SDL Studio to Trados Legacy Converter

Posted by SuperCAT (Translation Tutorials) on

Scenario: You use Studio but your providers still use Trados 2007

Suppose that you use SDL Trados Studio but your providers still use Trados 2007 or other CAT tools. Well, a few months ago, you would have been obliged to take a step back and to prepare your project in Trados 2007. Downgrading to Trados 2007 would imply exporting the TM from Studio, probably loosing segments on the way, and getting a lower leverage due to segmentation or tag issues. But here’s the perfect workaround!

A new App has recently been released on the SDL OpenExchange platform: SLDXLIFF to Legacy Converter.  You can download it here. Thanks to this very useful tool from Logos you can convert your Studio SDLXLIFF files to four different bilingual formats: bilingual .doc, bilingual .docx, .ttx and .tmx. Your providers can now use Trados 2007 or other translation environments to translate your Studio projects. Once you receive the translated files, you just need to import them into your original SDLXLIFF files. Thanks to this tool, we can say that finally Trados 2007 and Studio are (almost) completely compatible with each other.

Let’s see how it works.

STEP 1: ADJUST THE SETTINGS

Under Tools > Settings, decide which segments you want to export and import (Perfect matches, Context matches, etc.).

 

And define which status the imported segments should adopt after the import process (draft, approved, etc).

 

 

STEP 2: LOAD SDLXLIFF FILES AND EXPORT THEM TO THE FORMAT OF YOUR CHOICE

You may load files or complete Studio projects. Then, choose the target format in the drop-down list (bilingual .doc, bilingual .docx, .ttx or .tmx) and click on Start Processing.

STEP 3: GET YOUR BILINGUAL FILES TRANSLATED

Bilingual .doc and .docx can be translated under Trados 2007 or using Wordfast Classic for instance, TTX files are supported by many Cat tools, such as TagEditor, MemoQ, Wordfast Pro and many more, .tmx files are based on XML and could be translated in many CAT tools or in TMX editors, such as Olifant.

STEP 4: CONVERT THE TRANSLATED FILES BACK TO SDLXLIFF

Use the Import tab to load the bilingual files you received from your providers and click on Start Processing to import the translation into the original SDLXLIFF files.

You can now proceed to review the files, to update your Studio TM or to finalize your project as usual.

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11 responses to “SDL Studio to Trados Legacy Converter”

  1. Hi! First of all, thanks for this useful tutorial 🙂
    However, I’d like to ask: isn’t any free source tool that allows this conversion (I mean from .sdlxliff files to .ttx)?

    Reply

  2. I want to say thanks, too, for this incredibly valuable resource. However, does the procedure described here work in the opposite direction, too? While I am currently starting using Studio 2011, the majority of my clients still want me to use Trados 2007. So can I create an SDLXLIFF from their source DOC and return a bilingual translation they can work with? Thanks for clarifying.

    Reply

  3. Thank you very much for the helpful tutorial. I went through it, but ended up with a lot of tag text or background segment information in my document, which makes it difficult to read. Would you happen to know how to get rid of that? I’m trying to create a bilingual .doc, like the old-style Word documents that had the source text in the background, but showing only the target text, not the tag information.

    Reply

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