| User | Thread poster: Astrid Elke Johnson Preparing a "red-line version" of a document |
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Astrid Elke Johnson 
Germany
Local time: 14:30
  Member (2002)
German to English
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As this issue keeps coming up, in particular where a sequence of amended versions of a contract, for example, is involved, I cannot help wondering how colleagues prepare and charge for so-called "red-line" versions of documents.
As we all know, Trados does not work with "track changes". Therefore, if a client sends me an amended version of a document, with "track changes" switched on to show all the changes, I do the following:
1. I print off the version showing the changes.
2. I make another copy of the document, click on "accept changes", and then switch off the "track changes" function, so that I have a document that I can translate with Trados. I also print off this document, for proofreading against.
3. I run a Trados analysis against the original TM, to find out the percentage of the changes, and charge for this percentage.
4. I then translate the document with Trados, as normal, proofread and polish it, and produce my final version.
5. After this, in order to produce the red-line version desired by the client, I have to create a new copy of the previous document, and then carefully copy in the changes from the new document by hand. I have both documents open, and have to manually compare them, in order to do this. The process takes several hours.
Now, 2 questions:
1. Is there an easier way of fulfilling this request for a "red-line version"?
2. If not, should the client be charged for the extra few hours' work?
3. If the answer to 2. is yes, what happens if the client refuses to pay for the extra work, because they are only willing to pay for the "word price", and believe that everything else should be "in with the price", whatever is involved. Are they right or wrong?
Astrid
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| | | | pidzej
Local time: 14:30
Polish to English
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Astrid Elke Johnson wrote:
1. Is there an easier way of fulfilling this request for a "red-line version"?
Astrid |
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Yes. Forget about Trados. I use a word processor, not CAT, for such jobs, unless the changes consist in adding whole paragraphs or pages of text. They typically don't, most are dates, numbers, names and other such stuff.
The redline versions I work with do not come from Word's track changes but from DeltaView, but all I want to know is the statistics at the bottom of the comparison. It takes me an hour to introduce 90 to 110 changes, and I charge by the hour. An approximation will be inevitable with such revisions.
| | | | Astrid Elke Johnson
Germany
Local time: 14:30
Member (2002)
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | | Revisions mostly do concern whole paragraphs or pages | Jul 24, 2006 |
Thanks. Yes, in the case of contracts, however, the revisions do concern some quite big chunks of text. Many revisions are paragraphs added, deleted or altered in their wording. Some revisions are about an entire page long.
Astrid
| | | | Michele Johnson
Germany
Local time: 14:30
German to English
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| | Use "compare docs" function in Word? | Jul 24, 2006 |
Astrid Elke Johnson wrote:
...
5. After this, in order to produce the red-line version desired by the client, I have to create a new copy of the previous document, and then carefully copy in the changes from the new document by hand. I have both documents open, and have to manually compare them, in order to do this. The process takes several hours. |
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It sounds like the main problem is the copying in by hand at the end. At stage 5, could you just use the "Compare document" function in Word (or whatever it's called; in my German version, it's Extras: Dokumente vergleichen und zusammenführen)? You could compare your old cleaned target version with the new cleaned target version, and anything that's different (i.e. whatever has been updated) gets inserted and tracked as changes (be sure to make backups before you start). There are a lot of settings, so I'd recommend reading the help section on it.
Of course you'd still have to compare this doc with the modified source doc, to make sure it didn't miss anything, but I'm just guessing this would still be more efficient.
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| | | | Astrid Elke Johnson
Germany
Local time: 14:30
Member (2002)
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | | That sounds an excellent idea | Jul 24, 2006 |
Thanks. Michele! I never thought of using the "Dokumente vergleichen" function for this! Actually, I will suggest to the client to do this with my translation. I am sure his secretary knows how to work it.
Astrid
[Edited at 2006-07-24 14:34]
| | | | Gillian Searl
Local time: 13:30
Member (2004)
German to English
| | The other way is | Jul 25, 2006 |
don't use Trados till the end. You can use the track changes function in word to make the changes, even if the document is bilingual in Trados. It maybe difficult to edit the first letter of each line. So hide the source text, make the changes and you have the revised document. Then accept the changes, switch off "track changes" and update the Trados TM. I guess this method is good if the changes are small. Or edit the document with track changes, accept them and align source and target in WinAlign.
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