| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | CAT tools and tags Thread poster: Eva Lens
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Eva Lens
Belgium
Local time: 20:58
English to Dutch
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Hello everyone,
I'm rather new to the world of CAT tools and its wide variety, and I was wondering whether some of you could give me their opinions on different CAT tools, and specifically how they deal with tags. Which tool is the best one for handling tags in general? Or for html or xml tags specifically? Which one is the most user-friendly? Which one saves you the most time? Which ones can check for you whether you haven't changed or deleted any tags?
Thanks in advan... See more Hello everyone,
I'm rather new to the world of CAT tools and its wide variety, and I was wondering whether some of you could give me their opinions on different CAT tools, and specifically how they deal with tags. Which tool is the best one for handling tags in general? Or for html or xml tags specifically? Which one is the most user-friendly? Which one saves you the most time? Which ones can check for you whether you haven't changed or deleted any tags?
Thanks in advance! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Natalie 
Poland
Local time: 20:58
Member (2002)
English to Russian
+ ...
Moderator of this forum SITE LOCALIZER
kindly check the existing threads in this forum: there is a number of discussions on this topic where you will find all information you need.
| | | | Eva Lens
Belgium
Local time: 20:58
English to Dutch
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Alright, thank you. I did try searching the forum, and found lots of threads about problems with tags and the solution to those problems, and threads about which tools people prefer in general. I couldn't find any where people gave their opinion on which tools deal with tags best, but I must be using the wrong search word combinations then. Back to the advanced search then, I guess.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 20:58
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Natalie wrote:
Kindly check the existing threads in this forum: there is a number of discussions on this topic where you will find all information you need.
Such as?
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Emma Goldsmith
Spain
Local time: 20:58
Member (2004)
Spanish to English
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Dear Eva,
Eva Lens wrote:
Or for html or xml tags specifically?
The other day, I had several *.html files to translate. I simply opened them in several tools just to compare filtering quality and tags. I ended up translating them in OmegaT for the sake of better "filtering".
Eva Lens wrote:
Which one is the most user-friendly?
Well, you cannot have everything at the same time or in the same tool. HTML and XML files require specific experience anyhow.
Kind regards,
Yasmin
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 20:58
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Some comments | Nov 20, 2012 |
Eva Lens wrote:
[What is your] opinions on different CAT tools, and specifically how they deal with tags ... for html or xml tags specifically?
Well, some tools generate their own tags, based on the formatting of the file, but from your question I assume you mean specifically formats that contain tags as part of the format itself, e.g. HTML or XML, is that right?
Most CAT tools will not allow you to touch any tag outside of translatable text (so-called "external") or will force your cursor to stay away from it, and the only tags you have to worry about are tags inside sentences (so-called "internal"). Some CAT tools won't even show you the external text (and in such tools you sometimes can't even see that it is text with tags).
For me, the biggest question with such a tool is how easy it is to place these tags. In OmegaT, you have to retype them manually (although OmegaT does shorten them for you). In most other tools, you can use a keyboard shortcut to select a tag and place it.
The next question is whether I can see what the tag is for. Some tools replace the tags with numbers, so you can't see (or can only see with extra steps) what the original tag was. In OmegaT, when translating HTML, you can't see the original tag, but you can guess what it was based on the letter assigned to it by OmegaT (e.g. "strong" is styled "s3" in OmegaT). In other tools, the "meaningful" tags are converted to formatting. In Trados 2009, all formatting tags are converted to WYSIWIG formatting. In Wordfast Pro, all tags are converted to numbers (which leads to many translation errors, as I see every day, since I often proofread TXML files).
Another question is whether the tool makes significant changes to the file. Some tools change the tags to something else that you may not want. Trados 2009 assumes that the "strong" and "em" tags in HTML is for bold and italics, so if you translate a file with those tags in it, they will be displayed as bold and italics in Trados, and when you create the translation, the "strong" and "em" tags will be gone, and you'll have "b" and "i" tags instead. OmegaT doesn't change the tags to something else. For strong and em specifically I happen to know that these tags are more valuable in SEO than ordinary bold and italics, so changing them would lower the client's opinion of you (even if you're not at fault).
