Translation/CAT Tool help - Trados or MemoQ for Excel documents?
May 26, 2017 10:39 AM Subscribe
I just got my first project, hooray! It's a a doozy of an Excel document (which has already been about 1/10th translated into English), and comes with a significant amount of repeated words and phrases. I learned that most pros use CAT tools to maximize output and efficiency, so downloaded a trial of MemoQ - but nothing is working as it should for me. Is MemoQ a good option for Excel documents? If so, where am I going wrong? If not, should I switch to another tool such as Trados?
First off, here's my setup:
Windows 10
Excel (Office 2016)
MemoQ Adriatic (at the moment)
I was originally going to translate it directly through Excel... but upon doing some research and speaking with a colleague, it seemed like going with a CAT tool from the outset would be a better idea. I narrowed down my choices down to Trados and MemoQ, and ended up going for MemoQ, as I heard that Trados takes a bit more time to get into (plus MemoQ apparently works just as well).
I watched this tutorial, which was officially recommended by MemoQ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOPObtHItWY
I thought the instructor taught the material well, and everything seemed intuitive enough... but nothing worked as expected when I tried things on my own.
My document is already partially translated from Japanese to English, so I first tried importing the original source document and my partially translated document as a corpus/alignment in the LiveDocs section, as was covered in the tutorial video. The documents were imported successfully, but at least half of the translations did not line up at all, even the repeating words/phrases; there are a LOT of repeating elements so it would be tedious and a waste of valuable time if I was to correct each one manually.
After some flailing, I decided to just move on to the actual translation section of MemoQ and hope that leaving the alignment out wouldn't set me back too much (The client would like to see at least a decent chunk of the project completed by early next week).
So I created the project and translation memory, which I believe worked just fine. I next attempted to import all sorts of combinations into the translation section: The original Japanese and partially translated Excel documents; just the partially translated document; and finally both Excel language files combined into one document (on separate tabs). I ran into another error at this point - the preview creation failed each time! The error message said the file size was too big, even when I imported the separate documents piecemeal - so I don't even know if the document is being formatted or translated correctly, which is frustrating.
As for my questions:
1. Would you say that MemoQ is on par with Trados when it comes to translating Excel documents? If so, where do you think I might be going wrong in importing/starting a partially translated document? And if not, should I make the switch now before I sink too much time into MemoQ? (keep in mind that I really need to be working on the actual translation at this point, so getting set up ASAP to translate Excel documents efficiently is priority numero uno.)
2. Is there any prep work you feel is a must before starting to translate something like this, which I might be missing?
I have a deadline and unfortunately don't have as much time as I might like to study up on this kind of program - so I am hoping to focus on just one of them, and want to make sure MemoQ is a good choice for Excel. I've already spent a number of hours trying to sort this out that I could have used for translating, and the clock is ticking... so I would really appreciate the help.
Let me know if you need any more info, and thanks in advance.
First off, here's my setup:
Windows 10
Excel (Office 2016)
MemoQ Adriatic (at the moment)
I was originally going to translate it directly through Excel... but upon doing some research and speaking with a colleague, it seemed like going with a CAT tool from the outset would be a better idea. I narrowed down my choices down to Trados and MemoQ, and ended up going for MemoQ, as I heard that Trados takes a bit more time to get into (plus MemoQ apparently works just as well).
I watched this tutorial, which was officially recommended by MemoQ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOPObtHItWY
I thought the instructor taught the material well, and everything seemed intuitive enough... but nothing worked as expected when I tried things on my own.
My document is already partially translated from Japanese to English, so I first tried importing the original source document and my partially translated document as a corpus/alignment in the LiveDocs section, as was covered in the tutorial video. The documents were imported successfully, but at least half of the translations did not line up at all, even the repeating words/phrases; there are a LOT of repeating elements so it would be tedious and a waste of valuable time if I was to correct each one manually.
After some flailing, I decided to just move on to the actual translation section of MemoQ and hope that leaving the alignment out wouldn't set me back too much (The client would like to see at least a decent chunk of the project completed by early next week).
