WFP glossary terms with multiple definitions
Автор темы: johndel
johndel
johndel  Identity Verified
США
Local time: 07:42
английский => испанский
Feb 3, 2013

I'm currently making and categorizing glossaries, using Excel to facilitate the process before converting them into .txt files. Question: Will WFP accommodate more than one definition for glossary terms? At times, it's useful to have more than one option.

Example--English noun with two Spanish equivalents: form = formulario; form = hoja.

How about an English term with varying uses like this one? File (noun, a tool) = lima; file (inf. verb, to file) = limar; file (noun,
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I'm currently making and categorizing glossaries, using Excel to facilitate the process before converting them into .txt files. Question: Will WFP accommodate more than one definition for glossary terms? At times, it's useful to have more than one option.

Example--English noun with two Spanish equivalents: form = formulario; form = hoja.

How about an English term with varying uses like this one? File (noun, a tool) = lima; file (inf. verb, to file) = limar; file (noun, office file) = archivo; file (inf. verb, to archive) = archivar.

I hope this makes sense. I'm wondering what's going to happen if I have repeated glossary terms with varying translations and/or grammatical purposes.

Thanks,

John
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trhanslator (X)
trhanslator (X)
This is how CafeTran handles multiple target terms Feb 3, 2013

Not sure about Wf Pro but this is how CafeTran (Java too) handles multiple alternative translations and definitions:

http://cafetran.wikidot.com/adding-an-existing-glossary

http://cafetran.wikidot.com/adding-term-pairs-to-the-glossary... See more
Not sure about Wf Pro but this is how CafeTran (Java too) handles multiple alternative translations and definitions:

http://cafetran.wikidot.com/adding-an-existing-glossary

http://cafetran.wikidot.com/adding-term-pairs-to-the-glossary

IMO there is no other CAT tool that makes adding / modifying term pairs during the translation process that easy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uIG_lLiZD8

Also note that CafeTran can handle glossaries of 1 million terms without any delay or other problems, whereas importing largish glossaries in Wf Pro can take several days.

Stemming is possible with CafeTran glossaries too (though probably not relevant for your working languages).
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B D Finch
B D Finch  Identity Verified
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Local time: 16:42
французский => английский
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What for? Feb 3, 2013

johndel wrote:


Example--English noun with two Spanish equivalents: form = formulario; form = hoja.

How about an English term with varying uses like this one? File (noun, a tool) = lima; file (inf. verb, to file) = limar; file (noun, office file) = archivo; file (inf. verb, to archive) = archivar.



Don't forget "single file", "to file past" ...

I'm tempted to ask "what is the point?" Glossaries should be for words you might not remember or in order to impose consistency within a single translation or between related translations.

Many words have half a dozen or more alternative translations and this can be either an extreme nuisance when using a CAT tool glossary, or very useful in reminding you that the first translation you thought of might not be ideal. In some cases, I have deleted words with alternative translations from my glossaries because they have popped up in an annoying way so many times that I can't forget them.

[Edited at 2013-02-03 12:06 GMT]

[Edited at 2013-02-03 12:06 GMT]


 
trhanslator (X)
trhanslator (X)
Clever glossary handling Feb 3, 2013

Many words have half a dozen or more alternative translations and this can be either an extreme nuisance when using a CAT tool glossary, or very useful in reminding you that the first translation you thought of might not be ideal.


So true. And a clever CAT tool will allow you to place the target term that is appropriate for your on-going translation on the top of the project terms list easily. (In the next project that will probably be a different target term, that's what dynamical glossaries are for .)

Are you aware of the feature (mostly called) Auto-assembling, allowing you to let your CAT tool insert terms from the glossary into your target segment? Can be handy for translating specs sheets, lubrication tables, index tables etc. When the syntax of your source and target language is completely different though, this can be counterproductive.

So, you'll have to evaluate what different CAT tools offer in terms of, er, terms and try to profit from clever glossary features. Try to keep an open mind and ask yourself: What can the computer do for me? What is dull labor that can be automated by using handy features like auto-assembling. Perhaps you can increase your productivity.


 
Aelf
Aelf
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Local time: 16:42
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Easy to do Feb 3, 2013

Well, trhanslator, your marketing pitch didn't help him, did it?

Back to OP.

WFP handles it quite well. If you've selected a word which has two definitions, when you want to copy i (or rather paste the target term), a pop-up window appears with both choices. Then simply hit an Up or Down key followed by Enter. Voila!