Also, Trados 2009 writes all added HTML tags in uppercase, while leaving existing HTML tags in their original case. So if your source file is <p><b>hello</b>!</p>, then the translation (done in Trados 2009) will be <p><B>hello</B>!</p>. If your client validates your translation afterwards using a strict validator, he'll get errors messages.
On the other hand, translating something like <i><p>Hello</i>, Dolly</p> will be a lot easier in Trados 2009 than in OmegaT, because Trados automatically converts it to <i></i><p><I>Hello</I>, Dolly</p> before offering it for translation, whereas OmegaT makes no changes to the HTML file, and you end up with a lone closing tag in the editor, i.e. "Hello</i0>, Dolly".
I guess another question here is whether the tool allows me to add tags in the translation that are not present in the source text. For example, if a tool segments by sentence, and in my source text a word in the one sentence is bold, but in my translation I want a word in the next sentence to be bolded instead, can I make that word bold in the CAT tool in the sentence whose source text contains no bolding tag?
==
Added: Since I'm playing with HTML right now, in three tools (WFP, OmT and T2009), wondered what would happen to incorrectly nested tags. My test file contains:
<p><b>Hello, <i>Dolly</b>!</i></p>
* OmegaT simply displays the converted tags as-is: <b0>Hello, <i1>Dolly</b0>!</i1>
* WFP converts them to numbers, in a way that makes it rather impossible to see what is what: {ut1}Hello, {ut2}Dolly{ut3}! (the tag after the "!" is not present in the editor and therefore can't be moved to another position in the sentence)
* Trados displays it in WYSIWIG, but the odd thing is that when I translate it (not simply copy the source to the target field) with the exact same formatting, the output file contains this: <p><b>Hello, <I>Dolly</I>!</i></p> (yes, with an "i" at the end)
So in this case, OmegaT would have been the best tool (i.e. would have produced the best code), and WFP would have been the worst tool (making it impossible for the user to see what he's translating).
Samuel
[Edited at 2012-11-20 09:59 GMT]
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 20:58
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| HTML/XML tags versus formatting tags | Nov 20, 2012 |
While these threads give a nice overview of what the environments look like, they all relate to formatting tags, not HTML/XML tags.
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Eva Lens
Belgium
Local time: 20:58
English to Dutch
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Thanks everyone | Nov 20, 2012 |
Thanks for your input, everyone!
Emma, thanks very much for those links. That Wordfast thread especially is very interesting. I think you're probably right that whether or not the formatting is WYSIWYG is very important. Your info is most definitely helpful.
Yasmin, I will definitely check out OmegaT, thanks!
Samuel, I meant any tags, so html/xml tags but formatting tags as well. I will be doing some research on how different CAT tools ... See more Thanks for your input, everyone!
Emma, thanks very much for those links. That Wordfast thread especially is very interesting. I think you're probably right that whether or not the formatting is WYSIWYG is very important. Your info is most definitely helpful.
Yasmin, I will definitely check out OmegaT, thanks!
Samuel, I meant any tags, so html/xml tags but formatting tags as well. I will be doing some research on how different CAT tools handle tags and right now I'm mainly trying to find out which issues are worth looking into and which tools seem the most interesting to explore.
Samuel Murray wrote:
Most CAT tools will not allow you to touch any tag outside of translatable text (so-called "external") or will force your cursor to stay away from it, and the only tags you have to worry about are tags inside sentences (so-called "internal"). Some CAT tools won't even show you the external text (and in such tools you sometimes can't even see that it is text with tags).
It would be interesting to find out if those tools have an option to make those tags editable, e.g. to change the alt text for images in html.
Samuel Murray wrote:
Another question is whether the tool makes significant changes to the file. Some tools change the tags to something else that you may not want. Trados 2009 assumes that the "strong" and "em" tags in HTML is for bold and italics, so if you translate a file with those tags in it, they will be displayed as bold and italics in Trados, and when you create the translation, the "strong" and "em" tags will be gone, and you'll have "b" and "i" tags instead.
(...)
Also, Trados 2009 writes all added HTML tags in uppercase, while leaving existing HTML tags in their original case. So if your source file is hello!, then the translation (done in Trados 2009) will be hello!. If your client validates your translation afterwards using a strict validator, he'll get errors messages.