So I created the project and translation memory, which I believe worked just fine. I next attempted to import all sorts of combinations into the translation section: The original Japanese and partially translated Excel documents; just the partially translated document; and finally both Excel language files combined into one document (on separate tabs). I ran into another error at this point - the preview creation failed each time! The error message said the file size was too big, even when I imported the separate documents piecemeal - so I don't even know if the document is being formatted or translated correctly, which is frustrating.
As for my questions:
1. Would you say that MemoQ is on par with Trados when it comes to translating Excel documents? If so, where do you think I might be going wrong in importing/starting a partially translated document? And if not, should I make the switch now before I sink too much time into MemoQ? (keep in mind that I really need to be working on the actual translation at this point, so getting set up ASAP to translate Excel documents efficiently is priority numero uno.)
2. Is there any prep work you feel is a must before starting to translate something like this, which I might be missing?
I have a deadline and unfortunately don't have as much time as I might like to study up on this kind of program - so I am hoping to focus on just one of them, and want to make sure MemoQ is a good choice for Excel. I've already spent a number of hours trying to sort this out that I could have used for translating, and the clock is ticking... so I would really appreciate the help.
Let me know if you need any more info, and thanks in advance.
I find MemoQ a bit easier to figure out than Trados--and I say this as someone who has worked with half a dozen different CAT tools over the past 9 years or so--but it's still probably a steep learning curve and I definitely don't recommend starting out with trying to do an alignment if you've never worked with CAT tools before. I have yet to successfully figure out how to do alignments on MemoQ and any time I have to do one I go back to an older, simpler freebie application (WordFast online, FWIW). I also rarely muck around with the preview mode.
Does the partially translated version also have all the rest of the untranslated text in the original source language? If that's the case, you don't really need to do an alignment. Just set up a project then import only the partially translated version of the document. Use the copy source-to-target keyboard shortcut for the parts of the document that are already in your target language. If the file is too big for preview mode to work, just go on translating in the translation window and then you can export the target excel file if you ever need to check how something will look in the final file format.
Feel free to message me at drlith1@gmail.com if you need any more help. I work with MemoQ 2015 and I don't know how different Adriatic is but hopefully I can provide some guidance.
posted by drlith at 1:27 PM on May 26, 2017
Does the partially translated version also have all the rest of the untranslated text in the original source language? If that's the case, you don't really need to do an alignment. Just set up a project then import only the partially translated version of the document. Use the copy source-to-target keyboard shortcut for the parts of the document that are already in your target language. If the file is too big for preview mode to work, just go on translating in the translation window and then you can export the target excel file if you ever need to check how something will look in the final file format.
Feel free to message me at drlith1@gmail.com if you need any more help. I work with MemoQ 2015 and I don't know how different Adriatic is but hopefully I can provide some guidance.
posted by drlith at 1:27 PM on May 26, 2017
If you are totally new to CAT tools, I don't recommend either - instead, try the free trial version of Memsource, which is basically a two-column table, has a simple free editor and much easier to navigate.
If the existing translation is in the same Excel document as the source text (ie, in a different column), then you should really import as multilingual Excel, and designate the source and target columns. This way, as drlith mentioned, you don't need to align at at all, and the existing translation will already be populated in the Memsource file.
(Even if the existing translation is in a separate Excel, I recommend copying & pasting it into the source Excel to create the above situation.)
Feel free to message me if you have questions about this.
posted by war wrath of wraith at 8:08 AM on May 27, 2017
If the existing translation is in the same Excel document as the source text (ie, in a different column), then you should really import as multilingual Excel, and designate the source and target columns. This way, as drlith mentioned, you don't need to align at at all, and the existing translation will already be populated in the Memsource file.
(Even if the existing translation is in a separate Excel, I recommend copying & pasting it into the source Excel to create the above situation.)
Feel free to message me if you have questions about this.
posted by war wrath of wraith at 8:08 AM on May 27, 2017
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posted by ClarissaWAM at 12:49 PM on May 26, 2017