Translating a Document in SDL Studio
Welcome to SDL Trados, the leading translation software. There is a license on every station
in SH 204. The instructions will show you how to create your own translation memory,
which you can then access every time you use the computer, and even transfer to another
computer. Also, the use of SDL Trados here will enable you to obtain a discounted license
when you graduate.
You might think about SDL Trados as similar to the predictive text you know from your
smart phone and other devices, only here the software will predict the word or phrase for
the translation. The prediction for the smart phone is based on what you have typed in the
past. The prediction for the translation will be based on how you have translated words,
phrases and sentences in the past. The best way to start this foundation is to align texts
whose correspondence you are confident about, for example, officially translated documents
from the United Nations or carefully prepared parallel corpora. In addition, there is a
separate program to create term bases for individual words for specific genre. We have not
included any translation program, like Google Translate or BeGlobal from SDL so that you
have full control over the output.
Getting Started: Aligning Texts
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Open SDL by clicking the icon on the desktop.
Click on the Welcome tab on the bottom left.
Click on Translation Memories (bottom left)
Click on Align Documents and choose single or multiple files. (For multiple files, you select a
folder with all the files.) [Top]
Later you can choose the translation memory you have created on another computer or which
has been provided. For the moment, select create a new file-based translation memory, and set
the parameters.
Choosing Texts to Align
A good place to start is with the United Nations:
1) The Declaration of Human Rights is available in English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, French and
Arabic. Go to: http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ (and choose language at top)
2) This site has United Nations documents that have been translated into local languages, i.e. not
the official UN languages: https://unic.un.org/aroundworld/unics/en/multilingualism/index.asp
The Process in SDL
From the Welcome Menu, click on Translation Memory and then Align Documents/ Single File Pair. You
will have to choose a translation memory for the source and target language in your translation. Either
select a translation memory you have already started (add) or start a new TM (create {file-based
memory}). Select the documents for Source and Target Languages and save the results, which will
create an .sdlalign file. [Tip: put all of your documents in one folder.] The file that is created you can
always upload from the computer or even save it to a flash drive and take it with you for any other
translation program. Click Confirm All if no editing is needed and the Import into TM.
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Double-check
If you want to check your translation memory, go back to the Welcome menu and choose Translate
Single Document. Choose your source language file as the text and upload the translation memory you
just created. As you click in the windows on the right side to type in your translation, you will see the
entire translation appear before you. Just think, if we had all the possible language combinations in our
translation memory, we would have automatic machine translation!
Importing Translation Memory and Parallel Corpora
Let’s take it up a notch. It is possible to take already prepared translation memories and import them
into your translation program. Any files with a .tmx extension can be imported, in addition to the files
native to Trados with .sdltm. This is really where bilingual corpora come into play – one could enter
whole texts of Translation Units (the segments you see in the program) or take a translation memory
that was prepared from a bilingual corpora. In this example, I am going to go to Digital Corpus of the
European Parliament and use their bilingual corpus to create a term memory. Fortunately, they provide
instructions for all the steps!
Start with the home page: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/language-technologies/dcep and then go to DGT
Translation Memory.
Click on View Details under Download the DGT Translation Memory. You can download the latest
updates there until 2012, or go to the other link they provide for the original texts up to 2007. ( I had to
modify the link slightly, so here is the URL: http://optima.jrc.it/Acquis/DGT_TU_1.0/data/)
Back at the DGT Translation Memory page, go to Show Details segment of the next section: How to
Produce Bilingual Extractions and download the TMXtract.jar file and follow the instructions. [Tips: in
the lab you will need the lab assistant to log in as a technician to run this file; also, the English data is
tagged as British English, so it cannot be added to translation memory with American English!
When you run the data as per the instructions, you will have a .tmx file. To import this in SDL Trados,
either 1) go to the file tab and then Open Translation Memory. Select a .TMX file for the type of file you
are searching for. It will then be imported into the sdltm format. Or 2) open an existing translation
memory and import the .tmx file into it.
