English to French IT Translator Blog

Now Working with Antidote

After hearing so many good things about this software, I finally decided to start working with Antidote.

Antidote is an advanced French text checker. It features a very powerful spell/grammar checker, and incredibly complete dictionaries and style guides. Compared to the other checking solutions, the spelling and grammar check tool of Word for example, it does a better job at finding mistakes, even for complex grammatical structures.

The great thing about Antidote is that it also analyses your texts more deeply than any other tool. It will for example make style suggestions (regarding the use of certain expressions, commas), detect false friends and make suggestions of words you can use instead…

So that’s really a great tool for a translator. Even after using conventional tools and carefully proofreading your texts manually, it just happens that you didn’t notice a mistake, or used a word in an inappropriate way. Antidote detects most of these and helps delivering more professional documents.

By Anthony Teixeira | October 4, 2013 | Uncategorized |

September schedule

After a crazy summer, things seem to be cooling down a little bit here. I will take this opportunity to confirm that I will be available for work for the whole month, including on Japanese national holidays (Sept 9th and 16th respectively).

While working fascinating IT projects for some of the most prestigious companies of the industry, I also completed all the paperwork required to incorporate – I am now working, still alone, but as my own company, which opens up lots of great opportunities for the future.

I would also like to take the time to thank my partners who made this possible. Thanks to them, I managed to grow as a professional translator dedicated to IT/Software, my major in University. I like my work a lot and I hope it shows in my translations.

By Anthony Teixeira | September 3, 2013 | Uncategorized |

Busy summer

It’s been about a month since my last post. Well, I’ve been again quite busy! After some short but quite enjoyable holidays, I got back to work.

This month, I have been working on a massive project for a very (locally) popular Japanese manufacturer that is translating the description texts of its entire product lineup for the French market. The contents are rather different compared to what I usually translate, but it’s a nice project as I am actually regularly using some of the products in question.

Going to this manufacturer’s stores in the future and seeing texts I wrote on their products will be a fun experience. Hopefully French people will enjoy them as much as I do!

By Anthony Teixeira | August 22, 2013 | Uncategorized |

TIP: Switching status from “In Review” to “Translated” in Trados Studio 2011/2014

I just managed to sort out a rather complex issue with Trados, and I would feel guilty not to share it with people having the same problem – the trick probably saved me a couple of days of work!

After I finished translating files for a massive project, I found out that many of them had the “In Review” status, rather than the “Translated” one. Because of this status, it was simply impossible to generate the target translations properly.

The problem is caused by segments that are translated (perfect matches) and locked automatically during project creation. I had more than 7,000 locked segments with Approved status, and I couldn’t see myself unlocking and applying the right status to them one by one.

Fortunately, after examining the .sdlxliff files in a text editor, I found a way to do this much faster.

(Before trying this solution, make sure you have a backup of your files! Trados just happens to crash every time it finds something not 100% the way it would like it to be)

1 – Close your project in Trados

2 – Open a text editor that has a “Find in files” feature. I have personally been using Notepad++ (http://notepad-plus-plus.org/)

3 – If you are using Notepad++, go to Search > Find in Files, select the folder containing your translated .sdlxliff files (Something like My documents\Trados 2011\Your_Project\Target_Language_Code), make sure “Search in all sub-folders” is checked, search for the string conf=”ApprovedSignOff” and replace it with conf=”Translated”. Note that you can also replace conf=”Draft” (or anything like conf=”value”) with conf=”Translated” if there are segments you forgot to validate.

4 – Reopen your project in Trados and use the batch Translation Count function to fix file statistics. Now you should be done!

It might not be the most “elegant” way to do it, and I would recommend solving the problem in Trados rather than editing files manually whenever possible, but it worked well for me as a solution of last resort.

By Anthony Teixeira | July 24, 2013 | Trados |

A bit of free time!

After a few incredibly busy weeks, it seems I am finally getting a chance to rest a little bit! I have been working day and night on some exciting IT projects and now I can take some time to relax with my family, a fair reward after so much hard work.

It is always fascinating to work on documentation related to the latest technologies. IT is an industry that moves so fast that I get to learn about new protocols, languages and systems monthly. That being said, the knowledge I acquired at university is still very relevant and helps me a lot when it comes to understanding what such or such a protocol is for and how it works.

It also makes me realize how important specialization is for translators… If I had to translate such advanced texts about, say medicine, I would probably understand most of them and be able to find some general information about the parts I’m less comfortable with, but I would be missing a lot of subtleties.

 

By Anthony Teixeira | July 20, 2013 | Uncategorized |

Current works and availability

I am currently working on a handful of very interesting projects for major IT companies. Essentially security software and manuals for high tech devices. These are pretty big projects and I am expecting them to keep me quite busy for the next two weeks.

Usually summer is a little calmer period for translation projects, but this year I have the chance to work with very prestigious companies. I occasionally rest, though, and I am planning to take a quick 2-day break on August 7th and 8th to spend time and family and do a little bit of tourism.

I am also in the process of upgrading my personal hardware. I am currently working with two laptops connected to Dropbox, to prevent potential disasters, and one of my machines is going to get some replacement – a much deserved retirement!

