, but definitely nothing like this! This is a genuine beauty.

I would try and return the file together with a screenshot to the sender (i.e. the author of this document) and ask them to clean it up or ask for a horrendous rate to make up for all the time you need to spend cleaning it up!

... See more
But I'm afraid I still can't stop laughing...

I've seen quite a bit of those in some of my texts, but definitely nothing like this! This is a genuine beauty.

I would try and return the file together with a screenshot to the sender (i.e. the author of this document) and ask them to clean it up or ask for a horrendous rate to make up for all the time you need to spend cleaning it up!

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Vito Smolej
Vito Smolej
Germany
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Background information Jul 6, 2006

I did the original some time ago and then they "improved"on it. Evidently they decided for a "learning-by-doing" course. I'd say it took a lot of sweat to do it...

The text - and TagEditor & Co, suffering under it - brings up that graphitti from Pompei: Oh Wall, I admire you for not crumbling under all this BS.

Re "I always knew that TagEditor sux"-comments: that would mean shooting the messenger because of the message. And, yes, I am pretty sure it's FrameMaker, and
... See more
I did the original some time ago and then they "improved"on it. Evidently they decided for a "learning-by-doing" course. I'd say it took a lot of sweat to do it...

The text - and TagEditor & Co, suffering under it - brings up that graphitti from Pompei: Oh Wall, I admire you for not crumbling under all this BS.

Re "I always knew that TagEditor sux"-comments: that would mean shooting the messenger because of the message. And, yes, I am pretty sure it's FrameMaker, and yes it's every single character bolded and put in Helvetica (and of course unbolded and "Un-Swissed", every single one of them), with the result that segments are 2000+ characters long (!!). I sent the wallpaper above to the agency asking them to have the source cleaned and then I will look at the offending (four) segments again.

But, you must admit, there's ethereal beauty surrounding the segment above. Looks just like one of those clay tablets in Berlin museum with Gilgamesh epos scribbled on it. By Marx brothers?

[Edited at 2006-07-06 06:50]
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Thomas Pfann
Thomas Pfann  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:38
Member (2006)
English to German
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From a PJM's perspective Jul 6, 2006

From some* clients/project managers I would expect an answer like the following to your problem:

"Please make sure not to delete any tags, they are quite important (because otherwise there will be an error message). In your translation just try and use the same amount of letters as in the source [can't be that difficult, can it?]. Thank you."

Have fun!


__________________
* Gladl
... See more
From some* clients/project managers I would expect an answer like the following to your problem:

"Please make sure not to delete any tags, they are quite important (because otherwise there will be an error message). In your translation just try and use the same amount of letters as in the source [can't be that difficult, can it?]. Thank you."

Have fun!


__________________
* Gladly, only from 'some'. Luckily, most do have some some understanding for problems like these.

[Edited at 2006-07-06 08:20]
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Vito Smolej
Vito Smolej
Germany
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English to Slovenian
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on "Gladly, only for 'some'." Jul 6, 2006

Here's the answer from the agent:

Dear Vito,

thanks for quick translation. Those segments are ok like they are.

King regards


in any case no signs of cognitive dissonance. I feel relieved.





[Edited at 2006-07-06 08:53]


 
Ivette Camargo López
Ivette Camargo López  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 16:38
English to Spanish
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Wordcount Jul 6, 2006

Hola Vito,

I had one of those beauties not too long ago.

I complained and the agency resent me another file.

The original file was from Word, so they sent it instead of the faulty .ttx file, but mainly because they also realized there was a huge wordcount difference caused by the faulty segmented .ttx file (I confirmed this by analysing both).

So I wonder if your agency noticed if there was any wordcount difference...

Anyways, I a
... See more
Hola Vito,

I had one of those beauties not too long ago.

I complained and the agency resent me another file.

The original file was from Word, so they sent it instead of the faulty .ttx file, but mainly because they also realized there was a huge wordcount difference caused by the faulty segmented .ttx file (I confirmed this by analysing both).

So I wonder if your agency noticed if there was any wordcount difference...

Anyways, I am glad you had a happy ending.

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tectranslate ITS GmbH
tectranslate ITS GmbH
Local time: 16:38
German
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InDesign Jul 6, 2006

Vito Smolej wrote:

And, yes, I am pretty sure it's FrameMaker, and yes it's every single character bolded and put in Helvetica (and of course unbolded and "Un-Swissed", every single one of them), with the result that segments are 2000+ characters long (!!).

I would bet that it's actually InDesign - that has got to be the most verbose, or "chatty" program in terms of formatting marks that I have ever seen. (Thankfully, with the new .inx translation process, this tag redundancy seems to be reduced compared to the StoryCollector method.)

And you're right - it's the source file that is fraught with this problem, not the CAT tool. Then again, a clever software developer could make it so that the CAT tool's import filter strips away all the redundant stuff. Shouldn't be too hard.

B


 
Vito Smolej
Vito Smolej
Germany
Local time: 16:38
Member (2004)
English to Slovenian
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Given the focus of the joke... Jul 6, 2006

who cares, whether it's InDesign or FrameMaker some person up the feed chain doesnt know how to use.

re stripping the tags (a different story), I can just quote Humpty Dumpty: All the king's horses and all the king's men wont be able to put INX file together again.

Believe me, I went through this hell - want to hear the story? (g) - I am collaborating on help for Slovenian OpenOffice and a sizeable portion of translated stuff was delivered not in the native Op
... See more
who cares, whether it's InDesign or FrameMaker some person up the feed chain doesnt know how to use.

re stripping the tags (a different story), I can just quote Humpty Dumpty: All the king's horses and all the king's men wont be able to put INX file together again.

Believe me, I went through this hell - want to hear the story? (g) - I am collaborating on help for Slovenian OpenOffice and a sizeable portion of translated stuff was delivered not in the native OpenText format of OpenOffice (which involves some very tricky variants of HMTL) , but as a uncleaned trados quasi- XML something - with nicely changed tags etc, but no DTD delivered. And the lady who ran the students doing it all (must have been about 30k segments) took maternity leave right after "finishing" ...

It was a major software project (learned a lot on the way too) to put this Humpty Dumpty somehow together again. But then, there's may a bunch of students now in Ljubljana, who had some first-hand experience with TRADOS...

Morale in any case:"Keep your hairy hands off MY tags...."

[Edited at 2006-07-06 13:46]
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