software - 4

Well, the build-up to its appearance on the translation stage was big, as you might expect from SDL Trados! Have you heard the news yet? If you're also a translator and use translation software to help you with your daily work, then you may already be aware that the largest maker of computer-assisted translation (CAT) software tools recently launched the latest version of its key product (on 30 September).

It almost seems to have been a little early in arriving on the market, actually, as it's known as "Studio 2014" ... but then again, I expect they wanted to get a competitive edge over one of their main competitors, the Hungarian firm Kilgray (the makers of memoQ 2013 and other state-of-the-art tools for translators, translation agencies and terminologists).

The previous version of SDL Trados's tool, Studio 2011, has been around for a while and become widely used among freelance translators and agencies alike, partly because it supports bilingual file formats created by its much earlier predecessor, Trados 2007, which many agencies once invested in and weren't prepared to drop when Studio first came out.

Studio 2014 is based on the 2011 version, but the interface has been enhanced to make it easier to use. One of the main changes you'll notice is that a ribbon-based interface has now been adopted, organising related functions in tabs in a similar way to the programs that come with Microsoft Office 2007/2010. So if you're used to working with the latter, you ought to find it relatively easy to get to grips with Studio 2014. In addition to that, new areas have been added to the interface for training purposes – you can now access training videos directly from the program, for example – and you can access additional "apps" for Studio from here, too, by following an internal link to SDL's OpenExchange platform rather than having to call up the page separately in your web browser. So users can get information faster and more conveniently, which is great.

Apart from this, the sales people at SDL Trados have been listening to user feedback and passing it on to the developers, who have consequently come up with a number of "new" features such as AutoSave (to save your work automatically), Track Changes, Real-time Preview, a fast alignment tool (to replace WinAlign), QuickMerge (for combining individual files to speed up translation) and a customisable editing environment with user-defined short cuts for specific functions. (These are certainly enhancements in Studio, but they have actually been around in memoQ for a while.)

A few of the new features really are novel, however:

• enhanced concordance search, i.e. terms are looked up automatically in your translation memory (TM) if a search at segment level fails to find anything there, and partial matches are shown, which can help you come up with an appropriate translation
  
   


• InQuote, which is a new OpenExchange app that can be installed in Studio 2014 to generate quotations from project statistics. These stats can be output in Word or Excel or copied into another application or e-mail from your Clipboard to send to a customer, for example.

Well, that's the rundown so far. I'll learn more about it once I've tried it out myself. Hope it's not too buggy, being a new release...

To find out about the software suite yourself, you can watch various short videos that SDL Trados has produced. Click here, for instance: SDL Trados Product Tutorial Video. (N.B.: there's no sound in the video.)

The presentation below is also informative and it's spoken at a reasonable speed (unlike various other videos they've made, which are too short to be of much value and are narrated much too fast for non-English speakers):

• Studio 2014 - Getting started; a quick tour, by Daniel Brockmann, SDL Trados (lasts approx. 15 mins.).

This video is actually one of those that are accessible from the training tab in Studio 2014. Dominique Pivard has been kind enough to provide the individual links on his own blog, CATguru's vlog, so anyone can watch them in a browser and get an idea about using the CAT tool that way.

In sum, I'd say Studio 2014 looks like a very promising, mature tool, even if many of its new features aren't pioneering ones. That said, I'm keen to see what the forthcoming version of memoQ 2013 ("R2" aka "6.8") will be like, which is due out at the end of October and is said to include several new features that will make our work more convenient – like the ability to incorporate final changes made to translations into your translation memory once the texts have been exported (e.g. customer changes). Studio can already do this to a degree if the translation is converted from SDLXLIFF to Word beforehand, but this new solution may go much further. And be a real time-saver!

Best,

Carl

images: spotlights © Rainer Sturm/pixelio.de, memoQ logo © Kilgray Translation Technologies, Studio 2014 logo © SDL plc

• Related posts: Useful extensions for Studio on SDL OpenExchange
  
   


• multifarious, SDL's blog on its CAT products, written by Paul Filken. Click here to view a recent post on customising Studio 2014 using OpenExchange apps
  
   


• Emma Goldsmith's blog post on features of Studio 2014 for "beginners" (she was a beta tester)
  
   


• To sign up for a free 30-day trial of Studio 2014, go to the online form here. (Update: although the form's available online now, I've just been told by a sales rep here in Germany that the trial version hasn't come out yet [it's 15 October now!], so we'll just have to wait for it a bit longer, I guess. Maybe until 2014 after all...!)

