About Starting a New Translation

There are two ways to start a new translation in SDL Trados Studio. These options are available from any view in Studio:

·         Select File > New > New Project from the Ribbon.

·         Select File > Open > Translate Single Document from the Ribbon.

The two methods are described below.

Option	Description
New Project	Use this command to create multiple new translations by creating a project using the New Project wizard. This allows you to specify settings while creating the translation, such as the source and target language of the translation, project file settings, which termbase to use, which translation memories to apply and which translation memory options to use.
Translate Single Document	Use the Translate Single Document command to quickly open a document and start a new translation. You can also open a document for translation by drag-and-dropping it from your computer into the Editor View Navigation Pane or into the Editor Window.   Starting a translation using this method bypasses the selections you make when using the New Project wizard and you can. For example, you do not specify settings for pre-translation. Using the Translate Single Document command, you can create and save an *.sdlxliff file which contains source language segments only and then, from this, create further *.sdlxliff files which have a target language assigned to them. Once you have created the *.sdlxliff file, you can modify translation memory settings using the Project Settings dialog box. NOTE ·         When you create a translation using this method, a project is automatically created for you and the *.sdlxliff file is added to it. The project is given the same name as the document you opened. Settings for your active document can then be specified in the Project Settings dialog box where you can select translation memories, termbases and batch processing settings. ·         The options that you define in this dialog box when you first open a document for that language pair, become the default options for this language pair and are displayed in the Options dialog box and used if you create a project.

What Happens when you Create a New Translation?

When you open a source language document for the first time, Studio recognizes that this is a new translation and automatically:

·         Takes the content of the source language document and breaks it down into segments.

·         Places the document segments in an *.sdlxliff file.

·         Applies translation memory to the document segments (if a translation memory is open).

Studio automatically identifies the appropriate encoding for the language you are translating the document into.

*.Sdlxliff files

*.sdlxliff is an XML based bilingual file format, specially developed for use in localization. It is bilingual because it contains both the source document and the document translation in a single file. When an *.sdlxliff file is displayed in the Editor window in the Editor view, the source document text is displayed on the left of the Editor window and the target version of the text is displayed on the right.

When you save an *.sdlxliff file, the *.sdlxliff extension is added to the name of the source language document being translated. For example, a source document named Sample.doc would be saved as Sample.doc.SDLXLIFF.

Document Segmentation

When you open a document in the Editor view, the content is partitioned into segments, which can be matched against translation units in a translation memory. Usually the segmentation rules used to segment the document are the same as were used to create the translation units.

·         Each segment is displayed in a separate box.

·         The segments are displayed in the order in which they appear in the document and are numbered sequentially.