Which tool for this specific requirement?
Thread poster: SierraMadre
SierraMadre
SierraMadre  Identity Verified
Local time: 08:17
English to Spanish
+ ...
Apr 28, 2018

For all those of you who have worked with a variety of (low-cost) CAT tools, which would you recommend for "processing" MS Office docs starting with a TM in a non proprietary format?

For example, I have the translation of all the segments, I just need a tool to create the target document from the TM.


 
Hans Lenting
Hans Lenting
Netherlands
Member (2006)
German to Dutch
Valid TMX? Apr 28, 2018

SierraMadre wrote:

For all those of you who have worked with a variety of (low-cost) CAT tools, which would you recommend for "processing" MS Office docs starting with a TM in a non proprietary format?


Do you know, in which tool this TM has been created? Is it valid TMX (see: https://www.maxprograms.com/products/tmxvalidator.html )? Or is it tab-delimited? Or ... ?

A good choice for a free CAT tool that works directly in MS Word is Felix the CAT tool (http://felix-cat.com/cat/ ).


 
SierraMadre
SierraMadre  Identity Verified
Local time: 08:17
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Yes, valid TMX Apr 28, 2018

Thanks Hans.

I did read a little about Felix recently, but was a bit concerned to see the author had turned it over to open source for health reasons. Open source is great, obviously, as long as there is a sufficiently large interested developer community to keep it up to date.

Anyway, on your recommendation, I will certainly give it a try.


 
DZiW (X)
DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
+ ...
occasionally Apr 28, 2018

If not browser-based (online) Wordfast Anywhere (Freetm.com) or java-based OmegaT (mind .DOC type), I often do office documents in the native Word environment via a free WordFisher (by Környei Tibor), last free Wordfast 3.35x (2002 yay!), old Metatexis (by Hermann Bruns) or Anaphraseus from OpenOffice.

 
SierraMadre
SierraMadre  Identity Verified
Local time: 08:17
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
WordFisher? Apr 29, 2018

DZiW wrote:

If not browser-based (online) Wordfast Anywhere (Freetm.com) or java-based OmegaT (mind .DOC type), I often do office documents in the native Word environment via a free WordFisher (by Környei Tibor), last free Wordfast 3.35x (2002 yay!), old Metatexis (by Hermann Bruns) or Anaphraseus from OpenOffice.


Many thanks for that list, DZiW

I have tried Wordfast Anywhere but have been disappointed by the results in the format of the target document. I don't know if this is due to a problem in the wf software or if I should not expect any better...?

Your mention of Tibor's Word Fisher took me back a few years! Are you saying that his macros can be imported into the modern versions of Word? It never occurred to me that they might still work.

The others you mention I haven't tried. Which in your opinion is best in terms of preserving the original format (as far as possible, of course I understand that there will always be some work to do.)


 
Heinrich Pesch
Heinrich Pesch  Identity Verified
Finland
Local time: 16:17
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
+ ...
Who has done the translation? May 1, 2018

Even if the tm has all the segments, it is possible the the software will use other segmentation rules or that you have to set the rules. In WFC I often use forced segmentation in order to avoid splitting units unnecessarily. A full stop not always means the unit is complete, there can be dozens of abbreviations and hardly they can be covered all by the rules.
Quite often I see in SDL Studio segments where two sentences are merged because the author forgot to put a full stop between. In WF
... See more
Even if the tm has all the segments, it is possible the the software will use other segmentation rules or that you have to set the rules. In WFC I often use forced segmentation in order to avoid splitting units unnecessarily. A full stop not always means the unit is complete, there can be dozens of abbreviations and hardly they can be covered all by the rules.
Quite often I see in SDL Studio segments where two sentences are merged because the author forgot to put a full stop between. In WFC I would use forced segmentation, but in most environments there is nothing the translator can do about it.
So having a tm does not mean you could translate the same doc automatically without manual interference.
Collapse


 
DZiW (X)
DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
+ ...
templates May 1, 2018

Hello Sierra,

I still prefer old menu-style Word 2003, but also use Office 2007/13 and OpenOffice, so the named pieces of software (perhaps after some tweaking) do work fine for me. If I remember it, depending on the language pair, both W-Fisher (check the author's Free Licence) and W-Fast could have issues with TM/glossary in a non-Unicode/UTF format, because of Word XP/2002.

After hiding the 'hidden' text, the process turns almost WYSIWYG. The only drawback with big f
... See more
Hello Sierra,

I still prefer old menu-style Word 2003, but also use Office 2007/13 and OpenOffice, so the named pieces of software (perhaps after some tweaking) do work fine for me. If I remember it, depending on the language pair, both W-Fisher (check the author's Free Licence) and W-Fast could have issues with TM/glossary in a non-Unicode/UTF format, because of Word XP/2002.

After hiding the 'hidden' text, the process turns almost WYSIWYG. The only drawback with big files is the speed... and sometimes stability. Saving RTF/DOCX as DOC also helps occasionally.

Cheers
Collapse


 
SierraMadre
SierraMadre  Identity Verified
Local time: 08:17
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Segmentation May 1, 2018

Heinrich Pesch wrote:

Even if the tm has all the segments, it is possible the the software will use other segmentation rules or that you have to set the rules. In WFC I often use forced segmentation in order to avoid splitting units unnecessarily. A full stop not always means the unit is complete, there can be dozens of abbreviations and hardly they can be covered all by the rules.
Quite often I see in SDL Studio segments where two sentences are merged because the author forgot to put a full stop between. In WFC I would use forced segmentation, but in most environments there is nothing the translator can do about it.
So having a tm does not mean you could translate the same doc automatically without manual interference.



Thanks Heinrich. I am accustomed to making these small adjustments to the target document before processing, it certainly can save a huge amount of time.


 
SierraMadre
SierraMadre  Identity Verified
Local time: 08:17
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
WFisher May 1, 2018

DZiW wrote:

Hello Sierra,

I still prefer old menu-style Word 2003, but also use Office 2007/13 and OpenOffice, so the named pieces of software (perhaps after some tweaking) do work fine for me. If I remember it, depending on the language pair, both W-Fisher (check the author's Free Licence) and W-Fast could have issues with TM/glossary in a non-Unicode/UTF format, because of Word XP/2002.

After hiding the 'hidden' text, the process turns almost WYSIWYG. The only drawback with big files is the speed... and sometimes stability. Saving RTF/DOCX as DOC also helps occasionally.

Cheers


Thanks again. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who prefers the earlier versions of Word. I hope to continue using them for a while yet.


 


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