How to spell-check your TRADOS translation memories

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 »  Articles Overview  »  Technology  »  CAT Tools  »  How to spell-check your TRADOS translation memories

How to spell-check your TRADOS translation memories

By Vito Smolej | Published  07/13/2005 | CAT Tools | Recommendation:RateSecARateSecARateSecARateSecARateSecI
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Quicklink: http://admin.proz.com/doc/468
Author:
Vito Smolej
Germany
English to Slovenian translator
Became a member: Dec 10, 2004.
 
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How to spell-check your TRADOS translation memories Elvids

Introduction

Translation memories are, next to our brains, our most important asset. It is crucial, then, that they are in good health and that they stay in good health. This means among other things that target segments do not contain spelling errors. Easier said than done: I have been using TRADOS now for long enough and the one and only way I found to do this job is to catch the errors in translated documents and then use the maintenance function in the Workbench for corrections. This of course is VERY frustrating: it is error prone and you are never sure you did everything and did it correctly. And above all, it is labor-intensive: after half an hour your brain turns sunny side up and the hair loss… – well, believe me, it's not due to hormones.

No need to protract the agony, I said, and spent some time with Word… Here's an straightforward method that involves nothing more than Word and of course the Workbench. The time you will spend with it will be 90% spell checking and 10% for the rest. And not vice versa anymore.

Algorithm

The algorithm is a pretty straightforward bootstrapping procedure: a two-language TM is equivalent to a translated, uncleaned Word file (i.e. containing all its source and target segments). Getting for source to target is easy – we can pretranslate, can't we - so, what one needs for starters is a Word file with nothing else but all the source segments that the TM contains! We proceed as follows:

1. Export your TM to a text file

2. Create a Word file from the exported text file

3. Use the Word macro below to create a file of source segments

4. Pre-translate the result of step 2 to get the target version of source segments

5. Spell-check the result of 3

6. Update the translation memory with the result of step 4

Word macro

If you are new to Word Basic, you may first have a look at some introductory text on how to handle VBA environment. You don't need to know how to program - just how to cut and paste the code below into a VBA environment and start the result. Here's the source:

Public Sub GetSourceSegments()  Public Sub GetSourceSegments() 
' change to the source language tag of your TM 
    Const SRCTAG = "US>" 
    Dim OtherDocument As Document 
    Dim ThisDocument As Document 
    Set ThisDocument = ActiveDocument 
    Set OtherDocument = Documents.Add(, , wdNewBlankDocument) 
    ThisDocument.Activate Selection.WholeStory 
    Selection.HomeKey 
    Dim rng As Range 
    Set rng = RangeFromTo(SRCTAG, ""<Seg") 
    If rng Is Nothing Then 
          MsgBox "source tag " & SRCTAG & " is missing in the text file" 
          Exit Sub 
    End If 
    Do 
        rng.Select 
        OtherDocument.Activate 
        Selection.TypeText rng.Text 
        ThisDocument.Activate 
        Selection.WholeStory 
        Selection.Start = rng.End 
        Set rng = RangeFromTo(SRCTAG, "<Seg") 
    Loop Until rng Is Nothing 
End Sub  
 
 
 
Private Function RangeFromTo(ByVal startstring$, ByVal endstring$) As Range 
    Dim rstart As Range, rend As Range 
    With Selection.Find 
        .Text = startstring 
        .Execute 
        Set rstart = ActiveDocument.Range(Selection.Start, Selection.End) 
    End With 
    If Selection Is Nothing Then 
        Set RangeFromTo = Nothing 
        Exit Function 
    End If 
    Selection.Start = rstart.End 
    With Selection.Find 
    .Text = "{Seg" 
    .Execute 
    Set rend = ActiveDocument.Range(Selection.Start, Selection.End) 
    End With 
    If rend = "" Then 
        Set RangeFromTo = Nothing 
    Else 
        Set RangeFromTo = ActiveDocument.Range(rstart.End, rend.Start) 
    End If 
End Function 

Conclusion

If your source segments have embedded formatting commands, for example:

Press <\cs6\f1\cf6\lang1024>Rock and Roll<\cs6\f1\cf6\lang1024> button to bring back Elvis.

…then some extension to the above code is necessary to get a clean version:

Press Rock and Roll button to bring back Elvis.

The pretranslation would then run without any hiccups. Still, I have not thought it all the way through – is this the one and the same segment for the WorkBench or is it two different segments?…

Some changes would be necessary also in case that a translation unit contains more than just the two (source and target) segments. Given the RangeFromTo primitive, however, it should not be too difficult to expand it to these cases as well. One last comment: I have a gut feeling it would be a very simple job in XLST. Well, as Moustache in Irma La Douce used to say :"But, that's another story".



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