Proz.com is holding a virtual conference day for freelance translators today. The event is free – all you need to do is register as a Proz user (if you're not one already) and then log in to the Proz platform and register to attend the conference.

The event starts at 12 noon and is due to go on until 9.15 tonight. Presentations on various topics in English will be held at specific times throughout the day (see the programme here), while other presentations in other languages are available upon demand (just click on them and then they'll start).

Here are just a few of the subjects that are going to be covered today:

• How to use the Proz.com platform successfully
  
  


• EU terminology for medical translators
  
  


• Online marketing (this is actually a group discussion that you can take part in)
  
  


• CAT, machine translation and virtual interpreting – the use of technology in translation
  
  


• Time management (another group discussion)
  
  


• Human and machine translation
  
  


• Codes of ethics, standards of practice and national certification for translators
  
  


• Internet search techniques
  
  


• Speech-recognition software (group discussion).

If you've got a bit of time to spare, why not drop by and watch a presentation or have a say in a group discussion? It's a good opportunity for translators to learn more about subjects that concern them. Apart from being able to watch the free presentations, you can also benefit from big discounts on software for translators thanks to Proz's special promotion.

Have fun at the conference!

Carl

P.S. This event is actually the first of a series of educational events to be held by Proz.com this week: from Mon. 30 Sept. to Fri. 4 October. Click on this page for more details. Wednesday's event on working with CAT tools looks particularly interesting.

For a while now, I've been receiving some rather odd applications for freelance work by e-mail. This prompted me to write a post about the do's and don'ts of applying for freelance work this way a little while back, which some readers will hopefully find of help for their own marketing activities. However, what I've now discovered is that most of the odd-looking applications were actually scams produced by people wanting to get assignments – and ultimately money – from gullible customers around the world.

How did I find that out? Well, simply by looking up some of the applicants' names on the Net. Many of the names that have been used seem a little strange and are actually fictitious, so it turns out. (Not all of them are, though, which makes investigation trickier.) The intriguing thing about applications of this kind is that they apparently contain lots of background information about the person that is true. Because it's been stolen from existing translators who once made their CVs available to the wrong readership by mistake!

A long directory of scammers who claim to be translators has been created by João Roque Dias, a Portuguese translator. Click here to access the page. It lists the name of the "applicant", the e-mail address they have used and the original translator whose personal details were stolen (the victims of identity theft, in other words). If you receive scam mails of this kind, but can't find the person's details on this list, then please contact the people now running the site [as of 15 Feb. 2014] and forward the messages to them so the data can be checked. Any new scammers found will then be added.

To find out more about this issue, which seems to be a big one affecting the translation industry (and many other fields as well), you might want to read the section that Proz.com has created on scammers and identity protection; click here to go to it.

There are also plenty of other sources of helpful information you can refer to, many of which are on the internet. Marta Stelmaszak, for example, has written a detailed blog post on how translators can protect the CVs they send out to prospective customers from abuse; click here to read her advice. (Among other things, she refers to an article on the BBC's website on what information you shouldn't put in a CV in the first place.)

One easy step you can take is to save your CV as a PDF file, which makes it harder for people to extract the information quickly (unless they know how). You can also write-protect the file and prevent any content from being copied by using a program like Adobe Acrobat®, say – pick the appropriate security settings before you generate the PDF file (this short video from Adobe will show you how).

If you haven't done so already, take a look at the CV you've prepared for new customers (and the personal details you've included in any internet profiles you've created on platforms such as Proz.com, Xing, LinkedIn or Facebook) and think about steps you could take to protect your own identity. This is something that's becoming increasingly necessary as the amount of networking and self-marketing we do via the internet is growing. It can be as easy as leaving out your date and place of birth and adding the words "Further details upon request" for anyone who is really interested in working with you.

And in addition to that, please think twice about sending detailed personal data to agencies en masse. Hand-pick the agencies you want to contact after checking out their websites and seeing if they are likely to be interested in receiving your application; the more you personalise your covering letter and match the requirements they specify on their website, the better your chances are of being accepted as a potential supplier of translations. By increasing the quality of the contacts you pick, you ought to find your applications become more effective and you can keep track of the agencies that have your personal details much more easily. Protect your identity – and your reputation as a translator.