Surprisingly, even though the data files you downloaded have many different language combinations,
only those for the source language and target language you choose will be included in your translation
memory. You can always check these in the editor.
Multi-UN Translation Management and Parallel texts
Another source for a prepared bilingual parallel texts is the MutliUN project. The current URL (April 4,
2015) is http://opus.lingfil.uu.se/MultiUN.php.
The bottom portion of the page allows you to download translation memories for pairs of seven
languages. I downloaded the Spanish-English file with over 11 million sentence pairs.
The top part gives you the aligned sentences. There are fewer choices and tricks involved in getting the
downloads, so do your research if you want to access and use these files.
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Now, if you really want to venture out, here is a summary of open-source parallel corpora on the web:
http://opus.lingfil.uu.se
Using Aligned Texts, Translation Memory and Autosuggest Dictionaries to Translate with
SDL Trados
From the Welcome Menu select Translate Single Document. When you select the file for the translation
a window opens up with the source text in the left panel and the target text in the right panel. If you
use the same languages for source and target that you used to create the translation memory, choose
that translation memory (or add an already existing translation memory). If you have a very large
translation memory, with at least 25,000 translation units, you can use it to create an auto-suggest
dictionary. The text is automatically segmented. As you click on the different segments in the right
panel, any suggested translations will appear. When you type your own text in that window, the autosuggest dictionary will offer choices after the first couple of characters are typed. You can confirm the
translation for each segment and then move on to the next segment:
Click on confirm located on the tool bar in order to go to next section of the translation
You can transfer the same format (or part of your original document) to the document of target
language.
Highlight the section of your translated document in which you want to have the same format as your
original document, hold down control and comma button (Ctrl ,) and select from the possible options:
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Watch a Video
After pressing the Welcome tab, click on the ‘get started’ tab to shows videos. Click on the video for
To get back to your translation, click on the Editor tab in the left column of the SDL software. (The editor
view is where the actual translation happens. The ribbon on the top portion of SDL has all the
functionality grouped into different tabs.)
The help tab gives you access to all kinds of help related resources, including video tutorials, the SDL
knowledge base and other resources.
The translation memories tab gives you access to translation memory management related
functionality. It allows you to manage and keep translation memories up to date.
Pay attention to how to add a term base and an auto suggest dictionary. It gets interesting!
Previewing the File
1)
Click on the preview button (found under the View tab in the Information section) and then
click “Click here to generate initial preview”
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2)
At the top left of the window click on the icon highlighted in the picture below:
This will open your window up in Word.
Saving and Printing
Save the file with the file save icon. When you open it again it will be under Projects in the SDL main
menu. To print the final document, Choose Save Target As from the File menu and print out as, for
example, an MS Word document.
Studying the SDL Trados Manual
From the main menu go to Welcome/More Resources/ Help System
You can also get to this manual from home by clicking on the Delicious link at the larclab homepage and
then searching for translation. The link should be titled “SDL Trados Studio Manual”.
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Final Notes: what makes the program really powerful is adding things like an autosuggest dictionary
and Termbase for translations. Please watch how this is done in the video. (After pressing the Welcome
tab, click on the ‘get started’ tab to shows videos. Click on the video for Translating a Single Document
[25 min.])
You can also search for online resources. For example, If you click on the Project Settings/ Termbase/
Add termbase you will see the link at the bottom of the window directing to the SDL Open Exchange
where you can search for items. You can also go directly to Welcome/ More Resources/ SDSL Open
Exchange.
There is an additional program on all the computers in SH 204 to manage the multi-lingual term-base. I
say multi-lingual, because the Term Base can have multiple languages, unlike the Translation
Management, which is always for two languages.
By the way, if you find a Translation Management that has the languages in one direction, there is a free
app you can download to automatically reverse them:
http://www.translationzone.com/openexchange/app-search.html
It seems this tool can be just as rich and powerful as you make it. Remember, when you graduate from
SDSU and want to continue with the software, SDL will give you a significant discount for a license as a
result of your use while a student at SDSU.
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