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For information about my translation services, please visit the main site.
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Para información sobre mis servicios de traducción, visite el web principal.

Conversion of Déjà Vu memories into MemoQ memories

If you export a Déjà Vu (DVX) memory or terminology database and import it into MemoQ, you lose some of the data such as the client, subject, project, user name and creation date. This is because the tmx format created by DVX does not match the tmx format created and understood by MemoQ. For example, Déjà Vu has separate creation dates and user IDs for the source and target, whereas MemoQ has a single creation date for a translation pair (which makes more sense). Also, the tmx created by DVX contains the subject and client codes, not the actual names. For example, if you used the subject “33 – Economics” in DVX, you will be importing the number “33” as the subject, not the word “Economics”. Similarly, if you used client codes, like “MST” for “Microsoft”, you’ll be importing the code rather than the full name.

Anglo Premier recently migrated from Déjà Vu to MemoQ. After much labour we succesfully converted our translation memories and terminology databases, preserving all the subject and client data and the dates. We initially described the process on this blog, but the procedure is complicated to follow and the script we created won’t run properly on all versions of Windows. It also requires the user to have Excel and Access 2003. Instead, we are offering to convert your translation memories and terminology databases for you. For a fee of €20 or £16.50 we will convert a translation memory or terminology database, and for €40 or £33 we will convert up to four databases. None of the content of your databases will be read and we will delete the databases from our system as soon as the conversion has been done and the file(s) have been sent to you.

If you wish to use this service, please contact us via the contact form on our main website.

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Running Dragon 11 on 64-bit Windows XP

Nuance say Dragon is not compatible with 64-bit Windows XP. The installer aborts if you try to install it on this system. But there’s a workaround! Simply follow the instructions found here, but omit the part telling you to change the properties of Audio.exe to run in XP compatibility mode, since you’re already running XP (the blog was written to explain how to run Dragon in 64-bit Vista).

Many thanks to Larry Henry for explaining this workaround.

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Invertext glossaries

Edit on 29 March 2012

I have looked at this glossary more closely and having seen entries like this I can only conclude that it is not a reliable source.

End of edit

For professional translations, visit www.timtranslates.com.

Today I stumbled across this little beauty of a webpage. It contains a bilingual Spanish<>English glossary with 6,000 definitions in the fields of banking, stock markets, accounting, money and currencies, corporate banking, retail banking and money laundering. I’ve not really tested it yet, but it looks promising.

The glossary is produced by Ediciones Verba, who have produced what looks like a very interesting set of technical dictionaries. I’d be very interested in hearing from anyone who has bought the dictionaries.

I’m a little hesitant about buying them because I wonder whether at some point they’ll put everything online. Also, the dictionaries are not cheap (though given the number of entries, that’s not surprising). I do hope that at some point they will produce digital versions, because that’s what most translators prefer searching in. I’d rather select the terminology I’m looking for and activate a search on my computer or online than get a bulky paper dictionary and look for it manually. In fact, I’d be willing to pay more for an electronic dictionary than for a paper version.

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Linguee

Linguee is an online tool that searches for online translations of terms. It was originally only available for English<>German, but French, Spanish and Portuguese have now been added. You have to look carefully at the sources use and check the results for reliability, but provided you do that it’s a very useful tool.

Linguee website

Spanish<>English toolbar button (drag to the toolbar if using Firefox)
French<>English toolbar button (drag to the toolbar if using Firefox)

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Creating country-specific pages

When a company is looking for a translator, they are likely to include the name of their country or city in their online search. However, as any freelance translator knows, there is nothing to stop us working with clients anywhere in the world.

One way we can attract more potential clients is to create specific pages that target those living in a particular place.

Here is a list of the pages I have created for certain target markets. Note that many of the pages are written in the client’s target language. This list is also useful to ensure the pages are included in search engine indexes, since I don’t have links to any of these pages on my main site.

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