Regards

Carl

If you are the kind of translator who likes reading about the latest news from the translation industry, picking up tips about using your computer, learning about programs that can help you in your work and hearing an expert's opinions on new product developments, then you ought to have a look at Jost Zetzsche's "Tool Box" newsletter.

It comes in two editions: a basic one that contains several short articles and a teaser from a longer one, which is free of charge, and a "premium" version, which features all the articles in their entirety and a few more to boot, plus access to the archives, and is available at an annual subscription fee of $25. To get a copy, all you need to do is sign up for it, pick the edition you want and say which e-mail address it should be sent to, then it will land in your inbox on a regular basis.

The basic version of the current issue, no. 225, contains a piece on SDL Trados Studio 2014 and MultiTerm 2014, which are due out around the end of September this year. Jost discusses the revamped interface of Studio 2014, which – like Microsoft Office 2007 and later versions – includes a ribbon instead of drop-down menus. He also mentions Studio's new alignment tool, which has been integrated into the program for the first time and replaces the separate WinAlign application that was needed in earlier versions.

Apart from taking a look at SDL Trados's latest innovations, Jost also addresses the topic of machine translation (MT), looking at what offerings are currently available to freelance translators rather than large translation companies and corporate users, which have tended to be the focus of MT service providers up until now (the full version of that interesting article is in the premium edition).

What else is in the newsletter? Well, the basic version starts with a lengthy, descriptive piece on João Rodrigues, a Portuguese interpreter who lived in Japan in the 16th century, then it jumps to the fate of QuarkXPress, the DTP software that lost much of its market share to Adobe's InDesign, and goes on to mention CopyFlow, a tool that enables you to work on such DTP files. It ends with an announcement about an event to be held by an American translators' and interpreters' association in September where Peter Schmitt (University of Leipzig, Germany) will be talking about "new trends and risks at the translator's workbench".

One of the advantages of getting the premium edition is that Jost also discusses features of personal computers that can help you get more out of your own PC. So as you can see, the newsletter's a mixed bag of subjects with something of interest for everyone.

Hope you enjoy the read and find it helpful as well.

Regards

Carl

image: courtesy of Jost Zetzsche, International Writers' Group

This is just a brief reminder that there's a free webinar on Kilgray's new Language Terminal today (see my earlier post on the user platform here). The webinar will be in English and take place between 5 and 6 p.m. CEST.

Here are some of the points that are going to be covered in it (taken almost straight from an official description of the contents):

• Profile listing: publish a list of your services online and allow customers to find it, or search for profiles of other memoQ users.



• Project register: turn Language Terminal into your own project register. Turn your analyses into project quotes, send quotes to customers, deliver your work and track the status of your projects – directly from memoQ 2013.



• Back up your translation projects: store your translation projects in the cloud (at work) and restore them from wherever you happen to be running memoQ (at home, for example).



• Import Adobe® InDesign™ documents with a preview: produce XLIFF files that have a live preview in memoQ. Import native INDD files, not just IDMLs and INXs.



• Light resource marketplace: share your memoQ light resources with other Language Terminal members and gain access to theirs. Save others the effort of putting together a complex filter configuration or segmentation rule and in return save yourself time by using resources that others have made available. [end of quote]
  

A number of other points are also on the agenda as well.

If you're interested in finding out more about this promising server resource for translators (and not just memoQ users), then you should register for the webinar by filling in the online form available here. By attending, you'll be able to ask questions and get answers straightaway. N.B. This event is primarily intended for freelance users rather than LSPs, although they will be keen to know more about the way you can use Language Terminal to look for translators who work with memoQ).

Those of you who are already familiar with SDL's OpenExchange platform will see that Kilgray's platform is only similar in terms of its "light resource marketplace". Even then, it's actual users who mainly upload light resources to share with other memoQ users, while OpenExchange really is a marketplace where third-party enhancements for Studio 2011 are either sold or distributed free of charge.

This promises to be an interesting event.

Regards

Carl

images: my own screen shots

The good thing about e-learning is that it is generally done at your own pace rather than the speed set by a teacher, it's done at a time of day and a location that you can generally choose yourself, and in some cases, you can even tackle the subjects that are covered in the order that suits you best. So it's a very flexible form of instruction, which helps to make it effective.

