Sunday, March 19, 2006

CATs get lost in design

The more your document gets complicated, the more it becomes difficult to translate the contents. As a matter of fact, working on InDesign document, even for a translator armed with a CAT or two, could be very much challenging.

Supposedly, exporting the contents in XML format (INX) would make it easier. This is likely a preferable way for a translation factory. But with a Mac OS X native CAT, you want to make it different. Here I got an accessory plugin that you might want to check out.


This tiny plugin offers an alternative (I am not saying "the best") workflow for InDesigners. Actually, this plugin lets you connect to any application, as long as you can AppleScript a tiny set of bridge functions for the application. Isn't it nice?

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Playing segments

"So, where did the source text go?" It was the very first question that I got when I introduced AppleTrans to someone new to it. For those people who got used to other CAT tools, the representation of the segments in the application may appear a bit strange.

It is always a good idea to get back to the basics when you are not sure where to go. The following clip shows what the segment means to the application, that is something described at the very beginning of the users guide. You may also find the portability of the segments within AppleTrans document.