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 ...

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.

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 ...

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.

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 :-)