Monday, February 27, 2006

Preparing a presentation for Pisa ....

I am just preparing my presentation for the SSML in Pisa ... and I never had such a hard time to create a presentation - now you are wondering why, right? She who has WiktionaryZ in her venes has a problem to create a presentation ... well yes, but it is not about what to say ... it is the language in which I have to talk about WiktionaryZ ... I am not used to present it in Italian. I have been talking about WiktionaryZ and presenting it for approximately one and half a year now and I always did this in English ... isn't that strange? I am living my life in three worlds: Italian, English and of course German. It is soooooo strange ...

Sunday, February 26, 2006

just a short note ...

It is really a strange week-end. On one hand struggling with a person important as a friend who just does not see the point and on the other hand a great meeting with colleagues here in Maiori. Quite a lot to write down here ... all is related to my work, all is related to translator's work ... will I ever truly have the time to write about all that? I'll try to ... going out to meet my colleagues.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

And it is even easier ....

I was just looking again at the segmentation rules of OmegaT ... and something stroke me ... you do not need all the four lines below to work on each second segment of the trados files .... but only the one under point 3 and 4. In that way you will have less segments and you just need to remember to translate that text where there is no trados tag since in the source part of the segment the Trados tags will be attached near to the text. So it is even easier than I thought before ...

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Trados and Omegat - compatibility issues

OmegaT now has sentence segmentation based on SRX and is to be considered the leader in that specific field. As for tmx compatibility now it is compatible. Well what remains is the possibility to translate whatever kind of file with it ... and: even that is coming nearer and nearer.
Even not having filters for Trados files for example, now it is possible to work on trados presegmented files. I wanted to use a file created with RTF styler by MaxPrograms.com, but I could not manage to see the segmentation ... don't ask me why ... I opened the document after having passed it with rtf styler in Microsoft Word and it just looked like before. Well, one can create Trados presegmented files also with the trial version of Trados or you can ask your customer to send you the file already segmented to work on it ... of course I had no customer sending me files, but some colleagues (Thank you!!!).
Now what to do with such a file ...

  • open the .doc file with OpenOffice.org and save it as .odt (open document) format
  • within OmegaT go to the segmentation rules and add some rules
  • in each new rule you create you must check the checkbox, since we are creating artificial linebreaks that will "pull out" the text to be translated
  1. add a new rule ad add \{> in the before-column and leave the after column empty
  2. add a new rule ad add <\} in the after-column and leave the before column empty
  3. add a new rule ad add \{0> in the before-column and leave the after column empty
  4. add a new rule ad add <0\} in the after-column and leave the before column empty
  • now, reloading the project you will have each sentence twice + segments with only the Trados brackets
  • the ony thing you must be careful with is to translate only every second segment
  • once the translation is ready you create the target text, open it in OpenOffice.org and save it as .doc or .rtf (according to your original file).
Please understand that this is a workaround - it should work for approximately 90% of the Trados files - I am missing just one answer and the short files I tried out seem all to work as they should. To be sure if OmegaT can handle this create a project, make some changes is some segments and then save your target file.
Check if your target file opens correctly and save as .doc/.rtf file.

It would be a huge advantage if OmegaT had a "ignore hidden text"-function since this would allow for all kinds of particular workarounds using OpenOffice.org macros :-) and if it had the ignore hidden text thingie we would not need any workaround for Trados presegmented files since the source segment and the particular brackets are already marked as hidden text.

Well I don't know how difficult it is to implement that in OmegaT, but having that possibility would be really great.

Thanks for any feed-back on your experiences.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Zitat von Thomas A. Edison

"Wenn wir alles täten, wozu wir imtande sind, würden wir uns wahrlich in Erstauenen verstzen."

.dtd files can now be translated with OmegaT

Well of course, it is not a filter, but a workaround, but it works great. Using a new feature of OmegaT, the sentence segmentation, you can create rules that allow for the translation of .dtd files like they are used for Mozilla software. Really the reason to find this out was a request on the OmegaT IRC channel.

