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My first project in SDL Studio 2009 (Trados)
Thread poster: Marinus Vesseur
Marinus Vesseur
Marinus Vesseur  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 07:03
English to Dutch
+ ...
Nov 2, 2009

The sun was shining and the weather lovely, so what better thing to do on a Sunday than to install SDL Studio 2009 SP1 and start working on a new, urgent project.

Masochist? Me?

Actually the installation went quite smoothly. My system is brand-new, with Windows 7 64-bit freshly installed. What could go wrong? (sarcastic, insanely shrieky, halloween laughter).

Seriously, the installation was a breeze. Even the activation worked. Honest.

SDL Stud
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The sun was shining and the weather lovely, so what better thing to do on a Sunday than to install SDL Studio 2009 SP1 and start working on a new, urgent project.

Masochist? Me?

Actually the installation went quite smoothly. My system is brand-new, with Windows 7 64-bit freshly installed. What could go wrong? (sarcastic, insanely shrieky, halloween laughter).

Seriously, the installation was a breeze. Even the activation worked. Honest.

SDL Studio looks totally different than Trados. It looks like Across, if you've ever seen that. TM maintenance, side-by-side editor, Multiterm window, projects window, files indexes, etc. etc. is all combined in one large program screen. It looks shiny. Like an Austin straight out of the showroom.

You start by making a new project. Then you open a TM. Except that my TMs are Trados TMs. So, open your old Trados, export your TMs into tmx-es, open the TM maintenance in Studio, import the tmx. Hold your breath. Yes, it works. Go make a cup of tea, because this takes some time.

Same basic idea for creating the Autosuggest dictionary. It took some time and Studio does not remember where you store stuff, so you've got to watch out there, but it works.

Next: open a document. Now, the Editor does not handle docs; it imports them alright, but then wants to store everything in its own SDLXIFF format. If you're done, you're supposed to export the doc again, just like you used to do in TagEditor. Except that in TagEditor it usually worked. In Studio it did not.

Here's the error message:

SDL Studio error 4

And that was that. No help, no further explanation and, worst of all, no Word file. Imagine not having Trados to fall back on in that situation!

I solved that issue by exporting the TM and importing it into Trados 2007 again. Took some time, but at least my work was saved.

How was working with Autosuggest? Great! I loved it, but alas, after closing and opening the project AutoSuggest stopped working. It just didn't pop up anymore, whatever I did. Yes, it was enabled in the Options window and I had imported the TM into the Autosuggest dictionary. But it was dead.

How was working with MultiTerm. Apparently easier than before, but alas, not reliable. Sometimes there is a thin red line in the left pane to indicate MultiTerm has found something and sometimes it simply shows nothing, althought I knew the term to be there.

And another oddity.

Look at this:
SDL Studio error

See the segment 218: "Bearbeitungsfunktionen"? See segment 219 right underneath? What does it say? "sfuntkionen"". That part-of-a-segment, namely of the segment right before it, is NOT in the original document. This happened many times. Wonder if that was the reason it didn't export back to Word doc?

Shall I go on about the weird errors the GUI (the large program window) creates? Want to know about the dis- and reappearing scroll bar on the right? The tags it sometimes recognizes and sometimes not? About the completely empty window after opening a file?

It really is shiny, though. Nice, soft blue with chrome edges. Like a brand-new Austin or Morris. Or Rover maybe. Except they don't make those anymore. I wonder why?

Reliability, you say? Hm.
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Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 15:03
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
Did you check the tags? Nov 2, 2009

The error message says, that you most probably missed a field (which means a tag) in your translation.
As for the text which was not in the document - most probably it is there, but somehow hidden.
In my experience Studio is as reliable as any other software. No problems so far, when I have no errors on my side.


 
Marinus Vesseur
Marinus Vesseur  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 07:03
English to Dutch
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
SDL Stupido Nov 2, 2009

Jerzy, you're a really nice guy, but you and I have totally different expectations when it concerns professional software. Plus I am 'blessed' with a strong urge to try things. (Don't ever lend me your car!)

