Home
	Translators' zone
		How to speed up your translating with Search/Replace
				Here’s some tips on using Search/Replace I wrote for a friend on mine. I couldn’t find a similar thread so I’ll post it here. Many of you will already know this of course, comments welcome. Less typing = less time. If you’re using Word you can use the find/replace function to replace all the same words in the document by typing them in just once. You can even do this with one-letter words such as “e” in Italian which might appear hundreds of times and changing it to “And” in English at the click of a button. You can copy words from a dictionary on CD or online and paste them into the Search/Replace dialogue box to replace words without even typing one letter of them. It’s important to remember to check the “Whole word only” box when replacing one-letter or short words that could easily be part of other, longer words, otherwise you’ll make a right royal mess of things. Near the “Whole word only” check box you’ll find the “Capitals” check box which is handy to use if you want to change lower case to higher or whatever. If you leave this unchecked, Word will attempt to respect the formatting in the original. I’m not too sure about the “Use jolly character” “Format” or “Special” functions as I don’t use them, maybe someone in the know can help out on that. Unchecking the “Whole word only” box you can change parts of words, such as endings. For example in Italian to English I can change “………zione”  to “………tion” and so on. You can also use Search/Replace to change the order of words, or add/remove words in phrases or parts of the same. As you run through the doc checking for words you can auto- translate, if you notice phrases or groups of words that will always need switching around, do it automatically. At first you’ll be wary of changing things but then you find which you can change and which it’s better not to. Also you want to watch changing short words (especially one-letter ones). For example when changing “e” to “and” E-mail will be changed to AND-mail. You can Search/Replace “AND-mail and change it back to what it should be and if you use Search/Replace before doing the rough translation and proof reading you will notice these things. If, for some reason you can’t use the “Whole word only” function (when changing two short words for example), you can add a space to the beginning and end of these words (and the ones you’ll replace them with obviously) to stop the Replace function changing parts of longer words. If you use the UP or Down mode of finding words you can run through the doc to see what will be replaced. Or if you’re sure about what you’re replacing it’s faster to use the Replace All mode. If you use a Cat tool like Trados/Sdlx you can create a termbase of words you want to change automatically. These words will be changed in segments where no matching segment in the Translation Memory is found. This can speed up work immensely. Different versions of programs will apply termbases in different ways so you have to experiment a bit. I found that one version of Sdlx would apply it to parts of words so you can’ t use short words in the termbase or the result will be useless. Trados 7 doesn’t seem to want to recognise short words, so after applying the machine translation you can run through the doc using Search/Replace as above. A good way to add words to your tembase to add them as you’re running through the document using Search/Replace. That way the Cat tool will replace them for you in the future. Sdlx has a built-in Search/Replace function you can launch with Ctrl + F (Find in Source) and Ctrl + H (Find/Replace in Target). When using Trados you must check “Segment Unknown sentences” in the Translate function tab, otherwise you will not get a clean (hidden) source and a Target with machine translated words. Likewise, when using Word’s Search/Replace function with Trados you should temporarily close any open segments you’re translating to prevent the Replace function from changing the relevant word also in the Source. You can leave the segment open if one of the words you’re going to change has already been pre-translated, in other words if the text to translate is already different from the source. Trados will leave the termbase pre-translated words formatted blue. To avoid having to change the colour after clean up you can set the Translated Text Colour to “Blue” so Clean Up will automatically remove the Blue formatting of the words without having to change the colour by hand. Make sure the original colours of the Source are respected in the finished translation. You can also use Search/Replace to change all the double spaces in the Translation to single spaces with one click, instead of doing this with the Spell Check. Remember that some words may have different meanings in different contexts, and instruments that can be used to speed up your work should not prejudice the quality of the result. Have fun. Mac