So this has been a tough cookie for me the last couple of days - I've never been in this situation. I took over a book translation two thirds into the job from somebody else. We got the file with formatting and everything in pdf, but he translated into a word file where he marked paragraphs of unusual formatting with notes like "XXX QUOTE START", "XXX QUOTE END", "XXX GRAPHIC" and the like. I'm not going to continue translating in his file, I'll translate in Trados which is much more comfortable for me. I think the publisher wants the finished file the way he did it, but I'll first finish the translation and THEN put all these notes in because the other way around would make me crazy, I need to focus on the pure translation process first.

In any case, the main issue is the creation of the translation memory. I got the Word files with the chapters he translated, quite a bit of it specific terminology, so a translation memory is a must. Question is now, how to integrate his translated files into the project file I created of the original pdf. I can't just copy/paste all his translated segments, right? He already translated about 18.000 of the total 28.000. I guess there are ways to batch-import his segments at least semi-automatically?