What you need to do is:

  • recall the sentence segmentation rules through the menu
  • select the language the new rule applies to or create a new language if it isn't here (it could also be placed in the general rules, but I'd avoid that, because otherwise you will not be able to deactivate the rules easily
  • create a new line for the segmentation rule within that language
  • activate the checkbox by clicking on it
  • to have a segmentation after label " insert that in the first column (called before linebreak) and have only a fullstop in the second column called after linebreak
  • have a segmentation before "> create a new line for segmentation rules and activate the checkbox
  • then leave the first column before linebreak empty and insert "> in the column called after linebreak
  • to activate click on the OK-button
  • OmegaT will ask you to re-load the project - so just do so
Please keep in mind that of course you need to create a project first to be able to set the segmentation rules. Please refer to the OmegaT helpfiles on that.

And remember: you can subscribe to the OmegaT user group by sending a clean message to omgat-subscribe@yahoogroups.com - there you can ask further questions. Or you can try to have a look at the IRC channel.

Sabine

Das kommt davon ...

Tja 'was zu Lachen gab es heute auch ... ich habe mit einem Freund über WiktionaryZ gesprochen, ein Thema, über welches ich zu 99% immer auf Englisch diskutiere, in Online-Konferenzen bin, bei Meetings darüber spreche ... und heute, als ich den ganzen Kram auf Deutsch erklären sollte, fehlten mir schlichtweg die Worte ... ehm ... war der Titel des Blogs hier nicht words & more??? Das more war wohl hier eher der "Englisch-Effekt" ... tja ... das kommt davon ... man sollte dasselbe Thema halt ganz einfach in mehreren Sprachen "durchkauen" ... na denn ... guten Appetit :-)

Monday, February 20, 2006

Create terminology lists

When you search for terminology and then reach pages where you get the complete versions of official texts in German and Italian for example (or whatever other two languages) - it would make so much sense to be able to easily mark the text entries and send them to a glossary ... now as I write it ... it would also be great to have that possibility within Mozilla ... open two tabs - mark one entry as DE the other as IT and then just click or use a shortcut ...
The reason for this thought: a colleague asked me to check a term "deposito fiscale" which would be "Steuerlager" and you can find the term in German and Italian in these two documents of the European Union:
Maybe a feature that would be also an advantage for WiktionaryZ.

Sabine

Haldex .. altro sito interessante

http://www.brake-eu.haldex.com/img/magazine/spring2004_it.pdf

cambiando semplicemente l'estensione _it a _de si passa da un documento all'altro ...

Link interessante per cercare terminologia automobilistica

http://www.honda.ch/001hda_011406_it.htm

Be' cercando un termine ho visto che questo sito qui è fatto proprio come piace a me - essendo su di una pagina, cliccando sul link per l'altra lingua ci si trova sulla corrispondente pagina in quella lingua e non come quasi sempre sulla pagina di entrata per l'altra lingua dalla quale poi si deve cercare la pagina desiderata.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

And some more news ...

Well I also added some interesting links to other blogs and the possibility to receive new posts by e-mail. The posts are being sent out once a day. This means that you do not need to come back here to see what is new, but that you simply can subscribe and receive the post in your e-mail. When you subscribe you automatically create an account on the freeblitz website where you can pause receiving the mails and where you can get your own free account you can use for your blog. I found this neat thingie on Guy Kawasaki's blog and I am sure that it is an advantage since many prefer to read mail to surfing around the web. Well I am not a regular blogger ... at least up to now ... even if there are so many things one could talk about and there is so much to do. I don't know how often I already said this: I'd like to have a much longer day to do whatever I like doing ...

Sabine

A new name for my blog ... words & more

Well really words & more is about my work ... but it also applies to so many other themes ... and then a blog is about words ... and these words describe themes ... so the themes are the more composed of the words ...

This just as a short note - I am trying to re-program the layout as well :-) bit by bit ... step by step.

Sabine

Khalil Gibran über die Musik

Die Musik wirkt wie die Sonne, die alle Blumen des Feldes mit ihrem Strahlen zum Leben erweckt. ( Khalil Gibran ) Image by Pete Linforth fr...