But seriously, don't you find it strange that, when you start a new project:
- it can take 10 minutes or more to actually get to the point where you can translate?
- And when Studio is done preparing
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Jerzy, you're a really nice guy, but you and I have totally different expectations when it concerns professional software. Plus I am 'blessed' with a strong urge to try things. (Don't ever lend me your car!)

But seriously, don't you find it strange that, when you start a new project:
- it can take 10 minutes or more to actually get to the point where you can translate?
- And when Studio is done preparing that it does NOT go to the Editor window, but stares you blankly in the face?
- that there are hundreds of menu items, but it is not intuitively clear which ones are the most important and which are just for tweaking?
- that it does not ask you to open a MultiTerm file when it starts a project?
- that it does not ask you to open an AutoSuggest dictionary when starting a project?
- that, when you want to open a Termbase, Studio does not remember where the termbases are?
- that building an Autosuggest dictionary can take a very long time?
- that the box to turn Autosuggest on and off is deeply hidden in the menu structure?
- that auto-detection of the language in the file it is importing doesn't work, so you have to tell Studio what the source language and target language are, time and time again?
- that whilst opening a document it keeps offering me a list with hundreds of languages, although I installed Studio with only five?

And so on and so forth. There are literally HUNDREDS of bugs and illogical elements to this software.

Here's a very important, fundamental question about the functioning of Studio:

Since the TM is not automatically filled, as it used to, but you now have to manually update the TM: will there be fuzzy matches from the document you are working on?

Say you get very similar cells in an Excel file, with only one or two words different every time: will Studio give you fuzzy matches or not? Without finalizing or updating the TM, I mean.

I've already noticed that AutoSuggest does not fill its own dictionary when in use, so unless the long words you hope to avoid having to type again and again are already in the AutoSuggest dictionary, you'll end up typing them again and again again, if you know what I mean. Not the kind of progress I was hoping for.

That was a serious question, by the way, because my Studio is completely ****ed up after today's test drive. It won't put anything into the TM anymore, so I can't check it myself. The "Repair" function couldn't repair the program, either. How is a novice going to manage with this Jaguar-engine-in-a-Morris-Minor-body kind of program is a mystery to me. Or rather: I pity them.

Thanks for your replies, just the same.
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Gillian Searl
Gillian Searl  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:03
German to English
Back to the TM Nov 2, 2009

Did you use the "Upgrade TM function"? It's on the Tools menu "Upgrade translation memories". It would save a lot of effort in manually exporting and importing TMs.

And to start translating a document it isn't 100% necessary to open a project. You can just open a document from editor view. That way you simply update an existing TM(s).


 
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 15:03
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Terrified of changes! Nov 2, 2009

Once more I must really wonder what makes so many Trados users so blind about SDL Studio 2009. Yes, indeed we Trados users have been exposed to so many glitches and such a slow customer service over the last decade that we are reacting very slowly to the hardships imposed by SDL Studio 2009. We are used to finding workarounds and time-consuming tricks, apart from asking our colleagues in Proz.com. Just anything to avoid SDL's service.

Mankind never ceases to amaze me. We (and I incl
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Once more I must really wonder what makes so many Trados users so blind about SDL Studio 2009. Yes, indeed we Trados users have been exposed to so many glitches and such a slow customer service over the last decade that we are reacting very slowly to the hardships imposed by SDL Studio 2009. We are used to finding workarounds and time-consuming tricks, apart from asking our colleagues in Proz.com. Just anything to avoid SDL's service.

Mankind never ceases to amaze me. We (and I include myself) are terrified of changes and very reluctant to try other options. We always hope that our suffering will soon end and can wait for ages living just on hope. Meanwhile, other people enjoy the benefit of better, more reliable tools and a faster customer service.

