Re: Emacs as a translator's tool

[Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@traduction-libre.org>]

> On Jun 6, 2020, at 2:32, Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> wrote:
> 
> And rememeber that "translation" is a very general term.  Even though
> I'm not a professional translator, I did a few of them in my life.
> Translating:
> 
> - a scientific paper
> - an RPG manual
> - subtitles for a movie
> - an interview for a journal
> 
> are all _very_ different tasks.  In the first case, the repetitiveness
> (and hence opportunity to use CAT's memory) is huge.  It is smaller in
> the second one, but then the main challenge is (a) coming up with good
> translations of certain terms, and (b) being consistent with them,
> especially if half the way through you need to modify your translations.
> (I don't know if professional CATs would help me with the changes of my
> "glossary"...)

I can only talk about OmegaT, but you can (and I do) search in source for a term and in target for another, filter the result and edit at will, or do simple replacements. Since the glossary is a text file you can modify it at will, you can do automatic checks to see if your translation respects the glossary and here again edit at will, etc.

> In the last two ones, the repetitiveness is almost non-existent (though
> my humble attempt at simplifying my job with Emacs - the one with
> highlighting sentences - helps quite a bit).

Indeed. Repetitiveness is one aspect of what CATs help with. Not missing a sentence is another one. I always use a cat when I translate, regardless of the characteristics of the document.


-- 
Jean-Christophe Helary @brandelune
http://mac4translators.blogspot.com