Exchange of Best Practices for Autotranslatables Thread poster: Noe Tessmann
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Hello,
with the help of colleagues I managed to write some strings for autotranslatables. Maybe we could exchange our Best Practices for not reinventing the wheel all the time.
Dates EN > DE
Given you have added in the tab Translation Pairs:
left pane: #day#
right pane: all the days of the week in Source and Destination
and
left pane: #month#
right pane: all the names of the months in Source and Dest... See more Hello,
with the help of colleagues I managed to write some strings for autotranslatables. Maybe we could exchange our Best Practices for not reinventing the wheel all the time.
Dates EN > DE
Given you have added in the tab Translation Pairs:
left pane: #day#
right pane: all the days of the week in Source and Destination
and
left pane: #month#
right pane: all the names of the months in Source and Destination
I use the following expressions in the tab Auto-translation rules
left pane: (#day#) (\d) (#month#) (\d{4})
right pane: $1, $2. $3 $4
Monday 4 July 2008 > Montag 4. Juli 2008
left pane: (#day#) (\d)(th) (#month#) (\d{4})
right pane: $1, $2. $4 $5
Tuesday 5th December 2008 > Dienstag, 5. Dezember 2008
The same rule doesn't work with 1st "(\d)(nd) (#month#) (\d{4})", 2nd "(\d)(nd) (#month#) (\d{4})" and 3rd "(\d)(rd) (#month#) (\d{4})". So I use the following:
left pane: (1st)
right pane: 1.
left pane: (2nd)
right pane: 2.
left pane: (3rd)
rigth pane: 3.
and
left pane: (#month#) (\d{4})
right pane: $1 $2
July 2008 > Juli 2008
There must be a better solution for this.
The same without the day would be:
left pane: (\d)(th) (#month#) (\d{4})
right pane: $1. $3 $4
4th November 2007 > 4. November 2007
Putting (\d+) in the left pane and $1 in the right pane highlights every number in the text, which can be chosen from the Translations results pane. I don't know yet if this is really useful or just confusing.
Regards
Noe ▲ Collapse
| | | | Rod Walters 
Japan
Local time: 15:04
Japanese to English
| Resellers in each country should do this | Jun 14, 2009 |
Setting Auto-translatables is actually programming and as such, it would be most reliably and efficiently done if it were done by people who know what they're doing. For this reason, I think the resellers in each country should provide a list of the relevant codes for their region, or even better, a module that can be downloaded and applied.
| | | | Noe Tessmann
Local time: 08:04
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Hungary is everwhere | Jun 15, 2009 |
Hello Rob,
are there any regional resellers apart from the Hungarian branch? MemoQ is only available on the internet.
You cannot really do any harm, it's trial and error.
Regards
Noe
| | | | Rod Walters
Japan
Local time: 15:04
Japanese to English
| There's a Japanese reseller at least | Jun 15, 2009 |
The harm it does is waste a lot of time. And if another company realizes this first and responds quickly, then that company will have an advantage.
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Rod Walters wrote:
Setting Auto-translatables is actually programming and as such, it would be most reliably and efficiently done if it were done by people who know what they're doing. For this reason, I think the resellers in each country should provide a list of the relevant codes for their region, or even better, a module that can be downloaded and applied.
Rod,
You're right that programmers are best at programming and writing the so called "regular expressions", but sometimes they miss what translators need in their everyday work.
It is true that most translators don't know what regular expressions are, but there are some translators who are quite comfortable with them.
Regards
Piotr
| | | | Rod Walters
Japan
Local time: 15:04
Japanese to English
| Basic best practice - leave it to the people who are paid to do it! | Jun 15, 2009 |
Piotr,
I daresay if I put my mind to it, I could learn to write regular expressions myself, but still the question remains, why should I be required to do it? If I pay for software to translate between two languages, and then pay again for upgrades, why shouldn't I expect to have this basic functionality programmed for me? Are the original programmers of the translation software and the resellers assumed to know so little about translation that they won't be able to get the expressi... See more Piotr,
I daresay if I put my mind to it, I could learn to write regular expressions myself, but still the question remains, why should I be required to do it? If I pay for software to translate between two languages, and then pay again for upgrades, why shouldn't I expect to have this basic functionality programmed for me? Are the original programmers of the translation software and the resellers assumed to know so little about translation that they won't be able to get the expressions right?
