How CAT Tools Can Set Yourself Apart from Others
A Creative Simulation
Translation of the screenplay of Chinatown
My name is Marianna Guedez F, and I translate and interpret for a living. In my journey to become a professional, I have taken different classes to gain the skills that hopefully will make a difference. In the following portfolio, I will show you a simulation project that I did to understand better how to work with CAT tools and collaborate with future coworkers before taking a real-life localization project.
Furthermore, I will give you some tips to apply in REGEX that will facilitate your translation process.
BONUS TIP: At the end of this portfolio, you will find a link to a post on the Top 6 Reasons to Start Using Memsource for your Translations Today.
Proposal/SOW
What did we learn?
Deliverables
Reports
4 Awesome Tricks to Make your Translations Easier with the Verbal Expressions Feature (QA) in SDL Trados!
In translating from English to Spanish, we can face many problems with formatting. By using regular expressions, we can avoid a few that will make your life easier. Here are some of the ideas you can implement in Trados using the QA check function – Regular Expressions.
A common mistake is that while translating from English to Spanish, translators make it not to remember that numbers and currencies use a “,” in English, while in Spanish, they use a space between numbers. This can create massive problems, especially when we are talking about money.
However, there is an easy trick that you can follow to avoid this problem.
EN-ES number comma formatting
- Create your project in SDL Trados. (Do not forget to create the TM!)
2. Open the document; you will have the source language on your left and the target language at your right.
3. Identify the problem. The numbers in English are the same as in Spanish separate by a comma. This is a mistake in Spanish.
4. Resolve the problem:
a) Go to the Review tab and click on Quality Assurance at the top right corner.
b) Open Regular Expressions.
c) Check “Search Regular Expressions” and write the following code:
RegEx source: \d{1}\,\d{1}
RegEx target: \d{1}\,\d{1}
Condition: Report if both target and source regEx patterns match
Add Action
d) Click on Verify to check to the pattern in the text.
e) The functionality finds the problem and sends a warning.
f) Now as a translator you can fix the problem!
Easy right?
EN-ES finding days of the week capitalized- warning
Another problem that you can also fix while translating from EN to SP is finding the days of the week in capital letters. Remember that in English, the week’s days are in capital letters, whereas in Spanish are in lowercase, unless there are at the beginning of a sentence.
Imagine that we have a text with days of the week in English, and we need to translate that into Spanish. As translators, sometimes we forget that the days of the week do not use capital letters. Like in this short example:
Here is a nice trick to find those problems on your text!
Follow the same process, but this time add this code in the Regular Expressions tab:
Description: EN-ES finding days of the week capital error
RegEx source: \w\s(Monday|Tuesday|Wednesday|Thursday|Friday|Saturday|Sunday)
RegEx target: \w\s(Lunes|Martes|Miércoles|Jueves|Viernes|Sábado|Domingo)
Condition: Report if both target and source Regex patterns match
Add Action
Warning!
Now we can fix it
Another problem is that, as translators, we could face a problem of capitalization while working on a document from EN to ES that includes nationalities. Remember that whereas in English nationalities are capitalized, in Spanish, we do not capitalize the nationalities. Therefore, if the nationality is capitalized in Spanish in a Trados’s doc, you could use verbal expressions to cause a warning.
Since there are so many nationalities, you can change this formula to add the nationalities that your document requires. In this string, the nationalities are represented by the ones that are in the source text.
Since there are so many nationalities, you can change this formula to add the nationalities that your document requires. In this string, the nationalities are represented by the ones that are in the source text.
EN-ES nationalities capitalization warning
Follow the same process, but this time adds this code in the Regular Expressions tab:
RegEx source: \w\s(Turks|Japanese|Germans|Brazilians|Asians)
RegEx target: \w\s(Turcos|Japoneses|Alemanes|Brasileños|Asiáticos)
Condition: Report if both target and source Regex patterns match
Add Action
Change one word to another
By using Regular Expressions, we could find a word in a text and replace it with another very fast. This could happen when you are localizing a text for a specific locale that has a preference. Imagine a document with thousands of words where there is a word that you must replace with another. This will tell you where they are.
In this specific text, we want to replace the word ID with cédula, instead of “documento“.
So, we go to the Verbal Expression tab and enter the following formula to trigger a warning.
Description: Document Substitution Using Correct Spanish Verbiage
Regex Source: \s(ID)\W
RegEx target: (Cédula|cédula)
Condition: Report if source matches but not the target
And then you will see the warning:
Now, you can make the change manually, or if there are too many, you can always use the find-and-replace function (Alt+F) in SDL Trados.
If you are still interested to learn more about CAT tools check my latest post on Top 6 Reasons to Start Using Memsource For your Translations Today
