Trados and colour blindness Thread poster: RobinB
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RobinB 
United States
Local time: 10:41
German to English
A young man recently started working for us who's severely colour blind. This is self-evidently causing problems for him when he's working in the Trados Workbench because he can't see immediately whether a segment is a 100% or fuzzy match based on the text colour. Neither, of course, can he look at a pretranslated Word file and get an impression of where 100% and fuzzy matches are located or clustered in the file.
Does anybody have any experience on how to overcome this particular p... See more A young man recently started working for us who's severely colour blind. This is self-evidently causing problems for him when he's working in the Trados Workbench because he can't see immediately whether a segment is a 100% or fuzzy match based on the text colour. Neither, of course, can he look at a pretranslated Word file and get an impression of where 100% and fuzzy matches are located or clustered in the file.
Does anybody have any experience on how to overcome this particular problem? And does anybody know if SDL Trados (now) offers a solution to help people with this disability?
TIA,
Robin ▲ Collapse
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Jerzy Czopik
Germany
Local time: 17:41
Member (2003)
Polish to German
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| Use text delimiters and Workbench | Aug 22, 2007 |
Text delimiters (to be very precise: the one between source and target text) do show, how the match value was.
Workbench shows the match value also, so he will have to look at those.
Jerzy
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PAS
Local time: 17:41
Polish to English
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| Windows color schemes? | Aug 22, 2007 |
Windows lets you select the colors for pretty much every element on your screen (regardless of application).
There are high contrast schemes for people with eyesight disabilities. Perhaps it's possible to change the colours so that a colour-blind person will recognize the difference.
Right-click your desktop, select properties and then select the appearance tab. Work from there.
HTH
Pawel Skalinski
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RobinB
United States
Local time: 10:41
German to English
TOPIC STARTER
Jerzy Czopik wrote:
Text delimiters (to be very precise: the one between source and target text) do show, how the match value was.
Workbench shows the match value also, so he will have to look at those. Jerzy
That's what he's doing at the moment, Jerzy, but of course it really slows him down and puts him at a disadvantage compared with his colleagues.
What I'm looking for is a solution where he can work just as quickly and efficiently as a non-colour blind translator, i.e. where Trados doesn't "discriminate" against him because of his disability.
Robin
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RobinB
United States
Local time: 10:41
German to English
TOPIC STARTER | One colour scheme for all.... | Aug 22, 2007 |
PAS wrote:
Windows lets you select the colors for pretty much every element on your screen (regardless of application).
There are high contrast schemes for people with eyesight disabilities. Perhaps it's possible to change the colours so that a colour-blind person will recognize the difference.
HTH
Pawel Skalinski
Pawel,
Unfortunately Windows doesn't really offer much help for people who are colour blind. And we'd really need a colour scheme that works for everybody, whether colour blind of not.
So: the big question is whether Trados (or any other TM tool) can allow you to denote 100% and fuzzy matches other than by text colour.
Robin
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Jerzy Czopik
Germany
Local time: 17:41
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
You are absolutely right - this is not convenient at all...
But for the time being I don't know any better solution.
In Word this would most probably mean rewriting the macro to present text in a different way.
This has lead me to present an idea at SDL Trados Ideas web page, which is now visible there.
My idea is to present 100% on black background with white letters and leave all other matches as they are. This would at least help when translating. Unfotunately this is ... See more You are absolutely right - this is not convenient at all...
But for the time being I don't know any better solution.
In Word this would most probably mean rewriting the macro to present text in a different way.
This has lead me to present an idea at SDL Trados Ideas web page, which is now visible there.
My idea is to present 100% on black background with white letters and leave all other matches as they are. This would at least help when translating. Unfotunately this is not so easy for reviewing, but might as well be implemented there. Let's wait and see how people at SDL Trados will react.
Jerzy ▲ Collapse
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PAS
Local time: 17:41
Polish to English
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| Different users? | Aug 22, 2007 |
RobinB wrote:
And we'd really need a colour scheme that works for everybody, whether colour blind of not.
I don't use Trados (alas!), but even if that person uses the same computer, can't he log in as a different user, with his own color scheme?
Also, maybe there is something in the Microsoft knowledge base?
P.A.S.
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RobinB
United States
Local time: 10:41
German to English
TOPIC STARTER | One size doesn't really fit all, unfortunately | Aug 22, 2007 |
PAS wrote:
I don't use Trados (alas!)
