Studio 2017 and Bilingual Workbench Files
Thread poster: Stanislav Pokorny
Stanislav Pokorny
Stanislav Pokorny  Identity Verified
Czech Republic
Local time: 12:18
English to Czech
+ ...
Dec 7, 2016

Hello fellow ProZians,
long time no see.

I jumped to Studio 2017 from 2014 recently and there is a nuisance that I have had to live with since that.

Problem description:
I regularly work on files that I download from an LSP's proprietary tool. That tool generates pretranslated bilingual RTF files. In Studio 2014, I would just convert those to DOCX and load them in Studio.

The prob
... See more
Hello fellow ProZians,
long time no see.

I jumped to Studio 2017 from 2014 recently and there is a nuisance that I have had to live with since that.

Problem description:
I regularly work on files that I download from an LSP's proprietary tool. That tool generates pretranslated bilingual RTF files. In Studio 2014, I would just convert those to DOCX and load them in Studio.

The problem I have with Studio 2017 is that the pretranslated bilingual file is not recognized correctly as the Bilingual Workbench file type. Instead, Studio uses the Word 2013 – 2016 file type to generate the SDLXLIFF. This means, however, that any pretranslated segments, that should appear in the target-language column, are loaded in the source-language column instead.

Example, correct appearance:
Source: Document template in English. Pre-translated target: Dokumentvorlage auf English.

Example, false:
Source: Document template in English. Pre-translated target: empty
Source: Dokumentvorlage auf English. Pre-translated target: empty

I tried moving the Bilingual Workbech file type up in the Options > File Types settings. This will generate the SDLXLIFF file correctly, but throws a gazillion of error messages, such as "SDLXLIFF validation error at line 272 offset 29567: Key 13 sequence in the Keyref element urn:oasis:names:tc:xliff:document:1.2:U_tu_segsrc_mid does not refer to any key.

For the time being, my workaround is not having the bilingual RTF files pretranslated in the file preparation phase in the client's proprietary software: if not pre-translated, the bilingual SDLXLIFF files are generated correctly. The problem is that I am possibly losing some of the matches from the server-based TM.

Does anyone have a solution to this? I repeat, in Studio 2014 the workflow "Pretranslate > Generate bilingual RTF > Convert to DOCX > Load and process in Studio > Generate DOCX > Convert to RTF > Upload to server" used to work without a glitch.

Many thanks for any suggestions!
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Nora Diaz
Nora Diaz  Identity Verified
Mexico
Local time: 04:18
Member (2002)
English to Spanish
+ ...
DOCX or DOC Dec 7, 2016

Not sure if this helps, but what happens if you save as DOC instead of DOCX?

 
Stanislav Pokorny
Stanislav Pokorny  Identity Verified
Czech Republic
Local time: 12:18
English to Czech
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Unfortunately, no Dec 8, 2016

Hi Nora,
thanks for your reply. That's what I tried among the first things, along with RTF, all to no avail.
I also tried importing the legacy Studio 2014 Bilingual Workbench filetype settings to Studio 2017. Didn't work either.

[Upraveno: 2016-12-08 03:46 GMT]


 
MikeTrans
MikeTrans
Germany
Local time: 12:18
Italian to German
+ ...
I had a similar problem in my last project and my workaround was... Dec 8, 2016

Hi Stanislav, it's nice to hear from you again, I hope you are doing well!

I had a similar problem in my last project, it was a RTF with 3 columns, source-target-comments, unfortunately the rows were separated every so often by one single row going through all columns to make a 'title'. The file was probably a MemoQ bilingual export, but I'm not sure.
So I had the basic problem like all bilingual tables: Say you have a Word document with a table and 2 columns (source-target);
... See more
Hi Stanislav, it's nice to hear from you again, I hope you are doing well!

I had a similar problem in my last project, it was a RTF with 3 columns, source-target-comments, unfortunately the rows were separated every so often by one single row going through all columns to make a 'title'. The file was probably a MemoQ bilingual export, but I'm not sure.
So I had the basic problem like all bilingual tables: Say you have a Word document with a table and 2 columns (source-target); the question is how to get this in Studio 2017 so that you have a neat project file to work with immediately, all source segments and target segments filled correctly (and not like in your case treated wrongly and sequentially).

[EDIT; ADD]
First, you could try to get your content into an Excel file so that Trados will chose (or you instruct Trados to chose) a Bilingual Excel File Type. I don't know however if this will keep all the formatting of your original file. Now you should get a neat project file to work on.

Currently there seems to be NO File Type in Studio 2017 that would neatly create a project file for all scenarios where you have a table in a Word file.
Of course, I could chose the File Type tab/comma-separated text after converting my original docx/rtf, but I'm not sure if this will retain all formatting of the original document, and it will for sure not keep the right segmentation later on. So what I did was:

a)
In the original RTF file which I opened in MS Word 2013, edited the table to have exactly 3 flowing columns, I used the Search/Replace Fonts to hide specific content (what I needed to translate was written in red), I used the 'Inspect Document' to delete all hidden content so that only my 'ToDo content' was remaining; a lot of rows were empty, but I left them as is; I then simply duplicated the column with the source text and made a header EN/DE in the first row (necessary to import with Hearsome TMX editor!). I saved the RTF in DOCX.

b)
With Hearsome TMX Editor 8 (freely available now), I created a TMX from the DOCX, very convenient because all formats and tags will be kept. Still with the TMX Editor, I easily could delete emtpy rows, code-only rows, repetitions etc., and save the TMX back into another DOCX where I just delete the target column (otherwise: Studio will not import that one correctly!).
So I had 1 DOCX file to be translated which has exactly the *right segmentation* I need for my project after 'Prepare' the docx file in Studio.

When I was finished translating the docx file, I imported my client's origial RTF file and I simply copy/past and locked those segments that were wrongly in the source segments. Then, I pretranslated the remaining segments (the right ones, that I have already translated) and all I was left to do was adjusting the formatting in some cases.

Conclusion:
Of course it would be nice if Studio 2017 (and later) could:
- Import TMX files (as a standard feature in the File Type and not as additional OpenExchange tool).
- Can handle ALL docx and rtf files with tables to treat them as project files to have the correct source/target segments in the imported project files. Let's see when we get lucky...:)

This will not resolve your specific problem with RTF Workbench files, but I hope my scenario get you to work efficiently anyway!

Greetings,
Mike

[Edited at 2016-12-08 16:44 GMT]
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Stanislav Pokorny
Stanislav Pokorny  Identity Verified
Czech Republic
Local time: 12:18
English to Czech
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
No tables Dec 8, 2016

Hi Mike,
nice to e-meet you again too, and many thanks for your comprehensive reply.

I suspect I didn't make myself clear: the columns I referred to in my OP were just those in Studio Editor (source and target segments). The RTFs I download are conventional bilingual Workbench files which fail to load correctly in Studio.


 
MikeTrans
MikeTrans
Germany
Local time: 12:18
Italian to German
+ ...
Stanislav, please check this... Dec 9, 2016

...Check in the File Type options of your project settings for MS Word , that

"Process files with tw4winMark style"

is disabled (default). If you have accidentally enabled this it will treat any word binlingual file as a non-bilingual file.
Maybe that's the reason of your problem.


Mike


 


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Studio 2017 and Bilingual Workbench Files







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