José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
Now and then I get requests for cost estimates on translating web sites, so I had to streamline the process... especially because there must be cheaper vendors at large: I don't recall ever having been assigned such a job.
First, I download the web site to my hard drive, using
HTTrack, freeware.
Then I use an ancient version of
Cats Cradle, from the days it was free. It's pretty affordable now, USD 50, and I'd buy it immediately if I was ever assigned a web site translation.
Cats Cradle is a tool for translating web sites, which includes its own internal CAT tool. It also has a word-counting feature that will generate a spreadsheet containing all the file names and their respective word counts. This enables the client to remove any page(s) they don't want translated, and recalculate the total.
One caveat with Cats Cradle is that it won't touch links, URLs. In order to explain it simply, let's assume the site is in EN, they want it translated into PT. If I do the job with Cats Cradle, and upload my PT output, it will OVERWRITE exactly all pages in EN with the corresponding translations in PT.
I think that's good. As a translator, if they give me, say,
site.com, I have no idea whether their webmaster intends to have
site.com.br, br.site.com, site.com/br or what. So I warn them emphatically about the overwriting possibility, and leave them with the entire task of adjusting the links. Of course, I work on a COPY of the downloaded files in a different folder.