In this post, I will help you create your first, basic project, which you can then send to the translators. Note that this guide will apply, with minor differences, to Trados Studio 2009, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2019. I will be using Trados Studio 2015.

The Source Files

We will be using a Word DOCX and an XML. Both files have the same content. We don’t have any translation memories, so I will be creating one as well.

 

New Project

1. Open Trados Studio 2015, and click on New Project

2. You will be using the Default project template. Eventually, you will learn how to customize templates that you can re-use for an specific client, for custom file formats, or for an specific set of files with unique parsing needs. Click Next >

 

3. Here you will name the project, that’s all, so change Project 1 for PRJ-001. We will store the project in the default location, we will not be using a GroupShare server and we won’t be using Trados capabilities to track the project by using a due date, customer, etc. Click Next >

4. Select your source language. This is now English (United States), but Trados can go from any language to any other target language(s). Add your target language(s). You can add as many as you need, but for now I will only add Spanish (Spain, International Sort), which is sort of the default flavor of Spanish. Click Next >

5. Now you will drag the files into the panel on the right. Here is where you will customize some of the many hundreds of options you have to process a lot of these supported file types. For this project, we will be using the default settings. Note: when you want to customize anything, you first have to set the customization and then drag the files. Once you drag the files you can’t customize the settings.

There are a couple things you need to know about the description columns in this screen:

a. Type: this will tell you what type of file this is, according to Trados
b. File Type Identifier: this is telling you which pre-processor has been used to determine what is localizable and what is not. In future posts, you will understand why this is so important
c. Usage: probably the most important one, as you want to make sure the files dragged are all localizable. If you drag a .JPG, i.e. it will mark the files as Reference instead of Translatable, which is correct because you can’t directly translate a .JPG file

Click Next >

6. If you had any translation memories from the client, you will add then here. Since we don’t, we will create one:

a. Click on Create, then on New File-based Translation Memory…

b. Name your TM. No need to add a Description, and you can leave the Location to the default one. Click Next >

c. You can leave, for now, all these settings as-is. Click Next >

d. Click Finish on this screen, and Close the next one. Your TM has been created and added to the project automatically

7. Click on Next >. You will not be using a terminology database (Termbase), so you can leave this blank. Click on Next >

8. You can leave this with it’s default setting “Apply PerfectMatch and lock”. Click Next >

9. In this screen, select Prepare, instead of Prepare without Project TM, to make sure that the translation memory is included in the project that you will be delivering to the translators.

10. Leave the next screen as-is. In another post we will be seeing how to modify the reports, lock 100% and context matches, and how, if needed, we can manipulate the fuzzy matches bands. For now, just click on Next >

11. Congratulations! You have just created your first Trados Studio project. Click on Finish and then on Close

 

Reports

In the report section you will find your total word counts, new words to translate, repeated words and any leverage against a translation memory. Since we have a blank translation memory, there should not be any leverage. Since we are using the same content in both files, there should be a lot of repetition:

1. Click on Reports

2. In the totals section of your report, you will see this information

Total amount of words is 132. We have 66 new words, and 66 words that repeat from one file to the other, this is because the content is the same in both files. In another post, you will see how the translator will take advantage of the translation memory to translate those repeated words.

 

Files & Editor

In the Files & Editor section, you can see what is available for the translators to translate. I.e. see below the XML. You don’t see the tags, you only see the content, which is exactly what you want the translators to have access to:

 

Deliver Files To The Translators

We have two ways to deliver files to the linguists:

1. You can deliver the full project. This, however, will include any other language besides the one that they are supposed to translate. In this case we only have one language, so it should be fine:

a. Right click on the project. This will take you to where the project files are. You can zip them and ship

2. The correct way, would be to create a Package, which the translator can open within Trados Studios:

a. Click on Create Project Package

b. You can then select what files you want included. I need them all in this case. Click Next >

c. Here you can do many things. You can select the folder where you want your packages to be stored, you can Create a package for every language, and you can even split projects per word count so you can distribute them among different linguists. Click Next >

d. We need to assign a user, so we can keep track on who translated what. Click on Users…. Add the name and email of the translators and click OK

e. In Assign to: select Juan Castro. Leave the rest as-is. Click Next >

f. Leave these settings as-is and click on Finish

g. You can now, Open Target Folder… and send that package to your translator

h. The only file you need to send is the .SDLPPX file

This is it!