Actually, MemoQ is turning out to be a collaborative effort in many ways. It certainly feels as though I'm doing product testing and evaluation at the moment. So in practice I'm working as a translator with the programmers to fine tune the software to make it good for use in actual translation. But I'm not actually doing the programming myself, even though I may be able to.
Noe said, "Maybe we could exchange our Best Practices for not reinventing the wheel all the time." What better way than to have it done as centrally as possible by the people who write this stuff for a living? As I state elsewhere, I'd be happy to cooperate in evaluating and fine tuning the results for the language pair that I'm familiar with. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Noe Tessmann
Local time: 08:04
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Another few months waiting time? | Jun 16, 2009 |
Rod Walters wrote:
I daresay if I put my mind to it, I could learn to write regular expressions myself, but still the question remains, why should I be required to do it? If I pay for software to translate between two languages, and then pay again for upgrades, why shouldn't I expect to have this basic functionality programmed for me? Are the original programmers of the translation software and the resellers assumed to know so little about translation that they won't be able to get the expressions right?
Hello Rod ,
you're right. When I started using MemoQ I was amazed that there is no real placeable function like in Trados and Wordfast. The support pointed me to the "powerful" autotranslatables feature and a Wiki article (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/CAT-Tools/MemoQ/Tips_and_Tricks#Using_auto-translatables_for_number_format_conversion). I filled in the the three rules which is better than nothing. The help files show some configurations for dates but not in detail and not until the end.
I raised the question in a forum and Istvan from MemoQ answered the following:
We should have created as many auto-translatable config files as there are languages times languages minus 1 (source and target languages), and we just never made it, since 1.0. We are now reorganizing the whole resource handling a bit, and I think this won't be a problem again (after a few months). But we're aware that it isn't working nicely now for an average user!
It's just that I don't want to wait a few months or more for having some basic rules. I am sure some colleagues have working rules applied which they can share.
Regards
Noe
| | | | Rod Walters
Japan
Local time: 15:04
Japanese to English
Noe, thanks for the additional info.
Well, I'll get out of your way and wish you luck. If I get any remission from work, I may try my hand at writing some of these expressions, and I'm sure what you've posted will be helpful.
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| let me pitch in | Jun 16, 2009 |
Hi All,
Noe was kind enough to include my private answer to him. Frankly, MemoQ is a good tool but it can always get better. Until the last year, it was primarily an agency tool, this year we've seen a major uptake on the side of freelancers too.
We try to provide a balanced development plan in order to avoid problems like what Trados Studio is having at the moment - it may be good for freelancers but lacks the value added to agencies and end-users. So we always strive ... See more Hi All,
Noe was kind enough to include my private answer to him. Frankly, MemoQ is a good tool but it can always get better. Until the last year, it was primarily an agency tool, this year we've seen a major uptake on the side of freelancers too.
We try to provide a balanced development plan in order to avoid problems like what Trados Studio is having at the moment - it may be good for freelancers but lacks the value added to agencies and end-users. So we always strive to add value for freelancers and agencies alike. Of course, the agency related developments are not so visible to freelancers, especially when they relate to servers.
We are going to introduce a new version very soon, which will answer some of the concerns you have raised. It will not change the way we approach auto-translatables. That's due later this year.
What we could do is sharing some auto-translatable configurations on the Yahoo group. Is this something that may be interesting for you? The number of language pairs you work with is huge, and we simply don't have the capacity to cover all - at the same time we don't have the architecture to make a few config files available for a wide variety of language pairs. So for the time being the only possibility is collaborative support for some frequently used language pairs.
