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Making things happen...
Feb. 14th, 2013 10:28 pmSo there's this one client who likes to "repackage" documents as tables of source text on the left and target text on the right (and at times, of segmented source/target on the right, drawn from the company's voluminous translation memory files). In a way, the format is not much different from what one might see using a translation memory program.
Stuff the company doesn't want translated (e.g., numbers in tables, repeated text) just doesn't appear in these files, which means that from time to time, the "flow" of the text disappears. When this happens, it is very handy to have a copy of the original document, so as to be able to see the context in which a given segment appears.
Except that this time, the "original document" arrived as a 60+ MB zip file containing about 80 separate Word files. Some number of these could be dismissed, in theory, without having opened them, but even having to open 50 files in Word and then searching for a particular string is not my idea of a good way to spend Thursday afternoon. I mean, once would be bad enough, but what if you had to do this several times?
The search capability of Windows Explorer fell woefully short of the mark. Fortunately, a utility I found some time ago called SearchMyFiles (from www.nirsoft.net) did the trick, at least after I made sure there were no spaces in the path to the folder where the search was supposed to begin.
I started to use my in-house Doku wiki in two new ways today. The first involved creating a page for the job I'm working on and to populate it with terminology that I've uncovered, items to disambiguate, and other useful information that I currently maintain using ink and paper. The second is to do some "freewheeling" on various topics (or no particular topic at all), for later refactoring. This latter practice is also something that I currently—and infrequently—do on paper.
Not that there's anything wrong with using paper and a writing implement, mind you. There are times when the hiss of a penpoint over the surface of paper acts in much the same way as the sound of rain falling on a rooftop to clear the mind.
Between this, that, and about 2,200 source words of translation, I spent virtually no time today on the memory competition. Maybe tomorrow.
Cheers...
Stuff the company doesn't want translated (e.g., numbers in tables, repeated text) just doesn't appear in these files, which means that from time to time, the "flow" of the text disappears. When this happens, it is very handy to have a copy of the original document, so as to be able to see the context in which a given segment appears.
Except that this time, the "original document" arrived as a 60+ MB zip file containing about 80 separate Word files. Some number of these could be dismissed, in theory, without having opened them, but even having to open 50 files in Word and then searching for a particular string is not my idea of a good way to spend Thursday afternoon. I mean, once would be bad enough, but what if you had to do this several times?
The search capability of Windows Explorer fell woefully short of the mark. Fortunately, a utility I found some time ago called SearchMyFiles (from www.nirsoft.net) did the trick, at least after I made sure there were no spaces in the path to the folder where the search was supposed to begin.
I started to use my in-house Doku wiki in two new ways today. The first involved creating a page for the job I'm working on and to populate it with terminology that I've uncovered, items to disambiguate, and other useful information that I currently maintain using ink and paper. The second is to do some "freewheeling" on various topics (or no particular topic at all), for later refactoring. This latter practice is also something that I currently—and infrequently—do on paper.
Not that there's anything wrong with using paper and a writing implement, mind you. There are times when the hiss of a penpoint over the surface of paper acts in much the same way as the sound of rain falling on a rooftop to clear the mind.
Between this, that, and about 2,200 source words of translation, I spent virtually no time today on the memory competition. Maybe tomorrow.
Cheers...