If you're new to memoQ or already have some experience with it, but feel it would be good to get a structured overview of Kilgray's CAT tool, then why not consider taking the introductory e-learning course offered by the firm behind the translation tool? This course consists of 10 lessons:

• Lesson 1: Setting up a project
  
   


• Lesson 2: Translation 1 (opening a document, translating, saving it)
  
   


• Lesson 3: Translation 2 (adding a doc to a project, analysis, tags/nos./non-translatables)
  
   


• Lesson 4: Terminology
  
   


• Lesson 5: Quality assurance
  
   


• Lesson 6: LiveDocs (document corpus, text alignment, add to TM)
  
   


• Lesson 7: Understanding memoQ (projects, resource console, etc.)
  
   


• Lesson 8: Tracking changes and exporting files
  
   


• Lesson 9: Working with packages
  
   


• Lesson 10: Working on online projects.

Kilgray recommends participants to do two lessons a week, so it would take you five weeks to do the whole course. (You might want to do more than two a week and get through it faster, which is doable.) The lessons vary in length, but are all around half an hour long with a brief summary at the end of each one in the form of short questions with three possible answers. The style of them is like a webinar in which the tutor talks as you watch their presentation (some user interaction would make the lessons more dynamic in my opinion, even if it's just physically ticking the right answers to questions).

Once you've worked through all the lessons, you can then do a final multiple-choice test with 30 questions to see what you've learnt. Kilgray will give you a certificate on completing the course and passing the test (to do that, you'll need to get at least half of the answers right).

More e-learning courses to do with memoQ are currently being developed by Kilgray's training partner Loctimize GmbH, which is a German company specialising in (international) CAT-tool training. The memoQ course they are working on right now is intended for project managers working with translators in a memoQ Server environment.

The 10-part introductory ("level 1") course outlined above is free for anyone who already has a valid memoQ licence (you'll be asked to key in your licence number when you register). Otherwise it will cost you 90 euros + VAT (which is a very reasonable nine euros per lesson).

To sign up for access to the course, just click here: registration

If you have any questions about it, please contact Kilgray by writing to their sales department (sales [at] kilgray [dot] com).

Have fun! I'm quite an experienced user, but still found the course interesting and I picked up a number of new things, so it was certainly worth doing.

Regards

Carl

images: e-learning / freeimages.co.uk, Kilgray logo & memoQ: courtesy of Kilgray Translation Technologies

Related links

Kilgray's blog post announcing the first course in January 2013

My review of Kevin Lossner's e-book on memoQ 6.0

Tess Whitty, a Swedish translator I know, recently wrote a post on her own blog that was about unsolicited e-mails she gets from other translators. As I read it, I nodded in agreement with each of the points she made. Take the introduction, for example:

"Almost every day, I receive emails addressed to 'Dear Sir/Madam' from freelance translators applying for a job as a freelance translator, translating into or from other languages than Swedish. This is inevitably a result of someone finding my company information in a database, among many other companies and sending out mass emails to most of them, without checking the company facts."

Same thing here!

I currently receive several e-mail applications from translators each week, just about all of which get binned within 60 seconds (I'm sorry to say) because they don't meet my basic selection criteria. It's easiest to summarise these here as a list of do's and don'ts:

10 "golden rules"

 

1. Address your e-mail personally, i.e. use the actual name of the person you're writing to, not an impersonal "Dear Sir or Madam" – it will catch their attention right away and make you stand out from the crowd.
   
    


2. Never send the same unsolicited e-mail application to a group of agencies or other translators – it won't be personalised or meet each person's specific needs, so it's likely to waste their time and land in the bin.
   
    


3. If you really do want to do point 2, don't make the e-mail addresses of all the other people you are contacting visible to the reader – this data is private and the recipients won't want to know who else you have chosen to write to.
   
    


4. Tailor the content of your message to the recipient by checking out their website (or blog) first of all; the more you refer to that, the more impressed the recipient will be – because you are showing them you have made an effort to find out about their company and needs. If you do translations in a language the company doesn't offer itself, then there's not much point in asking them for work, is there?
   
    


5. Don't mention their website or blog if you haven't taken a look at it beforehand – it's annoying for them if they can tell you haven't read the information they've put on it (or haven't read it properly). Take your time and learn something about the firm before you apply.
   