That's very interesting. And frustrating, of course. I will have to check out if Trados 2011 still has those issues.
Samuel Murray wrote:
I guess another question here is whether the tool allows me to add tags in the translation that are not present in the source text. For example, if a tool segments by sentence, and in my source text a word in the one sentence is bold, but in my translation I want a word in the next sentence to be bolded instead, can I make that word bold in the CAT tool in the sentence whose source text contains no bolding tag?
That is indeed an important question. I think that in Wordbee you can only do that in html files, and not in e.g. Word or Powerpoint files, but I will definitely look into this for some other tools.
Thank you! ▲ Collapse
| | | | | | | Only if you don't know what you're doing... I'd say | Nov 20, 2012 |
Hi,
There is quite a lot in this post so I tried to break down your comments as follows using this file:
 .
I also saved it here if anyone cares to use it to see how another tool renders this information.
This is represented in Studio like this (I hid the tar... See more Hi,
There is quite a lot in this post so I tried to break down your comments as follows using this file:
.
I also saved it here if anyone cares to use it to see how another tool renders this information.
This is represented in Studio like this (I hid the target column so you can also see the document structure information column on the right that also contains further explanatory information to help):
Samuel Murray wrote:
The next question is whether I can see what the tag is for. ... In other tools, the "meaningful" tags are converted to formatting. In Trados 2009, all formatting tags are converted to WYSIWIG formatting.
This is only true if you have not set the option to show the tags. Studio can show wysiwg with tags, unformatted with tags or wysiwyg and tags. In the screenshot you can see that the tags also show the content of the tags because in addition to the three options I just mentioned you can also set three different display options for the tags themselves.
Samuel Murray wrote:
Another question is whether the tool makes significant changes to the file. Some tools change the tags to something else that you may not want. Trados 2009 assumes that the "strong" and "em" tags in HTML is for bold and italics, so if you translate a file with those tags in it, they will be displayed as bold and italics in Trados, and when you create the translation, the "strong" and "em" tags will be gone, and you'll have "b" and "i" tags instead. OmegaT doesn't change the tags to something else. For strong and em specifically I happen to know that these tags are more valuable in SEO than ordinary bold and italics, so changing them would lower the client's opinion of you (even if you're not at fault).
This will only happen if you use the QuickInsert instead of using the tags that are in the file already. This probably happens in your case because because you didn't know that you can display the tags, nor did you know that you can use ctrl+comma to select the correct formatting for the tag even if you don't display them. So instead you introduced additional tags to apply these formats using the toolbar.
Samuel Murray wrote:
Also, Trados 2009 writes all added HTML tags in uppercase, while leaving existing HTML tags in their original case. So if your source file is <p><b>hello</b>!</p>, then the translation (done in Trados 2009) will be <p><B>hello</B>!</p>. If your client validates your translation afterwards using a strict validator, he'll get errors messages.
This is also incorrect... at least this does not happen when I use the tags from the source instead of adding new ones. There are many different ways to handle tags in Studio - http://goo.gl/e84H0 - that make it easy to insert them.
Samuel Murray wrote:
I guess another question here is whether the tool allows me to add tags in the translation that are not present in the source text. For example, if a tool segments by sentence, and in my source text a word in the one sentence is bold, but in my translation I want a word in the next sentence to be bolded instead, can I make that word bold in the CAT tool in the sentence whose source text contains no bolding tag?
Yes... Studio can do this for supported tags by using the QuickInsert toolbar as you have verified already.
Samuel Murray wrote:
Added: Since I'm playing with HTML right now, in three tools (WFP, OmT and T2009), wondered what would happen to incorrectly nested tags. My test file contains:
<p><b>Hello, <i>Dolly</b>!</i></p>
* OmegaT simply displays the converted tags as-is: <p><b>Hello, <i>Dolly</b>!</i></p>
* WFP converts them to numbers, in a way that makes it rather impossible to see what is what: {ut1}Hello, {ut2}Dolly{ut3}! (the tag after the "!" is not present in the editor and therefore can't be moved to another position in the sentence)
* Trados displays it in WYSIWIG, but the odd thing is that when I translate it (not simply copy the source to the target field) with the exact same formatting, the output file contains this: <p><b>Hello, <I>Dolly</I>!</i></p> (yes, with an "i" at the end)
So in this case, OmegaT would have been the best tool (i.e. would have produced the best code), and WFP would have been the worst tool (making it impossible for the user to see what he's translating).
