Any advice on how to separate, in a Word file, source paragraphs followed sequentially by their translation

Hello,

I wonder if anyone may have a suggestion to solve this problem I’m facing:

I have received a large Word file in which a paragraph in the source language is followed by the corresponding translation, followed by another paragraph in the source language which is followed by its translation, so on and so forth. That’s the only document available.

Out of this file we need to create a translation memory with the translations provided within.

Using Alignment with the file as it is would be beyond messy, I think.

Besides brute force, is there by any chance some way of separating/extracting the source language from the translations?

Thank you in advance for any advice/suggestion you may have.

Gilberto

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  • In that case maybe you start a different way. It will require some manual work, but might give you what you need.

    First, make sure you see ALL non-printable characters including hidden text. Then go through the document, select the English paragraphs and press CTRL+SHIFT+H. This will format the text as hidden. You can obviously use also any other text attribute which will not change formatting. An option would be highlighting the text. When done, save the document. Now search for the text attribute you used. Replace with ^&^t and then use the other part I suggested before. When done, remove the text attribute you added. In case you used "hide" rund a search and replace for "hidden" and replace with "not hidden". For this replacement both search and replace fields are simply kept empty.

    I understand this is a lot of work, but in the end of the day this could bring you what you need, as creating a TMX from a table is a piece of cake.

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  • Thanks again, Jerzy!

    I'll try that. Yes, it'll be a lot of work but I trust it will be worthwhile.
    Your help and suggestions are very much appreciated!

    Gilberto

  • Yes, a lot of work. But certainly less as trying to align the files afterwards. 

    _________________________________________________________

    When asking for help here, please be as accurate as possible. Please always remember to give the exact version of product used and all possible error messages received. The better you describe your problem, the better help you will get.

    Want to learn more about Trados Studio? Visit the Community Hub. Have a good idea to make Trados Studio better? Publish it here.