Writing Direction

Question

good day everybody
I finished translating a table from English into Arabic and exported it into Word but unfortunately the text direction is designed from lift to right which is not the right direction of the target language. I made some search in here and I learned in this question that this is a bug needs to be tackled in the future:
community.sdl.com/.../right-to-left-text-direction
Any updates or suggestions plz?

Phil Elliott · Accepted Answer

Hi Abdullah and Paul, 
 So, having now looked at the Word file you sent through Abdullah, I can see that the table was created whilst MS Word was using right-to-left settings for Arabic text rather than the left-to-right settings for English. This then means that Trados Studio maintains the table layout as it was originally created. 
 For a table in English to be set properly in MS Word then the left-to-right text direction setting in the Home ribbon needs to be the active one and then when you translate into Arabic in Trados Studio you will find that the table and its content in the resulting Arabic target document will be set and displayed correctly. 
 Below are two images of an expanded copy of the document you sent. In both the original English and then the translated Arabic you will see that I have two tables with the same content. 
 The first table in each document is the result of where the original English table was set while still using the right-to-left text setting for e.g. Arabic. These are highlighted by the red pointers 1 & 2 in image (1) below. 
 The second table in each document is the result of where the original English table was set using the left-to-right text setting for e.g. English. As you will see, when translated into Arabic and the new MS Word Arabic version is created, this way displays the Arabic text and table layout correctly. 
 (1) English source text.

(2) Translated Arabic Text 
 
 So the setting that should be use when creating a table in MS Word in e.g. English (left to right languages) is in the Home ribbon and highlighted by Pointer 2 for Left-to-right text direction and NOT the one highlighted by Pointer 1 which is for Right-to-left text direction. 
 
 Hope this helps and is clear, but if you are still unsure or need further clarification, please come back to me. 
 Phil.

Paul · Answer

Abdullah Alobaid 
 The bug you are referring to has nothing to do with your problem. It specifically relates to the alignment of the text when working with Pashto... not Arabic. 
 For your problem... have you tried applying the BiDi markers to ensure the correct directionality of the text? Perhaps that will help?

Paul · Answer

Abdullah Alobaid 
 please save a SMALL sample of your source file with this problematic table and I&rsquo;ll try and help later.

Paul · Answer

Abdullah Alobaid 
 I can only test this by comparing to a machine translation online, but it looks correct to me. Please can you advise what's wrong here. 
 Source table: 
 
 Translation: 
 
 Target table:

Paul · Answer

Abdullah Alobaid 
 You said... 
 Abdullah Alobaid said: unfortunately the text direction is designed from lift to right which is not the right direction of the target language. 
 So what you meant is that the table itself should be reversed... the text itself is fine? 
 I'm not sure this is possible in Studio... Patrik Mazanek might know. I know it can e done in Word afterwards like this: 
 https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/how-do-i-change-table-direction-not-text-direction/7edeeddc-2347-450d-ad32-1e0eeff40bdb 
 But I'll need to investigate this tomorrow to see whether Studio can handle this or not and also whether this is a bug or not..

Phil Elliott · Answer

Hi Abdullah, 
 Not sure what you have set up either in MS Word or in SDL Trados Studio, but the table output when translating from e.g. English into Arabic in Trados Studio should read and display from Right to Left as far as the table formatting is concerned when you save back into MS Word. This is one of the big benefits when using Trados for translating left-to-right language tables into Arabic as it means there is no post editing required for switching the table around. This has worked very nicely since Trados Studio 2009. 
 I have just runs a quick test in Studio 2021 and have no problem with the table display and formatting see below (please note that I have used machine translation for creating the Arabic translation. 
 English input MS Word document: 
 
 Arabic output MS Word Document

You should not have to do anything special to achieve this result apart from open the source document for translation in Studio, say that you are translating from e.g. English US to Arabic KSA in the project settings, add the Translation memory(ies) you wish to use etc. then translate the document and use the Save to Target option to create your Arabic version of the MS Word document. 
 If this still is not working for you then please can you share some screenshots / overview of how you are setting things up when you open a document in Trados Studio as that may help us see where the problem is. 
 
 Thanks 
 Phil

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Writing Direction

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