By Anthony Teixeira | July 5, 2013 | Uncategorized |

New technical projects on the way

It was again an interesting week, less busy than the previous one in terms of translation but more when it comes to contacts. I am currently in advanced talks with a handful of Japanese manufacturers for manual translations. The products would be mostly electronic devices, such as audio systems, printers and cameras.

I have a long experience translating such documents (especially printer manuals lately) so I am really looking forward to these new projects.

This week, I mostly work on proofreading/review projects, in interesting fields. Among others, I have worked on reviewing medical documents and contracts. These are not my major specialization fields, but in both cases the texts were pretty straightforward and I was able to make a contribution that I believed helped increase the quality significantly.

 

By Anthony Teixeira | June 22, 2013 | Uncategorized |

I do not translate samples for free, here is why

Asking translators for free sample translations is a more and more common practice in the industry, but I’m not a big fan of these tests. In my opinion, they’re essentially a waste of time for all parties involved:

– I would rather spend my time working hard on the projects I am awarded rather than translating samples. There are unfortunately too many cases of outsourcers asking for samples to basically get a free translation, or without any concrete future projects in mind. That time is much better spent ensuring my very real partners get the best translations possible.

– A test simply doesn’t prove anything: the person you ask to translate a sample may outsource the work to someone else only that time, or spend time doing a good work on your sample, but not on the actual projects, etc. A translation test can help you filter out the really bad translators, but there are so many other ways to do it. In the end, you just spend some of your precious time creating and evaluating tests that won’t help you pick up the right translator.

– I am a professional translator and I am happy to share references or show you samples of my previous works. If you want to evaluate my translation and business skills directly, you can ask me to work on a small paid project. For example, if you are working on an iPhone app, I could translate the application’s description to start with. If you are selling computer hardware, I could start by translating the text that will appear on packaging or descriptions for online stores.

I love my work, I care a lot about the quality of my translations as well as my communication skills, and this is why I don’t and can’t work for free. I accept projects of all sizes however, so why not starting with a small one?

By Anthony Teixeira | June 17, 2013 | Opinion |

Busy week working on IT projects

A very enjoyable week comes to an end as I just finished working on two very interesting projects: one of them was a PC game, a MMORPG that is going to be released in all major European languages in the next few weeks, and the other one was an iPhone application.

I’ve been quite busy working on them, but these were very pleasant projects, the kinds of projects that allow you to express your creativity a little and have fun while translating.

I also translated a couple of small software/hardware manuals for a major manufacturer. It’s always interesting to translation documents related to the latest technologies – the products themselves are sometimes very tempting.

I will spend the next two days (Sunday/Monday) relaxing a little as I’m on a short trip. Meeting friends and visiting a park, there’s nothing better to recharge your batteries and come back full of energy and a refreshed mind for another week!

By Anthony Teixeira | June 15, 2013 | Uncategorized |

Increase your App / Game Sales with French Localization – A Worthy Investment

It is a question a lot of developers ask themselves when they are about to release their games/apps or when they are tying to improve the global sales of their released products : Is it worth localizing our app in language X or Y? Will it really improve sales enough to justify the investment? Don’t users from all over the world have a basic understanding of English?

Localization offers too many advantages to compile them all in the list, but they essentially fall under the below categories:

  • You can reach a broader audience: About two thirds of iPhone/Android users are not English native speakers, and many will prefer not to spend their money on games and applications they may not be able to understand. Various studies show localization can result in dramatic improvements in download numbers
  • More visibility on application stores: The simple fact of having localized keywords and descriptions for your applications can be enough to make them more noticeable when people search applications using certain keywords
  • Better reputation and word-of-mouth: Users will be happy to have your app in their native language and will be more likely to spread the word about it. Localizing your app in several languages also shows that you are serious about your business. If you release several games a year or that you games have sequels, it is a very good way to build a community around your brand. It will also encourage review sites/magazines to have a look at your app

Now let’s see the arguments of developers that choose not to localize their applications:

  • “Some people in Japan/China/France have bought my game although it doesn’t have a localized version these markets”: As I mentioned above, these users are a minority. If your product is already selling in foreign markets, its localized version may very well become a hit.
  • “Localization is too expensive for me”

Investing in localization may sound hazardous to many, but the truth is that you can localize your applications, at least to some extent, without spending a fortune in most cases.

If your game is rather light on texts (puzzle-games for example), say, one or two thousands words at most, localization won’t cost you more than a few hundred dollars. If this amount still sounds big to you, you can start localizing in one language to start with and see the results for yourself before deciding what to do next.

If you are working on an adventure game, though, you will most likely have large amounts of texts to translate, and costs can indeed become high if you are a small developer. If understanding the in-game texts is not absolutely vital (i.e. the player can still enjoy the game despite not understanding all dialogs), I would recommend to simply localize the game description/keywords and to create a localized help/get started file. With this solution, people from different markets will still be able to find and play your game, and you will save on localization costs. If you are new to cost-optimization for localized applications, here are a few tips to help you get started.

If you are still unsure about whether localizing your app or game into French would be enough to boost sales, contact me now and let’s talk about it.

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By Anthony Teixeira | June 9, 2013 | Game localization, Localization |