Translation Solutions Ltd.
Translation Services
Need translation? We provide effective translation solutions in English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and more.
Our translator teams can translate a wide range of projects, including Websites, user manuals, contracts, technical specifications, financial reports...
Translation Software & Tools
If you are a translator, a translation agency or a localization engineer, we have translation tools to make your life easier.
We can also design custom software on demand. If you need it, we will do it (or at least, we can try).
Translation Quote
Request a translation quote, read our terms and conditions and find out more about Translation Solutions Ltd.
About Translation Memories
NB: This is a theory section. You will find how to handle TMs in Wordfast below, or by clicking HERE.
Translation memories being a very important part of CATs, I will try to give a little more information on them here. You can find more data in the manual, or diverse resources on the net.
Wordfast TMs are in tab delimited text format, and you can open them using virtually any text editor (Word, Wordpad, WordPerfect, Star Write,....), spreadsheet or database application (Excel, Works, Star Calc, Access,...).
The TM contain the following parts:
- Heading
- Source and Target language designation
- Attributes
- Translation Units (TUs)
- Usage count
Heading:
The heading will, amongst other things, contain the creation date of the TM, a list of the existing attributes for the TM and the software that was used to create it (in our case, Wordfast)
Languagues:
A TM will contain the language designation of the source and target language, such as EN-US for US English, FR-FR for French (France), and so on. You will find a rather comprehensive list of these in the manual.
Attributes:
Attributes are additionnal information added on a TM, such the User ID of the translator, the field of translation (IT, Commercial,...). Actually, language is also an attribute. Attributes in a TM are used to attach information to the translation units. For instance, if you use a TM created by someone else, you will be able to differentiate your translations from those of other translator(s), and translations belonging to a different field then the one you are working with. Say you are translating IT, and the TM you are using contain Marketing translations. The two fields being different, you might be interested to differentiate them.
Translation Units:
Translation Units (TUs) are simply source segments, followed by the target segments (translations), each being introduced by the appropriate language designations, with the date of creation, attributes and usage count.
IE:
| Date | User ID | Usage# | Srce lang. | Source Seg | Tgt L | Target Segment | At | Attrib. |
| 20020713~194241 | SG | 0 | EN-US | This is a sentence. | FR-FR | Ceci est une phrase. | IT | TEST |
Usage Count:
Usage count is a number that represents the number of times a translation unit was re-used. ("0" in the example above). It is very interesting to determine the value of a translation unit. If a translation unit is re-used (meaning it was presented as a match and was approved) often, it is a very valuable one. On the other end, a translation unit that you do not re-use is of little value.
To learn how to handle translation memories in Wordfast, click NEXT.
