Trados: Translating standard files

After looking at Trados’ basic features in the first two articles, now it’s time to put it all into practice and learn how to translate a file with Trados. For this third article, let’s imagine you have one or several standard files (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDF, etc.) and you want to use Trados to translate them for a direct client.

1) Getting started:

1. Open Trados (always a good place to begin!), go to the Welcome page and click on “Drag files for translation or browse your computer”.
2. Here, you can add the files you want to translate.
3. You have two options: “Create new project” or “Translate as single document”. The first option is handy if you have several files to translate for the same client. You can use it to create a folder containing all the files, so you can have as many open at once as you like. If you only need to translate one file, I recommend Option 2, “Translate as single document”.

2) Creating a new project (local/cloud)

1. If you’re using Trados 2021, you will need to choose whether to create a local project (in Trados) or a cloud project (in Trados Live). If you are using an older version of the software, you won’t have that option and will have to create a local project. We’re only going to the look at how to create a local project for now.
2. In Step 1, set the source/target languages for your document and where you want it to be saved, etc.
3. In Step 2, you can add additional information (client name, deadline, etc.). Personally, I don’t do this, but it can be handy if you’re working on several projects and want a clearer overview.
4. In Step 3, add/create your translation memories and configure your search settings.
5. In Step 4, create/add your termbases and configure their settings.
6. In Step 4, it’s time to run the batch tasks. At this point, Trados will analyse your files and calculate the number of repetitions.
7. In Step 6, you will see a summary of your project (this last step doesn’t add much, it seems Trados simply felt five steps to create a file just wasn’t enough).
8. Finally, click Finish to create your file. You can also click Finish in Step 1 if you don’t want to make any changes in steps 2-5. Personally, I change various elements in the batch tasks section, so I go through the full process, but it’s definitely not compulsory.
9. Trados analyses all the files and flags up any errors. If everything is ok, you can then click Close, which will take you to the Projects tab, where you will see your new project, with the statistics in the bottom frame. This is where you can see the Analysis Statistics showing how many repetitions there are.
10. Double-click on the project name. This will open the Files tab, where you can see the various files in your project.
11. Double-click on a file name to open the Editor tab, where you can begin translating (finally!). If you would prefer to work on several files at once, select all the files in question, right-click and then click on “Open for translation”. This can be handy if you want to make changes to several files at once, say, for example, if you want to replace the word “staff member” with “employee” in all 25 files in your project, rather than having to go through them all file by file.
12. Once you have finished your translation, click on “Save target as” and your translation will be saved in its original format (unless it’s a PDF, which will be saved in a Word document that you will need to convert to PDF format after). You can then send it to a direct client who doesn’t use Trados.

3) Translate as single document

• In Step 1, you will need to set the source/target languages and create/add your translation memories.
• This takes you straight to the Editor tab, where you can begin translating.
• If you want to create/add termbases, click on Project Settings and go to Termbases in the left-hand column.
• If you want to analyse the number of repetitions or run another batch task, click on “Batch tasks” in the Home section of the toolbar and run the task you would like.
• Once you have finished your translation, click on “Save target as” and your translation will be saved in its original format (unless it’s a PDF, which will be saved in a Word document you will need to convert to PDF format after). You can then send it to a direct client who doesn’t use Trados.

In the next article, we’ll look at how to open project packages, and SDLXLIFF and MQXLIFF files!

This is a translation of one of my French articles (“Trados: traduire un fichier normal“), kindly provided by the amazing Georgie Scott from Cf Language Solutions!