Wordfast Pro - How to create TM and glossary from legacy files
Thread poster: islander1974
islander1974
islander1974
Canada
French to English
+ ...
Apr 29, 2020

Sooo... In August 2018, I bought a Wordfast Pro licence but did not set it up properly. It seems ridiculous, but I was too busy. I was going through a phase where many of my translations were from horrible old pdfs and were not repetitive.

I gather the licence is valid for 3 years so I am still within in the window and haven't lost my money. So that is a relief because I am on a budget.

At this time, I find that many of my texts are repeated or similar and are almost a
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Sooo... In August 2018, I bought a Wordfast Pro licence but did not set it up properly. It seems ridiculous, but I was too busy. I was going through a phase where many of my translations were from horrible old pdfs and were not repetitive.

I gather the licence is valid for 3 years so I am still within in the window and haven't lost my money. So that is a relief because I am on a budget.

At this time, I find that many of my texts are repeated or similar and are almost always in Word.

So now my Wordfast is staring at me and I know I need to use it.

If you were in this position, would you be able to "retroactively" create a memory and a glossary from the multiple translations you already have?

Where would you start with such a task?

Thanks in advance!
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Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 02:11
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Islander Apr 29, 2020

islander1974 wrote:
I bought a Wordfast Pro licence...


This entitles you to both Wordfast Pro 3 and Wordfast Pro 5. Which of these two are you now trying to use? (They are very, very different from each other... each with its own strengths and weaknesses.)

Would you be able to "retroactively" create a memory and a glossary from the multiple translations you already have?


Creating glossaries are best done on the fly, i.e. while you work. There is no tool of feature that can create glossaries automatically -- in (almost) all CAT tools, all glossaries are created by manually typing or selecting the term in the source language and target language and adding the term to the glossary.

You can try to create glossaries using old translations, but the problem is that it's very difficult to decide which terms you want to save in the glossary. Of course, when you have spare time, you can read through old documents and add more terms to your glossaries, but this isn't something that you should focus on if you have little time.

Creating TMs is done by a process called "alignment". For this, you need to find an aligner that you enjoy working with. Basically, you load both the source file and your translation into the aligner, it creates a table of the sentences and their translations, and when you're satisfied that all sentences are lined up correctly, you generate a translation memory from it.

As far as I know, neither WFP3 nor WFP5 have a built-in aligner. There is a simple aligner in WFA (Wordfast Anywhere, which is free and online), but it only works if the two files are perfect "copies" of each other. A free aligner that is often recommended, is LF Aligner.

(It looks like Michael Beijer hasn't created a list of aligners yet, so I think this thread is the closest to a list.)


[Edited at 2020-04-29 16:16 GMT]


 
islander1974
islander1974
Canada
French to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks Apr 29, 2020

Thanks Samuel. I gather it is Wordfast Pro 5. So bad that I had to look that up in my 2018 emails. Years ago I had used a very basic Wordfast so hope Pro is not ridiculously complicated as that is the main thing I remember about Wordfast as opposed to other TMs.

I have quite a project on my hands...looks like I will be investigating a free aligner of some sort.

I do have a list of terms I am sure about that come up a lot so maybe I should start with those glossary-wise.
... See more
Thanks Samuel. I gather it is Wordfast Pro 5. So bad that I had to look that up in my 2018 emails. Years ago I had used a very basic Wordfast so hope Pro is not ridiculously complicated as that is the main thing I remember about Wordfast as opposed to other TMs.

I have quite a project on my hands...looks like I will be investigating a free aligner of some sort.

I do have a list of terms I am sure about that come up a lot so maybe I should start with those glossary-wise.

I may also complete a translation I have done before (but this time using Pro) to get me started on an on-the-fly TM. I think this project will take a good few days but it will pay off in the long run and make up for my procrastination thus far.
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Wordfast Pro - How to create TM and glossary from legacy files







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