From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.ciao.gmane.io!not-for-mail From: Eric Abrahamsen Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Emacs as a translator's tool Date: Fri, 29 May 2020 10:39:24 -0700 Message-ID: <87zh9qr67n.fsf@ericabrahamsen.net> References: <871rn35lqc.fsf@mbork.pl> <87zh9r45ad.fsf@mbork.pl> <87h7vz2m5g.fsf@ebih.ebihd> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="ciao.gmane.io:159.69.161.202"; logging-data="119562"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/28.0.50 (gnu/linux) Cc: help-gnu-emacs , Emanuel Berg To: Yuri Khan Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Fri May 29 19:39:59 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1jeiz7-000UvV-OD for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 29 May 2020 19:39:57 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:60510 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jeiz6-00068q-Or for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 29 May 2020 13:39:56 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:46578) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jeiym-00068e-J4 for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 29 May 2020 13:39:36 -0400 Original-Received: from ericabrahamsen.net ([52.70.2.18]:35066 helo=mail.ericabrahamsen.net) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jeiyk-00013o-Vj for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Fri, 29 May 2020 13:39:35 -0400 Original-Received: from localhost (75-172-112-137.tukw.qwest.net [75.172.112.137]) (Authenticated sender: eric@ericabrahamsen.net) by mail.ericabrahamsen.net (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 9D213FA086; Fri, 29 May 2020 17:39:25 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: (Yuri Khan's message of "Fri, 29 May 2020 15:29:09 +0700") Received-SPF: pass client-ip=52.70.2.18; envelope-from=eric@ericabrahamsen.net; helo=mail.ericabrahamsen.net X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: First seen = 2020/05/29 13:39:27 X-ACL-Warn: Detected OS = Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] [fuzzy] X-Spam_score_int: -41 X-Spam_score: -4.2 X-Spam_bar: ---- X-Spam_report: (-4.2 / 5.0 requ) BAYES_00=-1.9, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_MED=-2.3, SPF_PASS=-0.001, URIBL_BLOCKED=0.001 autolearn=_AUTOLEARN X-Spam_action: no action X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "help-gnu-emacs" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.help:123181 Archived-At: Yuri Khan writes: > On Fri, 29 May 2020 at 15:14, Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU > Emacs text editor wrote: > >> Anyway, what other features do the proprietary >> CATs have? >> >> I always thought translation was just a matter of >> reading one thing and then typing what it means, >> looking up the occasional word or phrase for the >> idiomatic equivalent. > > I have not used any professional CATs, but one important function is > having a vocabulary (also called translation memory). > > Imagine translating a novel. When a new character is introduced, you > have to decide how his/her name is translated and spelled. You need to > record it so that you=E2=80=99re consistent. Same goes for any names, not= just > of people. > > If the translation is a joint effort, that vocabulary needs to be > shared so that the whole team calls characters the same names. I'm a translator, primarily of fiction, and do all of it in Emacs, specifically in Org mode. I've thought many times over the years about what I would really want an Emacs-based translation environment to provide for me. I don't do technical translation, so there's not a whole lot of value in sentence-by-sentence correspondences. But as Yuri mentions it can be very useful to keep track of how you've translated certain names, or certain important terms, in different places throughout the text. Basically I would want two things: 1. A way to keep track of location correspondences between the source text and translated text. CAT tool split the text up by sentence, but that's not very useful for fiction (particularly Chinese->English translation) because there's rarely a one-to-one correspondence. There /is/ a more reliable correspondence between paragraphs, though, and I'd like to know which paragraph equals which. The point would mostly be to find my place again when I start translating at the beginning of the day, and to implement a more useful follow-mode. I imagined this would happen when the mode was turned on: it would run down the file and insert markers that would be used to find correspondences. Special characters could be inserted into the file to indicate that two paragraphs should be joined, or one paragraph split. 2. Link terms in the translation to a glossary pulled from the original. This would be character names, places, special terms, etc. They might not always be translated the same way, but I need to know how I've handled them earlier in the document. Glossary terms would be highlighted in the source text, and when you came to the equivalent spot in the translation, you'd use a command like insert-translation-term that would prompt for the translation, offering completion on earlier translations, and then insert that term into the translated text with a link to the original in the glossary. There would also be two multi-occur commands: one that prompted for a translation and showed all the places in the source text where it came from, and another that did the opposite: prompted for an original glossary term and showed all the places in the translation where it was translated. Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about. Almost no code so far, though! Eric