Don't apologise! It's a pretty dumb system, and the underlying mechanics haven't really progressed very far since the first time I used it back in the (very) early 1990s. That said, however, I believe that all TM systems currently in use today - irrespective of whether they're flat file or database systems - are basically "1st generation" systems, as we really haven't seen any fundamental progress at all (or do you know of a TM system that offers parsing and morphology?).
but even if that person uses the same computer, can't he log in as a different user, with his own color scheme?
Unfortunately, these things are coded at file level, so it's "one size fits all" (although it doesn't really, if you see what I mean).
Also, maybe there is something in the Microsoft knowledge base?
Nothing we've been able to find, at least.
Thanks anyway,
Robin
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Paul Lambert
United States
Local time: 08:41
French to English
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| Just a suggestion, not sure if it would work.... | Aug 22, 2007 |
I'm not too clued-up on colour-blindness, but is there a way of maybe using black and light grey as your colours, and that way you could tell by the shade of the text, as opposed to its actual colour, whether it's a 100% or fuzzy match? Like I said I'm not colour-blind so don't know if this would help, but maybe it's an option.....
[Edited at 2007-08-22 11:05]
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Marc P (X)
Local time: 17:41
German to English
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| Trados and colour blindness | Aug 22, 2007 |
The text colour is just a character property. It should therefore be relatively easy to define alternative character properties for a given case. Alternative character properites could be different colours (which would benefit those with a minor form of colour blindness, i.e. 7% of the male population), but also different backgrounds (shaded, hatched, etc.), or perhaps even different fonts.
Perhaps SDL would consider adding this feature, if it isn't there already. I'm surprised some... See more The text colour is just a character property. It should therefore be relatively easy to define alternative character properties for a given case. Alternative character properites could be different colours (which would benefit those with a minor form of colour blindness, i.e. 7% of the male population), but also different backgrounds (shaded, hatched, etc.), or perhaps even different fonts.
Perhaps SDL would consider adding this feature, if it isn't there already. I'm surprised something similar doesn't already exist at operating system level, though.
Marc ▲ Collapse
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| Hope for the future? | Aug 22, 2007 |
Despite the fact that eight per cent of the male population (and only 0.5 per cent of the female population) suffer from red-green colour blindness, this problem is very seldomly taken into consideration.
I am colourblind and have problems distinguishing between yellow and light green (as used in Trados), and I sometimes ask my wife or someone else when I am in doubt. Red commas or dots on a printout with black letters are virtually impossible for me to see.
However, in... See more Despite the fact that eight per cent of the male population (and only 0.5 per cent of the female population) suffer from red-green colour blindness, this problem is very seldomly taken into consideration.
I am colourblind and have problems distinguishing between yellow and light green (as used in Trados), and I sometimes ask my wife or someone else when I am in doubt. Red commas or dots on a printout with black letters are virtually impossible for me to see.
However, in SDLX it is possible to personalize the colour coding of segments, so maybe in time this will also be possible in Trados or perhaps in a combined Trados/SDLX clone programme, as SDL now owns Trados. I hope so.
Jørgen ▲ Collapse
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| Possible software solutions | Aug 22, 2007 |
At the bottom of the Wikipedia article on colour blindness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colourblind), there are links to "Attempts to improve images for color blind observers".
Maybe some of these are helpful. If aynone tries, please let us know...
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Ulrich Roos (X)
Local time: 17:41
German
| Have you tried setting the translated text colors? | Aug 24, 2007 |
Hi everyone,
probably I missed something but have you tried to set the text colors under Options -> Translated Text Colors... ?
When you set the colors there you should bear the following things in mind:
- If you recieve a pretranslated word document, then it has the color scheme that the project manager used. To adapt it to your colors you have to pretranslate it again.
- Clean-up needs to be done with the same color scheme that was used durin... See more Hi everyone,
probably I missed something but have you tried to set the text colors under Options -> Translated Text Colors... ?
When you set the colors there you should bear the following things in mind:
- If you recieve a pretranslated word document, then it has the color scheme that the project manager used. To adapt it to your colors you have to pretranslate it again.
- Clean-up needs to be done with the same color scheme that was used during translation. If you have to deliver bilingual word documents you might need to synchronize with your customer or create a deliverable with the standard color scheme.
I hope this helps a bit.
Ulrich ▲ Collapse
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