Comments on: XML Editor for translations

Question: XML Editor for translations

strawberryviagra — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 18:38:48 -0800

Looking for a free/cheap/convenient (in that order - will pay if it makes life simple) XML editor. [mi]

I need to have text within some XML documents translated into Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages.

I'd like to 'mark up/colourise' the text in a way that makes it easier for the translators to identify and translate inline.

I want to minimise double handling/parsing of XML into other formats as much as possible.

*The text is unfortunately part of the XML elements - so using the MS Word reader doesn't show the text separately to the tags.

By: sanko

sanko — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 18:50:55 -0800

Notepad++

By: tmcw

tmcw — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 18:55:30 -0800

oXygen?

By: mmascolino

mmascolino — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 20:10:32 -0800

jEdit

By: nj_subgenius

nj_subgenius — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 20:24:02 -0800

Perhaps XML Notepad 2007 will be helpful.

By: dammitjim

dammitjim — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 21:42:13 -0800

You don't mention platform, so I assume it's Windows. Eclipse also has XML editing capabilities, using any of these plugins, some of which are free and some of which probably don't suck.

By: hackwolf

hackwolf — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 22:49:15 -0800

I might be over-complicating things, but it sounds like you might want the ability to edit in a styled view as well as the raw XML. For cheap WYSIWYG XML editors, I like Syntext Serna. It's easy to integrate with if you need to do that, not too expensive for personal/home use ($89), and you can edit the markup directly as well as via the formatted view. If you don't mind seeing nothing but markup, I'll Nth the oXygen recommendation. If you really, absolutely have to go free, try Butterfly XML

By: singingfish

singingfish — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 23:20:24 -0800

emacs is ok, for pretty much any text based format including international character sets, once you work out the different input methods and go through the emacs tutorial when you first start using it (about 1/2 hour).

The other advantage with emacs is that once you get over the initial learning hump (rather than curve), you've got it for life as it's the Free Software Foundation's flagship product.

(happy emacs user for ~ 12 years now :-) )

By: crazycanuck

crazycanuck — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 06:58:57 -0800

If you are hiring pros, then colourising the text is a waste of time. Professional translators use software like Trados when translating text. They do not typically do translations inline. Therefore, the cheapest and most convenient solution is to do nothing and let the translators do their jobs.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 10:14:49 -0800

I've written two very large XML-based applications with jEdit, and I've never found anything that works as well.

By: strawberryviagra

strawberryviagra — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 14:28:06 -0800

CrazyCanuck: I've worked with translators doing this kind of thing before - most are able to handle inline XML translations, however, due to the structure in this particular experiment, there are 2 instances of each piece of text - they only need translate one of them - it's complicated, and I seek to make it easier for them.

I've had a look at a few of these - I'll spend the day checking which is the most effective/easiest to use. Thanks everyone for your suggestions (I'll update the thread later today).

By: AmbroseChapel

AmbroseChapel — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:24:25 -0800

Having asked a similar question about XML editors recently, I like XML BluePrint which isn't free but is pretty full-featured for the price.

By: strawberryviagra

strawberryviagra — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 22:38:42 -0800

We ended up just re-saving them as RTF files, marking up the text, translating, then saving them as XML - seems to be working OK.

I now have a bunch of options though, for doing future XML work - so thanks again mates!

By: strawberryviagra

strawberryviagra — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 23:08:53 -0800

Let me clarify that - we saved the translated RTFs out of Word Pad as .txt files.