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Target language recognition in CAT software?
Thread poster: jblosser
jblosser
jblosser  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 15:12
Italian to English
Aug 31, 2012

I am looking for a feature in CAT software (preferably SDL Trados Studio 2011 - SP2) that allows the user to automatically weed out text from Word source files which are already in the target language.

Allow me to explain more clearly.

I often receive files for translation which already contain text which has been partially translated into the target language, so unless I go through the source document and manually cut out all of that text (saving the resulting file as ... See more
I am looking for a feature in CAT software (preferably SDL Trados Studio 2011 - SP2) that allows the user to automatically weed out text from Word source files which are already in the target language.

Allow me to explain more clearly.

I often receive files for translation which already contain text which has been partially translated into the target language, so unless I go through the source document and manually cut out all of that text (saving the resulting file as a working file), when I finally open it in my CAT software I obviously don't have an accurate idea of how much work there really is left to do, since the project shows even the text which is already in the target language as untranslated.

Does anyone know of any feature in Trados (or another CAT tool) which actually recognizes the language (maybe taking information from the Word language formatting?) and can copy the source segments to target that are already formatted as the target language, marking them as "draft" or "translated"?

If not, can somebody on the Trados development team take this under consideration to implement? I can't imagine that I'm the only one who has come across this inconvenience - I'm just not that "special"! ▲ Collapse
 
wotswot
wotswot  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 21:12
Member (2011)
French to English
Do it in Word Sep 1, 2012

The short answer is do it in Word. Mark all text already in target language as hidden then make sure your CAT software's option 'Include hidden text' is not selected before importing. Most top-end applications have such an option (often under File types or something to that effect), so I'd be very surprised if Studio 2011 doesn't.

I often get such jobs. If they're small jobs, I do it myself manually. If they're large jobs, I ask the agency to do it (only fair really, since they're o... See more
The short answer is do it in Word. Mark all text already in target language as hidden then make sure your CAT software's option 'Include hidden text' is not selected before importing. Most top-end applications have such an option (often under File types or something to that effect), so I'd be very surprised if Studio 2011 doesn't.

I often get such jobs. If they're small jobs, I do it myself manually. If they're large jobs, I ask the agency to do it (only fair really, since they're only paying you to translate non-target-language text).

You may be able to automate the process in Word (using VBA) if the text in the target language - and only that - is correctly marked as such, but in my experience this is seldom the case. And anyway automating language recognition is fraught with difficulty, if you think about it. What about words that are the same in both languages? And what about quotations/terms in the target language that have to remain in the text (possibly followed by a translation or explanation thereof between brackets)? ▲ Collapse
 


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Target language recognition in CAT software?






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