Can Trados Studio actually provide a decent Word document?

I have only used Studio once, and I am hesitant to ever use it again.

I had Word files that included text, graphs, tables, text around the graphs, and perhaps another type of embedded object. The SDL Trados generated Word files were a complete mess! I spent twice as much on formatting the translated files than I spent on the translation. In fact, in the end, I ended up at using the source files, and then copying, and pasting all the translated text.

In other words, I would have done it much faster and easier without having used Trados Studio at all. It was extremely painful. What can I do to see if SDL Trados can actually provide a decent Word document? I have copies of the files, and anything else that you could check on detail, if necessary.

  • Pseudo-translate would show it should work.  Perhaps the problem is you have used a converted pdf and then missed all the control tags that would be needed to properly render a converted file "ok".  A converted PDF might also simply be a very poor document to work with!

    The user asking this question might have also just not put in tags where they are needed.  Current versions of Studio are less strict about tags than they used to be so this means you could omit all tags and still save the target file... which could look awful!

    Basically, I think there is insufficient information to answer this one, and given Studio actually does an excellent job on Word files I don't think we can answer this easily without some examples to play with.

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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