There are some things in MemoQ which haven't been touched since v1.0, auto-translatables is one of these (the other is the aligner). Both work pretty fine, but we're aware of how we can make these better - and no worries, we'll do that. We have a development roadmap for the next five years, and I'm happy to tell that all the issues you've raised here are already included.
Thanks,
István
(oops yes, I'm one of the MemoQ architects if that's not clear from my comment ) ▲ Collapse
| | | | Noe Tessmann
Local time: 08:04
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Dates FR > DE | Jun 17, 2009 |
Hello,
here some more basic rules for autotranslatables:
left pane: (#day#), (le) (\d+) (#month#) (\d{4})
right pane: $1, den $3. $4 $5
lundi, le 5 juillet 2008 > Montag, den 5. Juli 2008
left pane: (\d+) (#month#) (\d{4})
right pane: $1. $2 $3
5 juillet 2008 > 5. Juli 2008
I also use:
(#month#)
$1
The inconvenient is that it highlights al... See more Hello,
here some more basic rules for autotranslatables:
left pane: (#day#), (le) (\d+) (#month#) (\d{4})
right pane: $1, den $3. $4 $5
lundi, le 5 juillet 2008 > Montag, den 5. Juli 2008
left pane: (\d+) (#month#) (\d{4})
right pane: $1. $2 $3
5 juillet 2008 > 5. Juli 2008
I also use:
(#month#)
$1
The inconvenient is that it highlights also mai in the word mais or something like this. Can the expression be limited to whole words?
and:
(\d+)\,(\d+)
$1,$2
for highlighting numbers with decimal comma (,) without changing into decimal point (.)
Regards
Noe
[Edited at 2009-06-17 10:43 GMT]
[Edited at 2009-06-17 10:47 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Hello,
I am just trying to establish auto-translation rules for Scandinavian>German dates such as "23 december 2011" where the result should be "23. Dezember 2011".
This looks quite simple, but I don't manage to find a rule which renders the source date as it should be.
What I have is a translation pair list with month names called #Monate# and the following rule:
(\d+) (#Monate#) (\d+)
I thought this should match any sequence of a... See more Hello,
I am just trying to establish auto-translation rules for Scandinavian>German dates such as "23 december 2011" where the result should be "23. Dezember 2011".
This looks quite simple, but I don't manage to find a rule which renders the source date as it should be.
What I have is a translation pair list with month names called #Monate# and the following rule:
(\d+) (#Monate#) (\d+)
I thought this should match any sequence of a 0-9 digit number, a blank, a month name from the list, another blank and another 0-9 digit number. However, MemoQ does not recognize the complete date but only the numbers and the month name as separate translation results.
Of course, I even tried with variants such as (\d+)\ (#Monate#)\ (\d+), but nothing helped.
Does anyone have an idea what went wrong and how I have to change the rule to get the result desired?
Thanks for your help!
Matthias ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Question regarding autotranslation of dates SLO>ENG in MemoQ | Sep 16, 2012 |
I hope this isn't a dead thread so I'm using it to ask my question, which I'm sure has already been asked and possibly resolved many times. I created a rule which I think should solve my need for autotranslating the date format:
13. december 2012 ==> December 13, 2012
I used the following rule:
Left-hand column
(\d{1,2})\.\s(#month#)\s(\d{2,4})
Right-hand column
$2 $1, $3
Under the Translation pairs links I put the di... See more I hope this isn't a dead thread so I'm using it to ask my question, which I'm sure has already been asked and possibly resolved many times. I created a rule which I think should solve my need for autotranslating the date format:
13. december 2012 ==> December 13, 2012
I used the following rule:
Left-hand column
(\d{1,2})\.\s(#month#)\s(\d{2,4})
Right-hand column
$2 $1, $3
Under the Translation pairs links I put the direct translations of months (i.e. januar>January) etc.
My problem is that in the preview option, I get the following result:
"13. december 2012" > "13cember 13, 2012"
What am I doing wrong? I would really appreciate some help or even a good resource with useful pre-made auto translation rules translators could adapt to their needs?
On a side note -- surely since V1.0 this user issue should have been addressed long ago? ▲ Collapse
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