#SDL OpenExchange

[paulfilkin]

Radical Anxiety Termination...

Radical Anxiety Termination…

… Really Awful Tucker, Radically Altered Terminology, Rheumatoid Arthritis Test, Race Against Time, Recurrent Acute Tonsillitis, Real Acquisition Technology, Republicans Against Trump… the list goes on!  All with the same acronym RAT.  A comment on the SDL AppStore this week relating to a new plugincalled the RAT inspired me to write this article this evening.  Everyone is loving this plugin so…

[paulfilkin]

The Story of "Studio" Colours...

The Story of “Studio” Colours…

Once upon a time, of course, the translation environment was just black and white with gray in between.  Black and white and gray?  The AppStore gods were understandably bored and angry, so they went looking for other colours to brighten the world for their users.  The resulting colours emerged from the Microsoft Word palette resulting in fifteen colours to choose from.  The AppStore gods were so…

[paulfilkin]

A business resolution for 2019...

A business resolution for 2019…

There are three things that have stood out for me this year.  The first is how much support SDL have provided to their users to make sure they are able to work successfully with their investment.  The second is how little many users are aware of this, and the third is just how many users have used Trados for a decade or more and were not aware of what a support & maintenance contract can bring…

[paulfilkin]

It's all about the money!

It’s all about the money!

It could be said that translators come into the industry for the love of language, and the creative nature of the work, writing beautiful translations that at least do justice to the original texts.  It might even be true for many… but let’s face it, very few people can afford to do this for a full career without thinking about the money!  So it’s all the more surprising to me that translation…

[paulfilkin]

A competitive edge...

A competitive edge…

I’m pretty sure that when we started to build the new Customer Experience Team in Cluj last year that there was nothing in the job description about being competitive… but wow, they are!!!  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t competitive, because I know I am, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had these kinds of feelings that keep me up at night.

To some extent I think the training requirements at…

[paulfilkin]

App Notifications...

App Notifications…

In the years that the SDL AppStore has been around I get asked one question on a fairly regular basis… “How can I find out about new apps or updates to existing apps?”.  A very reasonable question of course and one that has not been addressed particularly well, albeit there have been ways to keep yourself informed.  The ultimate solution we all want to see is the AppStore embedded into SDL Trados…

[paulfilkin]

Advancing the Advanced...

Advancing the Advanced…

Some time ago the SDL AppStore team created an opensource site where they make the source code available for virtually all the apps they create for the SDL AppStore.  You can find the site here, https://sdl.github.io/Sdl-Community/, along with links to the apps themselves and also the sourcecode which can be pulled by any developer so they can make their own enhancements and improvements based on…

[paulfilkin]

Double vision!!

There are well over 200 applications in the SDL AppStore and the vast majority are free.  I think many users only look at the free apps, and I couldn’t blame them for that as I sometimes do the same thing when it comes to mobile apps.  But every now and again I find something that I would have to pay for but it just looks too useful to ignore.  The same logic applies to the SDL AppStore and…

[paulfilkin]

So simple... yet so useful!

So simple… yet so useful!

I’m certainly no expert on knots, but I do like them.  They’ve always held a kind of fascination for me over the years, I even have an app on my phone with 121 knots in glorious 3D.  It sounds a little sad as I write this, but I also have a favourite… a Constrictor Knot.  I use it all the time because I learned a simple way to quickly put this one together for securing the ends of frayed lines…

[paulfilkin]

... and the winner is?

… and the winner is?

Every now and then I see an application and I think… this one is going to be a game changer for Studio users.  There have been a few, but the top two for me have been the “SDLXLIFF to Legacy Converter” which really helped users working with mixed workflows between the old Trados tools and the new studio 2009, and the “Glossary Converter” which has totally changed the way translators view working…

[paulfilkin]

The beauty of simplicity...

The beauty of simplicity…

In 2013 I wrote an article called “Solving the Post-Edit Puzzle” which was all about finding a way to measure, and pay for post-editing translations in a consistent way.  Then in 2015 I wrote another called “Qualitivity… measuring quality and productivity” that was all about everything Post-Edit Compare could do but then added many layers of detail and complexity through Qualitivityto support…

[paulfilkin]

Upgrading apps in the SDLAppstore...

Upgrading apps in the SDLAppstore…

Studio 2019 has arrived and it brings with it some nice features on the surface, and some important improvements under the hood… but it also brings with it a lot more upgrades than just Studio, and I don’t just mean MultiTerm!  The SDL AppStore is one of the unique benefits you get when you work on the SDL technology stack and there are hundreds of apps available that can provide additional…

[paulfilkin]

Looking cool...

Looking cool…

Using stylesheets to enhance the translators experience when working with XML files can be very helpful and sometimes essential.  It allows you to pull details from the XML and display them in a preview pane so that the translator has more context around the translatable text.  It can also provide a mechanism for displaying text that you don’t want extracted from the XML for translation at all. …

[paulfilkin]

More power to the elbow... upLIFT

More power to the elbow… upLIFT

“More power to the elbow”… this is all about getting more from the resources you have already got, and in this case I’m talking about your Translation Memories.  In particular I’m talking about enabling them for upLIFT.  upLIFT, in case you have not heard about this yet despite all the marketing activity and forum discussions since August this year, is a technology that is being used in SDL…

[paulfilkin]

square pegs in round holes...

square pegs in round holes…

It’s all about the termbase definition when you want to merge termbases, or import data into MultiTerm termbases.  The XDT… otherwise known as the MultiTerm Termbase Definition file is the key to being able to ensure you are not trying to knock square pegs into round holes!  I’ve written in the past about the flexibilityof MultiTerm and it’s this flexibility that can make it tricky for new users…

[paulfilkin]

Two heads are better than one...

Two heads are better than one…

… and hundreds or thousands of heads are better than two!!

I wrote an article a little while back called “Vote now… or have no say!” which was a follow up to the SDL AppStore competition SDL ran for a few months.  I wanted to remind everyone to go and vote if they wanted to have an opportunity to see an app developed that would be useful for them.  Well the competition is over now and we have a…