Looking for advice re XML files in Trados Thread poster: AnneM (X)
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AnneM (X) 
Local time: 00:50
Spanish to English
+ ...
Hello,
I have been asked to do a test for a new agency who want to test my translation and Trados skills.
I have just received the text, and it is in XML format. This is new to me but I presume I can learn how to do it from the support documentation.
I would, however, like to know if this is particularly complicated and if a surcharge is normally added. I have "accepted" a price presuming we were talking about standard word docs but there seems a lot of more work invol... See more Hello,
I have been asked to do a test for a new agency who want to test my translation and Trados skills.
I have just received the text, and it is in XML format. This is new to me but I presume I can learn how to do it from the support documentation.
I would, however, like to know if this is particularly complicated and if a surcharge is normally added. I have "accepted" a price presuming we were talking about standard word docs but there seems a lot of more work involved (??).
Thank you!
Anne ▲ Collapse
| | | | Peter Linton (X)
Local time: 23:50
Swedish to English
+ ...
| Some things to watch | Nov 26, 2004 |
[quote]AnneM wrote:
Hello,
I have been asked to do a test for a new agency who want to test my translation and Trados skills. I have just received the text, and it is in XML format.
I did a test of XML files for an agency some months ago, and I have since done quite a few XML translations. It is fairly straightforward, but there are several things to watch out for:
1/ You haven't mentioned Trados TagEditor. You need to use that.
2/ Make sure you get a separate INI or DTD file from the agency (this defines the structure of the XML file). TagEditor will ask you for that, and it includes a wizard for defining that file right at the start. I found the wizard to be fairly intuitive and easy to use.
3/ One of the XML files I had to translate the was for a user guide that consisted of two columns of text with very little punctuation. As Trados relies on punctuation for segmentation, the result can be enormous segments. It can take several minutes to load a file into TagEditor, and on one or two occasions the segments were so large (thousands of tags and words) that Windows thought TagEditor had stopped responding, and the PC froze. The only answer was to reboot and then add some temporary punctuation in the source XML file, and leave it out of the target file. This also made it much more likely to find matches, and also speeded up the Concordance. So look at the XML file first in an editor, to check the punctuation.
4/ Translating XML files is more difficult and time-consuming than text, because you are likely to get segments of varying sizes and overlapping lines, and therefore less context. You may also have to move the translated text into different locations between the XML tags because of differences in word ordered between your source and target languages. In short, translating XML files is trickier than plain text, and can take much longer.
Do the test, but take the chance to decide if you like that sort of work. If you do, it's a useful niche market to be in.
| | | | Parrot
Spain
Local time: 00:50
Spanish to English
+ ...
| Cuts your earnings by 25% | Nov 27, 2004 |
if you're normally a fast one, so bear it in mind...:)
| | | | AnneM (X)
Local time: 00:50
Spanish to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you both very much for your advice.
Regards,
Anne
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