First steps with SDL Trados Synergy
One of the reasons I went to the ATA Conference was to find some project management software that is targeted at the translation market. This year, it seems like I am spending more and more time on managing translations and while I like to do this and it is a nice change of pace from actually translating into German.
Some of my recent projects had up to 10 languages and since I prefer to work with freelance translators, I have to open 10 translation memories, analyze 10 files, write 10 emails, wait for 10 replies, post-process 10 translations, file 10 invoices and last but of course not least, get 10 invoices paid. Yes, it is as time consuming and tedious as it sounds and I need to streamline my process. This is particularly awful if after all is sent out, you get the dreaded “Oops sorry, we forgot something” email from a developer and have to start over. Somehow, we are way too accessible since we are in the same building - heck, if I get up and look over my cubicle wall, I can even see many of them. Here are my first thoughts on Synergy after setting up a couple of projects.
I am using Trados since 10 years now and I just love it. I have to admit that I have good computer karma, so working with Trados is pretty much smooth sailing for me. I attended Dierk Seeburg’s seminar Manage Like a Pro: Translation Management which was very informative. Unfortunately, it did not cover translation management systems because according to the ATA, those would be in conflict with the seminar Translation Support Tools from the day before. Anyway, during this seminar I still learned that Synergy, which is included in SDL Trados Pro, could do the job. So after the seminar I went straight to the Trados booth and Kristen Shauger from SDL Trados gave me a quick impromptu demo.
Now that I am back, I couldn’t wait to see if this software does what I need. So far it looks pretty good. The project setup wizard is very intuitive and it took me just a few minutes to set up my first project. It generates language coded subfolder with the files for translation and eliminates the tedious process of manually opening translation memories for analysis.
Now, while it is all cool and very pretty, I was hoping that it would be easier to customize it. Here are a few examples:
- The translation files don’t have a language tag, so if my source file is called web.htm then all the files in the subfolders are also called web.htm. I find that very irritating; I have a translator who takes care of multiple languages and now I would have to attach 2 or 3 files with the same name to an email. I believe that would be confusing on his end and even worst when I receive three files with the same name but in different languages. It does not look like you can select language codes for your files. So for now, I just prefix them with DE_, FR_ etc., but I would love to eliminate the manual step.
- For every project, it generates a project TM. I work exclusively with one translator per language aside from the very very rare occasion if one is on vacation and we have an urgent unplanned translation. Unfortunately, there is no way to turn off this function.
- While the analysis reports are nice, it doesn’t seem like they are customizable. My translators charge on a per word base, so I really just need an analysis based on words. I don’t need characters, placables and segments. But that’s not the worst, the biggest issue is that it is not possible to properly copy and past the word count into an email. Before, I used the plain old log which worked fine. Now with Synergy, I have to highlight the analysis and then drag and drop from the Reports window into an email. I cannot highlight and copy/paste. Ctrl+C does nothing. It’s so weird, since the report seems to be HTML or XML based, but I can’t find the report source file.
Other than that, it looks promising. Has anyone else worked with localization-centric project management tools or is anyone working with Synergy? I sent an email with my questions to the TW_Users group but haven’t heard back - I believe my last 3 questions to the list remained unanswered.
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[...] short while back, I explained how I started to use SDL Synergy to manage my multilingual projects. I realized that I need to use the “packages” [...]
hello,
i just had the trados synergy 2007 and i really dont understand how to use it. can you please hlep me? or email me aguide? step by step? i have tried their tutorials bt they are not helpful at all!
thank you
Camille
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