    


6. Only apply to a translation agency for freelance work if it offers your target language to its customers. Check out their website beforehand and see if your language is listed as one that the agency covers. If it isn't, then move on to the next potential customer on your list – your chances of finding a new business partner are much higher if you offer them something you know they need.
   
    


7. If an agency you are interested in working for has provided a special e-mail address for unsolicited applications on their website, then please use it. And if they have posted instructions on how to apply for work, please follow these carefully. Again, this will impress the agency as they will see you have been making an effort to find out about them.
   
    


8. E-mails that contain spelling mistakes or are poorly worded or structured are very likely to get binned quickly – if you are a translator, then you are a language specialist, so regard anything you write as a sample of what you can do. "If she makes mistakes in a simple e-mail like this, what will her translations be like?", the recipient will ask himself.
   
    


9. If you decide to write your e-mail in a language that's not your mother tongue and you feel the e-mail is important (which it is as you are trying to win a new customer and ultimately boost your income), then ask a friend or colleague who has a very good grasp of the language or is a native speaker to check it for you. After all, it ought to be as well written as any e-mail you write in your first language.
   
    


10. Last but not least, if you really are interested in working for a particular company, then follow the message up with a phone call to the same person a few days later. This kind of contact is more personal than e-mail correspondence and will help the recipient remember you when a suitable assignment comes in. A phone number ought to be listed on the "contact" page of their website.

These are just a few brief tips about applying for work by e-mail. If you follow this advice, chances are you'll get more (positive) responses from the potential customers you contact and a few more assignments as well. Why not try it out? Apply these "golden rules" and see if they can improve the results of your own customer-acquisition strategy. And remember: sending a prospective customer an e-mail for the first time is like handing them your business card.

Regards

Carl

images: © Iwona Golczyk, S. Hofschlaeger / PIXELIO

If you are a translator who uses one of SDL's computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools (e.g. Trados® 2007 or one of the newer versions of Trados® Studio (2009 or 2011), you will probably already have heard about the firm's relatively new software-development platform SDL OpenExchange.

OpenExchange is an interesting idea as it is a way of enhancing the functionality of SDL's products by harnessing the intellectual power of 3rd-party developers. In the words of SDL:

"By offering a range of plug-ins and associated applications that will extend and augment the product feature set, we aim to see our users achieve a greater return on their SDL investment, while offering developers a stage to showcase themselves before the industry’s largest translation professional community." (quoted from their website)

In addition to this, SDL is using the platform to seek suggestions from users of its products regarding further potential enhancements. In this respect, it currently seems to be ahead of the competition, although other CAT-tool manufacturers such as Kilgray in Hungary (the maker of memoQ) have also started creating user platforms that can partly be employed to exchange software resources (see Kilgray's new Language Terminal, which can be accessed directly from memoQ 6.2 and memoQ 2013).

SDL's 3rd-party development platform currently contains around 80 enhancements in the form of plug-ins and apps. Some of these cost money (quite a lot in some cases), while others are free. Among other things, they include:

• Auto-Suggest dictionaries in a variety of language pairs
  
   


• conversion software (e.g. SDLTM to XLIFF for proof-reading in a different tool)
  
   


• file-type definitions so that Studio can process further file types (such as PO files or DTP formats like Adobe Illustrator and InDesign)
  
   


• glossary converters (e.g. for converting an Excel glossary to a Studio or MultiTerm term base)
  
   


• Microsoft terminology collections in various languages (converted for use in MultiTerm)
  
   


• machine-translation plug-ins
  
   


• and even instruction manuals for Studio 2011 in various languages.

To find out more about these and the other apps, check out the OpenExchange site. I would also recommend you to read a recent blog post by another translator, Tuomas Kostiainen, a Studio user and trainer who has taken a closer look at five of the products available there.

As an aside, I noticed that some of these optional plug-ins are actually included in memoQ's functionality; they are there if you want to use them and just have to be activated by ticking a check box - there's no need to download and install them, let alone pay for them. Instruction manuals for memoQ and other CAT tools made by Kilgray are available from Kilgray's own website for free and are also in a range of languages.

Still, a number of the Studio and MultiTerm plug-ins and apps do look interesting and provide enhancements that are still lacking in memoQ. In the course of time, however, memoQ users may find that a growing number of these are being offered on the Language Terminal. Let's wait and see how it evolves...

Carl

images: Kilgray's logo and Language Terminal courtesy of Kilgray Translation Technologies. SDL OpenExchange: my own screen shot