Creating a translation memory from an existing translation
Thread poster: Jan Cerny
Jan Cerny
Jan Cerny
Austria
Sep 12, 2018

Hi,

in my company, text resources which need to be translated are defined in DTD, PROPERTIES and XML files.

For translating these text resources into new languages, external translators have already used OmegaT with great success.

However, when we update the translations of our "main languages" internally, we do not use OmegaT yet. Instead, we use revision control tools and diff tools to find out what needs to be translated, and text editors for the actual
... See more
Hi,

in my company, text resources which need to be translated are defined in DTD, PROPERTIES and XML files.

For translating these text resources into new languages, external translators have already used OmegaT with great success.

However, when we update the translations of our "main languages" internally, we do not use OmegaT yet. Instead, we use revision control tools and diff tools to find out what needs to be translated, and text editors for the actual translation.

Consequently, we do not have a translation memory for our "main languages" yet.

Is there a possibility to create a translation memory from our existing translations? If we could provide this to our colleagues, we might convince them to use OmegaT, and they would really benefit from it.
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Susan Welsh
Susan Welsh  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 14:30
Russian to English
+ ...
see archive Sep 12, 2018

This question has been asked several times on this forum. Basically, you need to align the files, which you can do in OmegaT or with other applications such as LF Aligner.

For example, t
... See more
This question has been asked several times on this forum. Basically, you need to align the files, which you can do in OmegaT or with other applications such as LF Aligner.

For example, this one: https://www.proz.com/forum/omegat_support/328213-how_to_reimport_final_translated_version_back_into_omega_t_cat_tools.html


[Edited at 2018-09-12 10:55 GMT]
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Jan Cerny
Jan Cerny
Austria
TOPIC STARTER
Align multiple DTD, PROPERTIES and XML files at once? Sep 12, 2018

Hi,

thanks for the answer.

I tested the integrated alignment tool in OmegaT. With this tool, alignment is possible for DTD, PROPERTIES and XML files. The exported TM file can naturally be used in OmegaT. And the result looks fine, at least for the three files I tested.

However, there is a problem: You can only align two files at once. As in my company we have hundreds of files to translate, I cannot imagine any sane way to create a TM using this alignment t
... See more
Hi,

thanks for the answer.

I tested the integrated alignment tool in OmegaT. With this tool, alignment is possible for DTD, PROPERTIES and XML files. The exported TM file can naturally be used in OmegaT. And the result looks fine, at least for the three files I tested.

However, there is a problem: You can only align two files at once. As in my company we have hundreds of files to translate, I cannot imagine any sane way to create a TM using this alignment tool.

LF Aligner cannot read my files ("Try converting your files to txt before running the aligner."). The same is true for NOVA Text Aligner.

The desktop app Stingray seems to work as well as the integrated OmegaT alignment tool, but it also works with pairs of files only.

So I guess my question is:
How can I align multiple files at once and then create a TM?
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Susan Welsh
Susan Welsh  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 14:30
Russian to English
+ ...
multiple files Sep 12, 2018

I don't know. If you don't get an answer here, post your question to the Yahoo group, which gets much more traffic, including from developers. https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/OmegaT/conversations/messages

 
Didier Briel
Didier Briel  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 19:30
English to French
+ ...
I don't know any standard solution Sep 13, 2018

Jan Cerny wrote:
I tested the integrated alignment tool in OmegaT. With this tool, alignment is possible for DTD, PROPERTIES and XML files. The exported TM file can naturally be used in OmegaT. And the result looks fine, at least for the three files I tested.

However, there is a problem: You can only align two files at once. As in my company we have hundreds of files to translate, I cannot imagine any sane way to create a TM using this alignment tool.

LF Aligner cannot read my files ("Try converting your files to txt before running the aligner."). The same is true for NOVA Text Aligner.

The desktop app Stingray seems to work as well as the integrated OmegaT alignment tool, but it also works with pairs of files only.

So I guess my question is:
How can I align multiple files at once and then create a TM?

As you have noted, "batch" aligners don't know how to work with technical files, and "technical" aligners don't do batch alignment.

If that's really a business need, and you are willing to invest in it, you could contact OmegaT's development team (I am OmegaT's project manager) to see whether a batch alignment feature could be added to OmegaT.

Didier


 
Jean-Christophe Helary
Jean-Christophe Helary
Japan
Local time: 03:30
Japanese to French
+ ...
concatenate the contents Sep 13, 2018

In a similar situation I would do this:

1) ensure that source and target files have the same order when listed in OmegaT
2) Export the translatable contents of a batch of source files by using OmegaT's Extract Text Contents script
3) Export the translatable contents of a batch of corresponding target files by using that same script
4) align the resulting 2 files


 
Jan Cerny
Jan Cerny
Austria
TOPIC STARTER
Disappointing but at least I know now Sep 13, 2018

Hi Didier,

thanks for your answer,

So it appears there is no out-of-the-box and free solution for my problems. That is disappointing, but at least I know now. I guess we will have to discuss how urgently we want to do this and whether we are willing to invest something into it.

[Edited at 2018-09-13 11:32 GMT]


 
FarkasAndras
FarkasAndras  Identity Verified
Local time: 19:30
English to Hungarian
+ ...
Convert Sep 13, 2018

If LF Aligner otherwise meets your needs and the only road block is that it can't read the source files, you can pre-process the source files. The best option is probably Studio. Batch convert your files to sdlxliff and feed those to LFA. Use the newest version of LFA (4.2). I do that myself with large alignment jobs because Studio is pretty good at extracting text in meaningful blocks in the correct order. The results are often better than what you get with other text extraction methods, includ... See more
If LF Aligner otherwise meets your needs and the only road block is that it can't read the source files, you can pre-process the source files. The best option is probably Studio. Batch convert your files to sdlxliff and feed those to LFA. Use the newest version of LFA (4.2). I do that myself with large alignment jobs because Studio is pretty good at extracting text in meaningful blocks in the correct order. The results are often better than what you get with other text extraction methods, including those baked into LFA.
If it's all a big mess and you'd rather have someone else do it, contact me off the forum.

[Edited at 2018-09-13 08:20 GMT]
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Creating a translation memory from an existing translation






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