The question is today: is SDL Studio 2009 really offering a cutting edge to its users? Maybe, if you compare it with Trados 8.0, but not compared with other much better tools out there in the market.
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Marinus Vesseur
Marinus Vesseur  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 07:03
English to Dutch
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Scary options Nov 2, 2009

Thanks for the tip, Gillian.

I'm scared to death of letting Stupido manhandle my TM's. I could copy them first, of course, so that's what I'll do, then.

My main question is about the 'populating' of the TM and AS dictionary. Does this happen whilst you work, or do you now have to update the content manually, resp. when the project/document is finalized? The latter would take a lot away from the promised 50% increased turnover, wouldn't it?

I can't check it,
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Thanks for the tip, Gillian.

I'm scared to death of letting Stupido manhandle my TM's. I could copy them first, of course, so that's what I'll do, then.

My main question is about the 'populating' of the TM and AS dictionary. Does this happen whilst you work, or do you now have to update the content manually, resp. when the project/document is finalized? The latter would take a lot away from the promised 50% increased turnover, wouldn't it?

I can't check it, because for some reason my TMs aren't populating at all, whatever I do. I deinstalled and reinstalled Studio, all to no avail. I tried an imported and a brand-new TM.

Curiously, after I reinstalled the open project was still in the project list as 'open' and in bold. But when I opened the Editor there was nothing. AutoSuggest started working again, by the way.

It looks like I'll have to wait for SP2 or SP3, or, as Tomás suggests, find an alternative. Wordfast and OmegaT don't cut it for me, either. What else is there.

Gillian Searl wrote:

Did you use the "Upgrade TM function"? It's on the Tools menu "Upgrade translation memories". It would save a lot of effort in manually exporting and importing TMs.

And to start translating a document it isn't 100% necessary to open a project. You can just open a document from editor view. That way you simply update an existing TM(s).


[Edited at 2009-11-02 09:28 GMT]
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Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 15:03
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
It really depends on the point of view Nov 2, 2009

Marinus Vesseur wrote:

Jerzy, you're a really nice guy, but you and I have totally different expectations when it concerns professional software. Plus I am 'blessed' with a strong urge to try things. (Don't ever lend me your car!)

Well, I wouldn't lend my car to anyone, seriously

But seriously, don't you find it strange that, when you start a new project:
- it can take 10 minutes or more to actually get to the point where you can translate?

For a simple project it does not even take a minute - just open the document, show TM and you're done. And for more complicated projects you can save templates, then it also takes not so much time.
- And when Studio is done preparing that it does NOT go to the Editor window, but stares you blankly in the face?

I seriously thought, people wouldn't like TagEditor and be happy, when it is gone. Now you are looking with sorrow after it?
- that there are hundreds of menu items, but it is not intuitively clear which ones are the most important and which are just for tweaking?

Show me any software without and I owe you a big beer in the next conference.
But even if you do - most of the menus are used once to configure Studio to your needs. Then you can forget about it.
- that it does not ask you to open a MultiTerm file when it starts a project?

When creating a project you are asked for termbases. You are not asked for them, when you just open the file - this is why you have so many configuration possibilites. In that case the standard MultiTerm termbases are used.
- that it does not ask you to open an AutoSuggest dictionary when starting a project?

But you set it up per language pair as default. In that case the project is simply using this setting - no further questions necessary, making it easier to create a project.
- that, when you want to open a Termbase, Studio does not remember where the termbases are?

Well, in my case it does. And even if not - I have them all stored in one place, so finding 'em later is really easy. As I do not use different termbases for different projects, but always use all of them and have this configured by default I do not need to change anything when opening a file or creating a project.
- that building an Autosuggest dictionary can take a very long time?

And what is the problem with that? You do this just once...
- that the box to turn Autosuggest on and off is deeply hidden in the menu structure?

Tools-Options-AutoSuggest - this is deep? OK, so maybe I'm already drown...
- that auto-detection of the language in the file it is importing
doesn't work, so you have to tell Studio what the source language and target language are, time and time again?