Be sure to read the manual how to make the glossary work for you (e.g. through wildcards).


 
johndel
johndel  Identity Verified
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Local time: 07:42
английский => испанский
Автор темы
WFP glossary lessons Feb 6, 2013

Thanks for feedback about the basic concept of glossary use within WFP as well as giving me some things to consider. (Life is suddenly busy, so I'm having to put off my WFP training for a few days.) The most recent response really told me what I had hoped about being given choices separate from the text so that I can choose the most appropriate one. I've been out of translating for 2 1/2 years due to health issues and am just now learning to use the stand-alone program.

I had made a
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Thanks for feedback about the basic concept of glossary use within WFP as well as giving me some things to consider. (Life is suddenly busy, so I'm having to put off my WFP training for a few days.) The most recent response really told me what I had hoped about being given choices separate from the text so that I can choose the most appropriate one. I've been out of translating for 2 1/2 years due to health issues and am just now learning to use the stand-alone program.

I had made an extensive mega-glossary a few years ago of legal, medical and construction terms, which I had hoped to have access to within WFP since I have relatively few helpful TMs at this point. My thought was that multiple specialty glossaries might speed up things in the translation process (i.e., not having to retype things), but BD Finch makes good points about using the glossaries for "words [I] might not remember or in order to impose consistency within a single translation or between related translations."

That has clarified things a bit for me but I've decided to keep methodically working thru the mega-glossary to review the tech vocab after being out of the game for so long. Ultimately I expect to scale down the lists to the technical terms/phrases that are most problematic and hard to recall.

I'm aware of wildcards and auto-assembling but haven't yet had time to play with them. Thanks for calling attention to those concepts so that I'll keep them on the radar.
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Aelf
Aelf
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Local time: 16:42
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You might want to consider MT too Feb 7, 2013

Having a good glossary is always helpful, regardless of having a lot of TM or not. So you're right it'll make you work faster.

I have recently discovered that applying machine translation within WFP makes me work even faster. For longer utterances and more sophisticated texts it still fails miserably, but surprisingly, it works quite well for shorter casual sentences. What's good about it is that I can quickly copy and paste whole words and phrases and rearrange them as needed. With
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Having a good glossary is always helpful, regardless of having a lot of TM or not. So you're right it'll make you work faster.

I have recently discovered that applying machine translation within WFP makes me work even faster. For longer utterances and more sophisticated texts it still fails miserably, but surprisingly, it works quite well for shorter casual sentences. What's good about it is that I can quickly copy and paste whole words and phrases and rearrange them as needed. With longer sentences I feel like I'm proofreading a horrible translation, though, which isn't a good thing. You might give it a go.
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Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
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Local time: 16:42
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английский => африкаанс
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WFC vs CafeTran Feb 8, 2013

trhanslator wrote:
This is how CafeTran handles multiple alternative translations and definitions:
http://cafetran.wikidot.com/adding-an-existing-glossary


Yes, I can see from that URL what the syntax is of a glossary entry with more than one translation, but how does CafeTran deal with the actual adding of such entries? I mean, suppose I already have one translation of "file" in the glossary, and I want to add another translation of "file" to the same glossary, how would I do that in CafeTran? Will CafeTran create two glossary entries or will it automatically merge the two entries correctly or will it replace the one entry with the other?

I don't know how WFP deals with it, but since WFC has the same glossary format as WFP, I can tell you what WFC does: you can have only one translation per glossary entry, but you can have multiple entries for the same source term. In the editor, when trying to insert a glossary match, WFC displays a drop-down list of all the matching entries, which you can choose from.

I have never used glossaries in WFP so I don't know how it works.

IMO there is no other CAT tool that makes adding / modifying term pairs during the translation process that easy...


This is off-topic, but I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but the way you add glossary entries in CafeTran is pretty much the same as in WFC and e.g. OmegaT.


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
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Local time: 16:42
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английский => африкаанс
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Long versus short glossaries Feb 8, 2013

B D Finch wrote:
Many words have half a dozen or more alternative translations and this can be either an extreme nuisance when using a CAT tool glossary, or very useful in reminding you that the first translation you thought of might not be ideal.


I agree, but it also depends on the design of the CAT tool. In WFC, for example, using long glossaries makes no sense because matches from both long and short glossaries are displayed in a mixed way, and if there is a match for every single word in your source text in one of your long glossaries, then every word will be highlighted and will have a hotkey, and that reduces the benefit of being able to insert specific selected words with a keyboard shortcut.

A tool like OmegaT, for example, has a separate pane for long glossary matches (it is called the "Dictionaries" pane). In that tool, only words from the short glossary are insertable using shortcuts (and only those words are underlined in the editor), but matches from the long glossary are displayed in a separate pane where you can see them, without interfering with the usefulness of having insertable matches from the short glossaries.


 


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WFP glossary terms with multiple definitions







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