I tested this with Studio 2011 and the result is exactly the same as the source. I don't get an "i" at the end, or the uppercase letters (as I didn't introduce new tags). Perhaps this was a feature of the way Studio 2009 handled incorrect html... I don't know. But Using ctrl+, to select first the <i> and then the </b> as they have been rendered in the image above worked perfectly.
Regards
Paul ▲ Collapse
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 20:58
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| I used default settings | Nov 20, 2012 |
SDL Support wrote:
There is quite a lot in this post so I tried to break down your comments...
Thanks. In my testing I used the default settings of each program. I assumed that the program would know how to handle the file if I open the file in it. I understand that many tools allow the user to customise file handling.
This probably happens in your case because because you didn't know that you can display the tags...
Yes, I just opened the file in Trados 2009 and used whatever was available on-screen to type the translation. There were no visible tags, but there was visible formatting in WYSIWIG, and there was a WYSIWIG formatting toolbar, so that's what I used. I did not take into account additional options that the program may provide.
In my humble personal opinion, if WYSIWIG is not the best way to deal with a certain file type, then there should be some kind of indication to the user, not assuming that the user would have read the manual before trying to open the new file type.
==
Added: Oh, and my HTML test file was in street HTML, not W3C HTML.
[Edited at 2012-11-20 19:14 GMT]
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 20:58
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Eva Lens wrote:
Samuel, I meant any tags, so html/xml tags but formatting tags as well.
Aah, well I think then it should be mentioned that not all CAT tools use tags for formatting (or: not all CAT tools handle formatting exclusively using tags). Wordfast Classic and Metatexis are the only active tools that do not use tags for formatting at all (though you're limited to the MS Word format in those tools). MemoQ and Trados 2009/11 use tags only for formatting that it can't display in WYSIWIG format. Tools like Wordfast Pro and OmegaT use tags for all formattting.
I will be doing some research on how different CAT tools handle tags...
Why is that important to you? What would it matter how the tool handles tags?
| | | | | Displaying the tags that are always there | Nov 20, 2012 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
... Trados 2009/11 use tags only for formatting that it can't display in WYSIWIG format. ...
This is incorrect Samuel. Studio uses tags for all the formatting. You just didn't show them, that's all. In fact even if you don't show them you can still place them correctly if you use the tag handling placements instead of introducing new tags through the quick insert toolbar.
For example... this is with tags:
This is without:
It's the same file in the same view. I just turn on or off the tag display for formatting using Ctrl+Shift+h or this icon on the toolbar:
I know what you mean, but it's misleading.
Regards
Paul
| | | | | Default settings | Nov 20, 2012 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
Thanks. In my testing I used the default settings of each program. I assumed that the program would know how to handle the file if I open the file in it. I understand that many tools allow the user to customise file handling.
Hi Samuel,
So did I. The only change I made was to display the tags. You can do this in the Editor when you work. I also just opened the file... no special filetype settings here.
Samuel Murray wrote:
Yes, I just opened the file in Trados 2009 and used whatever was available on-screen to type the translation. There were no visible tags, but there was visible formatting in WYSIWIG, and there was a WYSIWIG formatting toolbar, so that's what I used. I did not take into account additional options that the program may provide.
The toolbar you mistakenly call a wysiwyg toolbar is actually the QuickInsert toolbar. This is inserting tags or placeables for formatting or special characters. The wysiwyg Studio applies is based on recognition of the actual tags from the source file and these tags are there.
Samuel Murray wrote:
Added: Oh, and my HTML test file was in street HTML, not W3C HTML.
Oh... street html..! I tried to use what you did and then added some things to reflect some of the conversation going on. If you have a more comprehensive example of "street html" I'd be happy to try it out of interest.
Regards
Paul
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