Hi Michael Bailey, hi Paul 

I use Studio as a PDF converter too, creating a Word file then tidying it up and base the translation project on that.

If the client wants a Target PDF, all you then have to do after translation is Save as Target, open the resulting Word file (which is what you get anyway when translating from PDF) then you can Save as from Word to PDF.

All the best,

Ali :)

Hi there,
There is a regular feature called 'Perfect Match'. It was invented by SDL long time ago, but it is still hardly used/known and therefore 'workaround'ed by translators. Once translated from German1 to German2 (or from English1 to English2), you can use your translation.sdlxliff as a template for your future translating/editing jobs. No need to apply makeshift macro before and after translation or do any other additional actions.

Unknown said:

There is a regular feature called 'Perfect Match'. It was invented by SDL long time ago, but it is still hardly used/known and therefore 'workaround'ed by translators.

I believe that's because - for some obscure reason - it's available only in (awfully expensive, therefore rarely used by common translators) Professional version. At least that's what Paul said several times (personally I don't know, I only used Pro version).

Unfortunately I am not that rich as to buy Pro =) I use Freelance Plus.

UPDATE: Err... My bad... I use Freelance Plus at home. Now I am on rotation at my employer's office. We work with Pro indeed. That's why I can use PM. My work schedule is so that I mostly work on rotation. When on vacation, I do my best to minimize or, even better, evade any workload. This is why I didn't notice the difference. Sorry for misinformation.

Unknown said:

I believe that's because - for some obscure reason - it's available only in (awfully expensive, therefore rarely used by common translators) Professional version.

Yes, this is true.  But worth noting that the "update file" feature in Studio 2019 uses Perfect Match and this is available with the Freelance licence as well.  This may be the biggest usecase for Perfect Match anyway... mid-project updates.

Hi Ali and Paul,

The PDF converter is something I have rapidly come to love in SDL Studio 2019 working in financial market supervision where I have to frequently translate administrative decisions (passed on as PDFs to me, due to their containing an electronic signature). Fortunately as the PDFs are originally Word documents, the formatting is not so bad, but I have also used it before now to align an existing translation of a law prior to using Perfect Match with deductions. The only problem that threw up in one instance was an "Unexpected Token Error"

The OCR part of it has come into its own where I have non-OCRed scans of faxed reporting submissions from a couple of very small supervised entities - the OCR feature is a marked improvement of the previous having to retype the PDF files (1-2 pages of text).

Michael

Another workflow I use, which again is using Studio as an authoring memory system, is one I call "Monolingual Track Changes in PowerPoint" which is useful as I get a lot of PowerPoint presentations to review, frequently written in English by non-native authors (second language authoring ("2LA") also being increasingly prevalent, who have presentations in working groups that they ask me to check. One of the weaknesses of PowerPoint is the fact that there is not the same track changes feature as in Word (track changes in PowerPoint from the 2013 uses the Review > Compare feature. SDL Studio's bilingual preview mode (Ctrl + P in Editor mode) is particularly useful as I often have to go through slides with colleagues and can then see what has been changed.

In addition I also have a Monolingual Termbase that I use in conjunction with this workflow that I use in conjunction with a QA terminology check, as a way of trapping frequent errors and also AutoCorrect entries to correct numbers (e.g. where the English presentations continues to use German abbreviated forms for millions and billions). As I have a lot of regular customers who tend to be consistent in usages (ie. the same changes are often required between one presentation and the next where they write from scratch on each occasion). One colleague has asked me before now if I am aware of mistakes he regularly makes - and by using a job number in each project which includes the customer's in-house abbreviation (we all have three letter abbreviations eg. ABC or BAI etc.) coupled with a "user" field in the Termbase, it has helped some improve their authoring by being aware of what frequently gets changed.

When the target language version presentation is generated, it can of course also be compared and reviewed in PowerPoint if required. The only downside is that sometimes the formatting needs checking in PowerPoint afterwards.

Hi Michael Bailey 

Here's another thing that Studio wasn't quite designed to do but can do very well...

Comparing pre-existing translations

All the best,

Ali :)