Introduction

Editing a prepared file as an xliff file is relatively easy. We only need to edit the file and send it back as a return package or target format. But, what if the file is a plain bilingual Excel file with a thousand rows, and you need to check the translation against a glossary in another Excel file?

Manually checking a translation against the glossary is very time-consuming and will possibly leaving the inconsistencies untouched.

So, how do we import the Excel files (the translated and glossary files) to CAT tools such as Trados to effectively and quickly check the translation using the built-in spellchecker, segment verifier, and terminology checker? Read More

Have you ever experienced the following scenario?

1. You are using MemoQ (or a client wants you to use MemoQ);
2. Assuming you get an Excel file contains a lot of rows. There are 2 columns there: column A is for the source text and column B is for the target text. It can also contain more than 2 columns: column A is for the source text, column B is for the target text (Arabic), column C is for target text (Italian), column D is for target text (Indonesian), etc;
3. You want to translate specific rows because the other rows are already translated, or because you add more texts that need to be translated. You don’t want to create another Excel file that contains the new text only to be imported to MemoQ—and later, the translation is imported/copied back to the original Excel file—so you need to use the original file and select only the rows you need;
4. How do you select those specific rows from the original file so they—those specific rows only—can be displayed in MemoQ?

Here I show you how to select the specific rows so they can be displayed in MemoQ and the other rows are hidden: Read More

Failed to Import WorldServer Return Package to Trados?

As I mentioned in my previous post that a return package is basically a zip file, it means that a return package can be manually extracted using WinRar, Winzip, or similar apps to see the contents (which are xliff files). So, knowing that the return package contains xliff files, later, we can manually put them into SDL Trados’ project folder to update the project files.

After extracting the contents of the return package file, we will find that the file name contains language code. Example: sampletranslation.idmlid-ID.xliff, where the id-ID is the language code for Indonesian. Yours might be different, depends on the language pair you work on.

Background

A few days ago, one of my colleagues asked for help from me. He got a revision job, but he couldn’t open an <sdlrpx.wsxz> file, a Worldserver return package he received from an agency he worked for. When he tried to import the file after opening the original package, he got a warning: “The translation package doesn’t contain necessary information. The package you are importing may be a return package.”

The PM had no idea how to open it. Later, he only sent the <.xliff> files so my colleague could check the translation by opening those files one by one without updating the main package.

My colleague asked me if there was any possible way to open the return package, so he could update the package and send back the file in return package format. He had tried to Googling the tricks but found no relevant information. Read More