Thread

Index > Lgi > Translating LR8 with Wordfast
Author/Date Translating LR8 with Wordfast
Samuel Murray
16/01/2006 12:41pm
G'day everyone

This is just for information's sake.

I'm a professional translator and I use a CAT (computer assisted translation) tool with TM (translation memory) for jobs of which the content is highly repetitive. The CAT tool I use is called Wordfast.

I'm so glad that the LR8 file is basically XML, because it means I can use Wordfast to translate it, and I don't have to worry about recompiling the resources (with EXE and DLL files hacked by Resource Hacker, I can translate the RC file with Wordfast, but the RC file has to be compiled into an RES file before I can re-import it into the EXE or DLL file).

Using translation memory (TM) means that you can take the existing translation of another product of a similar type, and re-use the translations either partially or fully, which speeds up the translation of the new program (but watch out for copyright issues if the TM isn't yours).

==

Here is the procedure (you'll have to learn Wordfast elsewhere):

1. Open the LR8 file in MS Word by dragging and dropping. When prompted, select UTF-8 (you may not be prompted if the LR8 file contains only English). Optionally save it as a DOC file.

2. Add untranslated strings for your language by duplicating the English strings:

Find what:
(\e\n\=\")(*)(\")
Replace with:
\1\2\3 af="\2\3
(with wildcards enabled)

3. Add a style in MS Word called tw4winExternal (you can use the freeware Ando Tools to add it automatically).

4. Change everything except your untranslated strings into the tw4winExternal style:

Find what:
(\")(*)(\a\f\=\")
Replace with:
\1\2\3
(with wildcards enabled, style = tw4winExternal)

You'll have to change the top and bottom pieces of text to tw4winExternal manually by highlighting it and changing the style.

5. Translate using Wordfast.

6. Do a quick-clean, or do whatever you do.

7. Save the file as Encoded Text, and choose UTF-8 when prompted.

8. Rename the TXT file to an LR8 file, and open in LGIRES to check it.

==

I can't wait for iMage to get an LR8 file... I have a comprehensive TM for it.

Samuel
http://www.leuce.com/translate/
fret
18/01/2006 12:14am
I added most of the obvious strings in i.Mage to it's lr8 file and released it as v1.01 yesterday. :)
Samuel Murray
18/01/2006 8:06am
Neat! There were still a number of new terms that I had to research the meaning of, but all in all it was quick and easy.

I made one mistake (we learn from them, after all), and I learnt that when you open a file in MS Word and MS Word identifies the format as UTF-8, then you must save the end-result as UTF-8 and not merely as "Unicode", otherwise LGIRES won't open it and i.Mage will choke on it.

And of course there are a few strings that are not in the LR8 file yet.

And... i.Mage has no option for changing the language, so I had to dummy the "af" strings into "en"s to see the Afrikaans in i.Mage.

Thanks for permitting me this little experiment.
fret
18/01/2006 10:22pm
Can you email your original lr8 file to me so I can incorperate it into the main release?

The reason why i.Mage has no mechanism to change languages is that there is no translations yet, so as soon as I get a translation I will add a menu to change the language.
Reply