Segmentation issues in WinAlign
Thread poster: piotrsut
piotrsut
piotrsut  Identity Verified
Local time: 07:58
English to Polish
+ ...
Dec 4, 2004

Hi, I'm new to Trados, and not particularly fond of it at all, but what can you do. I can live with it, and I now use it on larger projects, even if I don't have to.

The problem I have is with winalign - it would be very useful for the long-term projects I now want to TM-enhance, but the segmentation it gives me is rubbish. Both languages have the same full stop options etc., but where I get a single sentence in a segment on one side, there is a whole paragraph on the other. This is
... See more
Hi, I'm new to Trados, and not particularly fond of it at all, but what can you do. I can live with it, and I now use it on larger projects, even if I don't have to.

The problem I have is with winalign - it would be very useful for the long-term projects I now want to TM-enhance, but the segmentation it gives me is rubbish. Both languages have the same full stop options etc., but where I get a single sentence in a segment on one side, there is a whole paragraph on the other. This is unworkable! The same happened even where there were identical paragraphs in source and target docs (the source had some sentences already translated in it). Still, they got segmented differently.
Some people in the forum said it did work, so is there anything I may be doing wrong?

Thanks for help,

Piotr


[Subject edited by staff or moderator 2004-12-04 07:03]
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Ralf Lemster
Ralf Lemster  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 07:58
English to German
+ ...
Works very well for me Dec 4, 2004

Hi Piotr,
Before I respond to your post, I would like to ask you how you prepared for working with Trados. Did you go through the Tutorials? Did you have a look at the manuals?

I have been using WinAlign for years, and I'm particularly happy with WinAlign 6.x.

The problem I have is with winalign - it would be very useful for the long-term projects I now want to TM-enhance, but the segmentation it gives me is rubbish. Both languages have the same full stop options etc., but where I get a single sentence in a segment on one side, there is a whole paragraph on the other. This is unworkable!

Have you taken a look at the formatting of the two files? Are the sentences separated properly (i.e. with a blank after each full stop)?

The same happened even where there were identical paragraphs in source and target docs (the source had some sentences already translated in it). Still, they got segmented differently.

Aligning a (partially) pre-translated document will not work; similarly, aligning files containing revision marks will cause problems.

There can be differences in segmentation, but you can easily split or merge segments, as well as inserting new ones.

HTH, Ralf


 
Jeff Allen
Jeff Allen  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 07:58
Multiplelanguages
+ ...
document pre-formatting for Text Aligners Dec 4, 2004

Ralf Lemster wrote:
I would like to ask you how you prepared for working with Trados. Did you go through the Tutorials? Did you have a look at the manuals?

Have you taken a look at the formatting of the two files? Are the sentences separated properly (i.e. with a blank after each full stop)?


I fully agree with Ralf.
My new article to appear in the upcoming Guide to Translation by MultiLingual Computing & Technology magazine (goto: http://www.geocities.com/jeffallenpubs/upcoming.htm) provides a detailed step-by-step methodology for preparing and creating dictionaries with commercial machine translation (MT) systems, and free online MT portals.
The first section of the procedure is specifically dedicated to performing necessary document pre-formatting steps.

In creating and using a Automatic Forced Text Alignment script several years ago on the DIPLOMAT MT project, we coded in dozens of regular expressions to cover the widest range of formatting contexts of the texts that were translated by the teams. Yet even with that script, I ended up post-formatting many documents until we could recycle new rules into the script.

Upfront pre-formatting will save a significant amount of post-processing.
The best way to be productive for a medium to large project is to read the manuals, attend the tutorials and read/search the translator forums on software issues that others have encountered.

Jeff
http://www.geocities.com/jeffallenpubs/localization.htm


 
piotrsut
piotrsut  Identity Verified
Local time: 07:58
English to Polish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks! Dec 4, 2004

Great thanks for your replies!

It now seems to me, that the problem was with the "ordinal follower" option - when I unchecked it for Polish (which is like German in this respect), all sentences were aligned properly! Oh, the other thing I did was import the styles of the documents in the appropriate window (those were identical, as the translation was written over the source document).

To answer your questions, the tutorial somehow didn't work here (some problem with t
... See more
Great thanks for your replies!

It now seems to me, that the problem was with the "ordinal follower" option - when I unchecked it for Polish (which is like German in this respect), all sentences were aligned properly! Oh, the other thing I did was import the styles of the documents in the appropriate window (those were identical, as the translation was written over the source document).

To answer your questions, the tutorial somehow didn't work here (some problem with the automatic mouse pointer), and the UserGuide is not very extensive on Word files. But I may do just fine. I was just frustrated to think I would have to match each sentence by hand.

Did I say I don't like Trados for a couple of other reasons? I guess it gets better once you learn to use it properly, correct styles after cleaning, and to not delete any tags, and so on.

By the way, when aligning dozens of long documents - should I mind the TM size? Is there a limit of how large it can be for comfortable work on 512MB RAM Athlon 1.6+ computer?

Thanks again,

Piotr
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Ralf Lemster
Ralf Lemster  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 07:58
English to German
+ ...
Exactly. Dec 4, 2004

Hi again, Piotr,
Great to hear it's working for you now.

I guess it gets better once you learn to use it properly
.
Couldn't have said it better...

By the way, when aligning dozens of long documents - should I mind the TM size? Is there a limit of how large it can be for comfortable work on 512MB RAM Athlon 1.6+ computer?

Not really. Of course there will be a limit at some stage, but unless you reach several millions of units, there shouldn't be an issue.

Cheers, Ralf


 
Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 07:58
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
No (really big) speed issues with a big TM even on slower PC Dec 4, 2004

I have a TM with over 300,000 TUs, which is approx. 90 MB heavy.
Trados does work very smooth with it on my desktop Athlon 3200+ with 1024 MB RAM. But it does work too with my notebook, which is only P IV Mobile 1,6 GHz and only 256 MB RAM. Both run Windows XP. The only issue on notebook is the concordance search, which takes a bit longer, as on the desktop. The difference may be a second or two, so not that bad.

Trados is a quick application.

Regards
Jerzy


 
piotrsut
piotrsut  Identity Verified
Local time: 07:58
English to Polish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks, Dec 5, 2004

Danke, dziêki!

Piotr


 


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Segmentation issues in WinAlign







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