The GeekSpeak column has two goals: to inform the community about technological advances and at the same time encourage the use and appreciation of technology among pro- GeekSpeak Jost Zetzsche fessionals. Jost also publishes a free technical newsletter for [email protected] translators (www.internationalwriters.com/toolkit). Cultural Rifts

I have written before about the strange phenomenon surrounding translators of open-source material, Virtually none of the tools used by open-source who, though by most accounts often translators are used by commercial translators, very technical, have no technology intersection with their commercial and vice versa. (and often much less technically inclined) counterparts. Virtually none of the tools used by open-source trans- lators are used by commercial transla- when I had to document that particular no terminology components, etc.). tors, and vice versa. There are filter. I had never seen a file like that, There are some things that can be exceptions, of course. The open-source nor did I know what the files were done very well with it. One is to turn translation environment tool (TEnT) even good for! Fortunately, one of the .pot files (the template files that are OmegaT, built mostly for and by pro- few translators who “lives in both directly derived from the software) fessional commercial translators, is worlds” took me under his wing, sent into the bilingual .po files, and the used by some open-source translators, me sample files, and explained to me other is to compile the translated .po and there are a handful of commercial what the files were about. Eight or nine file in its compiled .mo version—both translators using tools like Virtaal, years later, I now have to work in proj- extremely welcome features when you , and Poedit. But the crossover is ects based on .po files—something that receive .pot files and are asked to the exception rather than the rule. is becoming increasingly popular, deliver translated .mo files. There are reasons for this discrep- especially in newly released software As far as translation goes, it is inter- ancy. First, the commercial TEnTs are, products with developers who origi- esting for experience’s sake to take on well, commercial, pricey, and therefore nally came from the open-source one small project in Poedit, but you not accessible for the mostly volunteer corner. will want to go back to your good old open-source translators. This becomes So, what are these files? These are complete translation environment even more relevant when you consider the translatable language resource files quickly. Which tools support this that most open-source translators work used in the free GNU concept format? Here is a list of TEnTs that in real-time workgroups1—a feature that for translating software and documen- directly support it: in most commercial products REALLY tation. GNU gettext is the de facto costs a lot. In addition, most commercial standard in many open-source projects, • Déjà Vu; TEnTs used to run on Windows only, and it works with a large variety of • Heartsome; which was not particularly popular programming languages. • Swordfish; among many connoisseurs/translators of In many ways, .po files are quite • SDL Passolo (a localization open-source software products. And sophisticated. Long before XLIFF tool); and, not surprisingly, finally, this serves only to highlight the existed or the Trados TagEditor .ttx • OmegaT, plus a number of other cultural rift between the two groups, one format had become a standard of sorts, open-source tools that tend to that in my opinion is unfortunate. these bilingual translation files were have the same limitations as There is one other reason as well, the actual translation files and could Poedit. though, and that is different file for- themselves become translation memo- mats. Many open-source projects are ries for other projects. All this was This is great if you have one of not based on the commercial file for- made possible by the above-mentioned these tools for your ongoing project, mats on which yours and mine are Poedit, an open-source translation but what if you do not? based, but on ones that many of us may editor. You might have noticed that I Enter Rainbow, the tool that will do never have heard of before. The for- do not call it a TEnT—that would be what no other can, the tool that will go mats that particularly come to mind are saying too much. It has the definite feel the extra mile, the tool whose devel- the GNU gettext .po and .pot files. of a Notepad compared with Word or opers, under the leadership of industry Years ago, as I was writing the doc- OpenOffice (no fuzzy matching, no veteran Yves Savourel, do all those umentation for a TEnT, I was stunned spell-check, no concordance searches, things that others are too lazy to do or

32 The ATA Chronicle n April 2011 Links do not have time to do. Rainbow allows you to carry out a OmegaT Poedit multitude of localization-related tasks www..org www.poedit.net (see its wiki page under the links listed in the box), but its most important func- tion in our context may be the prepara- Virtaal Rainbow tion of translation packets for XLIFF, translate.sourceforge.net/ www.opentag.com/okapi/wiki/index OmegaT, and Trados RTF for a great wiki/virtaal .php?title=Rainbow number of otherwise not supported or badly supported file formats (including Pootle .po). translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/pootle To convert your .po files to either XLIFF or Trados RTF where the non- translatable text is protected with the Trados tw4winExternal style, follow these steps: already partly translated, courtesy of 6. Select Execute. 1. Download, install, and start Yves and his team, a translation Rainbow. memory exchange TMX file would You can now pick up your trans- have also been created with that con- lated .po files in the Done folder. And 2. Select Input > Add Document tent right above the Work folder.) if you need to deliver .mo files, open to insert files and select the .po Once you are done with the transla- them in Poedit and simply save them. file(s). tion: In the default setting, Poedit will have created an .mo file for you. 3. Select Utilities > Translation 1. Save the files back into the Work (If you are thinking you will never Package Creation and choose folder. need to know this information, keep either Generic XLIFF or this in mind: Hosni Mubarak expected Original + RTF Layer. 2. Start Rainbow again. his 2011 to go a little differently than how it panned out, too. So keep these 4. Select a location on the Package 3. Select Input > Add Document instructions in a safe place!) Location tab. to insert files and select the man- ifest.xml file above the Work Note 5. Press Execute. folder. 1. Thanks to members of the OmegaT user group (http://tech. You will now have a folder struc- 4. Select the translated file(s). groups.yahoo.com/group/Omega ture that contains a Work folder in T/) for bringing this and other which you can find the files that need 5. Select Utilities > Translation things to my attention. to be processed with the TEnT of your Package Post-Processing. choice. (And if your .po file was

2011 Honors and Awards Now Open

ATA presents annual and biennial awards to encourage, reward, and publicize outstanding work done by both seasoned professionals and students of our craft. For complete entry information and deadlines, visit: www.atanet.org/membership/honorsandawards.php.

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