There is no auto-detection of language for Word files. This just works for TTX or ITD files, which have the language codes stored. Usually Studio takes then the default language setting, which should be suitable for most of us having one major working language pair.
- that whilst opening a document it keeps offering me a list with hundreds of languages, although I installed Studio with only five?

This is new to me, as I have the Pro version with so many languages. But still I do not feel really offended by that.

And so on and so forth. There are literally HUNDREDS of bugs and illogical elements to this software.

Well, hundreds of languages are not a bug. Creating an AS-dictionary taking some time is not a bug. Using settings menu to set default options is not a bug.
And what you call illogical is a subjective point of view.

Here's a very important, fundamental question about the functioning of Studio:

Since the TM is not automatically filled, as it used to, but you now have to manually update the TM: will there be fuzzy matches from the document you are working on?
Say you get very similar cells in an Excel file, with only one or two words different every time: will Studio give you fuzzy matches or not? Without finalizing or updating the TM, I mean.

This is just one setting - you can update the TM as you work or when you finish.
The last option is completly illogical to me, but somehow might be usefull in a special environment. Nevertheless, however your setup is is up to you.

I've already noticed that AutoSuggest does not fill its own dictionary when in use, so unless the long words you hope to avoid having to type again and again are already in the AutoSuggest dictionary, you'll end up typing them again and again again, if you know what I mean. Not the kind of progress I was hoping for.

This is what MultiTerm or AutoText is for - to be filled with new entries which then can be used by AutoSuggest. The AS-dictionary itself is static and will not be updated unless you create a new one based on the updated TM.

That was a serious question, by the way, because my Studio is completely ****ed up after today's test drive. It won't put anything into the TM anymore, so I can't check it myself. The "Repair" function couldn't repair the program, either. How is a novice going to manage with this Jaguar-engine-in-a-Morris-Minor-body kind of program is a mystery to me. Or rather: I pity them.

Thanks for your replies, just the same.

Well, this is always so with any new software. No big difference to Word 2007, if you ask me.


 
Laurent KRAULAND (X)
Laurent KRAULAND (X)  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 15:03
French to German
+ ...
A lot is out there... Nov 2, 2009

Marinus Vesseur wrote:

It looks like I'll have to wait for SP2 or SP3, or, as Tomás suggests, find an alternative. Wordfast and OmegaT don't cut it for me, either. What else is there.


the question being: do you have time to test them all or at least many of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAT_tools



[Edited at 2009-11-02 09:33 GMT]


 
Gillian Searl
Gillian Searl  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:03
German to English
The TM updates as you go along, autosuggest doesn't Nov 2, 2009

I don't understand why you are having an issue with the TM. Maybe we could skype.
I checked about auto-suggest updating itself and the answer is, every now and again you have to do it manually.


 
simon tanner
simon tanner  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 15:03
Italian to English
+ ...
sympathy and suggestion Nov 2, 2009

Marinus, I know just how you feel. Trados has taken me to the verge of madness on more than one occasion.
It's not even the shock of the new that's the problem, since I've been using SDLX since version 2.0 back in the mid 90s, and then Trados too for the last 5 years or so, so I've followed its evolution at close hand. Yet every version just seems to bring more hype and shine without improving basic stability or a user-friendly experience.
I've been trying out MemoQ over the last f
... See more
Marinus, I know just how you feel. Trados has taken me to the verge of madness on more than one occasion.
It's not even the shock of the new that's the problem, since I've been using SDLX since version 2.0 back in the mid 90s, and then Trados too for the last 5 years or so, so I've followed its evolution at close hand. Yet every version just seems to bring more hype and shine without improving basic stability or a user-friendly experience.
I've been trying out MemoQ over the last few weeks and there is no comparison - fast and straightforward installation and job start-up, intelligent use of TM and termbases (which can be updated on the fly with absurd ease), lots of nice little features which make work faster and more enjoyable, and STABLE, oh so stable. Despite having all the stuff in one big screen layout like Trados, for some reason it also seems much less cluttered.
Try it, and do yourself a favour. Oh, and it also seems to work a lot better with Dragon (which crashes continuously in Tradios), and that's a big plus for me.
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Marinus Vesseur
Marinus Vesseur  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 07:03
English to Dutch
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Tomorrow Nov 2, 2009

Gillian Searl wrote:

I don't understand why you are having an issue with the TM. Maybe we could skype.
I checked about auto-suggest updating itself and the answer is, every now and again you have to do it manually.


