Creating Bilingual TTX File Using Trados Studio 2009
Often in life something happens which never happened before. It might belong to our personal life, or professional career.
As a translator, I have to use different software which assists me in completing my translation projects. Software are not used to translate the documents (in my opinion software translation is rubbish), instead translators use them to maintain consistency and accuracy throughout translated document. Such software are known as CAT (computer assisted translation) tools. CAT tools help us to maintain translation memories and use previously translated sentences/phrases/words in very similar manner. They also saves lot of time as previously translated sentence need not to be translated again.
Most common CAT tools are déjà vu, word fast and Trados. I am fan of Trados, and recently I installed Trados studio 2009 (previously I was using 2007). One of my clients provided me html file and asked me to translate this file and return it in bilingual ttx file. It was not a problem and I am used to create bilingual ttx files.
I launched my Trados Studio 2009 (for the first time), translated the file and then tried to save into bilingual ttx… «Oh no, where the option of saving file as TTX format vanished??» It was the very first question which came into my mind. I tried several times, but of no use. I simply saved file into sdlxliff format (parent format of Trados 2009).
With extensive web research I was able to solve the problem. Following is the technique which I used to solve this out:
1. Open your source file html/doc etc file with Tag Editor 2007 (which you are going to translate)
2. Save file into TTX format simply by Tag Editor 2007.
3. Now, launch your Trados Studio 2009. Start new project and open TTX file using «Open document» icon.
4. Translate file, go to File>save target as>ttx file
Congratulations! You are done. This file (which you saved just few moments ago) is bilingual ttx file. Actually Trados 2009 don’t have any built-in option of saving file as bilingual TTX. TTX format is commonly adopted by Trados 2007. However; Trados 2009 can open all 2007 formats and is capable to save them in the same format in which it is originated. That’s why you are able to open TTX file in 2009 and save it as TTX.