Thanks, but I'll have to call it a day. It's 02:30 here now. I'm pooped out.


 
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 15:03
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
MemoQ... Nov 2, 2009

simon tanner wrote:
I've been trying out MemoQ over the last few weeks and there is no comparison - fast and straightforward installation and job start-up, intelligent use of TM and termbases (which can be updated on the fly with absurd ease), lots of nice little features which make work faster and more enjoyable, and STABLE, oh so stable. Despite having all the stuff in one big screen layout like Trados, for some reason it also seems much less cluttered.

Indeed. I sincerely recommend MemoQ for the reasons you describe. We are using it in a server version in the team and are very happy about it. Of course it is not perfect and we are sending some feedback about features that don't feel like they are quite there yet, but other than that I sincerely recommend it.


 
Grzegorz Gryc
Grzegorz Gryc  Identity Verified
Local time: 15:03
French to Polish
+ ...
An example, CSV export case... Nov 2, 2009

Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:

Indeed. I sincerely recommend MemoQ for the reasons you describe. We are using it in a server version in the team and are very happy about it. Of course it is not perfect and we are sending some feedback about features that don't feel like they are quite there yet, but other than that I sincerely recommend it.

In few words, the difference between Trados and MemoQ is Trados has a lot of functions which don't work properly (especially the Multiterm related ones) while MemoQ has less functions but they basically work.

E.g. if you compare the terminology export/import filters, Multiterm has two or three times more file formats available... but few of them work properly...
E.g. see:
http://www.proz.com/forum/sdl_trados_support/149740-multiterm_2009_and_tbx_import.html

In the same way, the Multiterm default CSV export is an illogical crap unusable in not so complex scenarios while the CSV export in MemoQ simply works as a charm.
Click, click.

For the Multiterm default CSV export, see e.g.:
http://www.proz.com/forum/déjà_vu_support/117860-exporting_multiterm_7_termbases_to_dvx.html
Multiterm 2009 SP1 preserves carefully this eternal bug.
And yes, the MT programmers are aware of it.

Cheers
GG

[Edited at 2009-11-02 11:28 GMT]


 
Stanislav Pokorny
Stanislav Pokorny  Identity Verified
Czech Republic
Local time: 15:03
English to Czech
+ ...
TM updates Nov 2, 2009

Gillian Searl wrote:

I don't understand why you are having an issue with the TM.

I believe the problem is that Marinus is using the project TM scenario. If you drop project TM, the main TM will be updated as you translate. Otherwise it is the project TM which is being updated and the main TM only as you finalize the project.


 
Marinus Vesseur
Marinus Vesseur  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 07:03
English to Dutch
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
TMs are being updated Nov 2, 2009

Gillian Searl wrote:

I don't understand why you are having an issue with the TM. Maybe we could skype.


Thanks again. I found the culprit here:

SDL Studio TM Update box

The check box "Update" was not checked. For the life of me I can't remember unchecking it, but there it is. I checked it and now the TM updates again. My bad, I guess.

AutoSuggest gave up the goast again. All settings seem in order:

SDL Autosuggest Options

MultiTerm only worked for a very short while yesterday and I haven't seen it do anything since:

SDL Studio Editor View 2

The termbase is loaded and the settings look ok, but that might not mean much when I say it. In the meantime I'm working with TagEditor. Who would have thought I'd start loving the old work mule again, eh?!

Despite the fact that I'm looking for alternatives, I'm still happy with y'all's support. I keep swaying between annoyance, frustration and embarrassment about it all.


 
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