Lech Lachowski 

It does depend on what these custom styles are doing.  If you mean a style whereby several different types of formatting are grouped to form one "style" then you probably cannot do this.  Trados Studio is not a word processor and it's designed to replicate the formatting of the source.

Perhaps if you provided an example of what you want to do and what/how you have tried then we can answer your question.  I'd almost hazard a guess you are adding your formatting in File -> Options and expecting it to work in an existing project, but without more detail I don't really know.

Hello, Paul.

I go to Project settings>File types>Microsoft 2007-2019>QuickInsert and try to add new tag, but there is no option Tag pairs (linke in HTML5 file type), but only Standalonetext and text pairs, which give me no optiom to define any formatting. QuickInsert had some default styles, like bold, italic etc. and some free buttons for custom (styles?), so Trados can do formatting, but leaves few buttosn to create user's styles I guess, but so far I connot do that.

I need to add styles like "bold green", "curier new, red, 9 pt.", "italic with custom navy color", "curier new, red, 9 pt. italic", hyperlink, 6 kinds of headers etc.

Generally adding this after in completed word file is very timeconsuming. I translate books, that have concrete styles I have been given by my publisher in word template.

I see I can do this in HTML5 file types, but I connot do conversions from ord to html and back, no use.

For now I mark this places with comments and do formatting later but it's not working for me.

Do You have any suggestions?

I was thinking about inserting HTML tags, but word does not parse it. So it's no good.

I would appreciate any suggestions and clues 

Lech Lachowski 

It sounds to me as though this is too much of a DTP task for a translation tool, and is heavy enough for you to be charging for it as a separate task.

A clunky kind of workaround to deal with simple formatting additions would be to add sample of the formatting to your source file before you start, then bookmark that location in your file.  For example:

This whole process did give me an idea which I'll investigate with the appstore team.  If we could right-click on a tag style in Studio and have it added to the quick inserts as a custom tag then that would be quite neat.  You could create a "style file" which you add to your project and then use that to add all the quick inserts you need.  That could be a good and easy solution.  I don't expect this to be anything we'd pick up any time soon but I kind of like the idea.

Tank You, I will test this and let You know. Though I'm afraid that giving the count of words I need to format and the count of styles I use, it may be only temporarly solution.

I very much like Your idea of clicking and adding styles to QuickInsert - it would be the best solution!!! 

I am just suprised what are blank custom buttons in QuickInsert for? And I think it wouldn't be so hard to implement this formattig, given that in file type HTML you can confgure styles for this buttons. It is somewhat disapointig that this professional and not so cheap software lacks this funcionality.

I have been reading posts in forums from 2017-2019 that users are looking for it and they wrote, they epecting it soon... 

Lech Lachowski 

Lech Lachowski said:

And I think it wouldn't be so hard to implement this formattig, given that in file type HTML you can confgure styles for this buttons.

You think?

Lech Lachowski said:

It is somewhat disapointig that this professional and not so cheap software lacks this funcionality.

Show me any translation tool that isn't a set of macros inside Microsoft Word that can do this?

Lech Lachowski said:

I have been reading posts in forums from 2017-2019 that users are looking for it and they wrote, they epecting it soon... 

Could be a long wait!  Frankly this amount of editing the format of the document should never be the responsibility of the CAT tool. Consider the filetypes that Trados Studio supports and then try to imagine how much effort that would require and how even more bulky the software would become.  It's a translation environment and not a desktop publishing tool!  If the provider of the original source can't ensure that it's formatted correctly then this is a simple case of you using the right tool for the job.. either before or after the translation has taken place.

Maybe You right it isn't easy to implement, and I do not know other CAT tools that well.

Unfortunately in my kind of work I have a raw text that I copy from book's pdf and I can format only headers before adding file to Trados, so for me formatting would be great.

Nevertheless I still think they got blank buttons in QuickInsert for Word and now they're are no use - so they seem to be waiting for add better functionality. 

And I think adding formatting it's just adding some HTML an a parser - surely not so hard. If you look how looks QuicInsert for html file type (and few other types), there is possibility to configure Tag pairs with formatting. Why not for word files? And I found no use for this custom 1, custom 2 etc. buttons in word QuickInsert for now. 

Besides for polish translations market and earnings (0,03 euro cents for word), 400 euros for 12 moths license barely pays off. 

Lech Lachowski 

Lech Lachowski said:

Unfortunately in my kind of work I have a raw text that I copy from book's pdf and I can format only headers before adding file to Trados

Why?  Don't you have a copy of Microsoft Word, or the free Open Office?  Surely if you work this way it makes far more sense to properly format the file before you translate it?

Lech Lachowski said:

And I think adding formatting it's just adding some HTML an a parser - surely not so hard.

But it's not like this... although maybe you just know something we don't.  I'll pass your advice over to our developers so they can learn something.

Lech Lachowski said:

Besides for polish translations market and earnings (0,03 euro cents for word), 400 euros for 12 moths license barely pays off. 

Perhaps, given you seem to only work one way you made a poor choice of tool?  Maybe Wordfast Classic would be better for you?  You have all the functionality you need as you translate inside Microsoft Word.

I do use Office 365, unfortunately formatting in word file anything more than headers is useless, because polish language is far different structured than english, so it's more work to format before than to do it after or as you go. And it's my style of work to do formating on ongoing basis. It's much faster, that's why I would like to have styles at hand 

I was even looking for some html parser for word documents so I would jut put raw html tags formatting in trados and than parse outcoming word file, but didn't find anything useful yet. Mabe this could be good idea to use blank buttons from QuickInsert, paste there raw html elements into text pair field, use them in translated target, and at the end put it through some html parser?

To bo honest I did not like WordFast. I was choosing between Trados and memoQ, and decided as You know.

After 12 years working on polish market I started my own company GoodMateIT and now I am looking jobs abroad, in UE and USA, becouse money is 4 times bigger. So maybe Trados will pay off in time. 

By the way, besides lacking the smal funtion of formating, I like this software very much, and working is faster and gives me more pleasure. 

 Lech Lachowski 

Lech Lachowski said:

I do use Office 365, unfortunately formatting in word file anything more than headers is useless, because polish language is far different structured than english, so it's more work to format before than to do it after or as you go.

Really?  I wonder how Polish authors create their content?  Is there some other tool they use?

I guess another approach you could take would be to quickly apply the formatting sample to a single word in the source where you know it will be required... so don't spend time trying to format properly.  Then when you translate the file the tags will already be in the source paragraph and they'll be easy to apply into the correct place.  These days Studio is less strict with formatting and won't care if the source formatting tags don't match the target.

Lech Lachowski said:

Mabe this could be good idea to use blank buttons from QuickInsert, paste there raw html elements into text pair field, use them in translated target, and at the end put it through some html parser?

Sounds like a hammer to crack a nut!  If we don't use the approach I mentioned earlier in the thread to right-click on a tag, then maybe we can build a DOCX formatting plugin.  It's not as simple as you think as we need to understand how to add code to the text as a tag that Word will understand represents the formatting of your choice.  That would only work for Word.  But since this is one most translators working on their own look for it might be helpful.  But till won't be something we do soon.

Given how accessible the APIs are for Trados Studio it's quite amazing nobody ever did this if it's such a big problem.  I wonder why that is?

Lech Lachowski said:

So maybe Trados will pay off in time. 

Truth is the list prices of these tools are all very similar!  Always good to look for a discount or purchase through a local reseller.  Good luck with your company... if you can manage to find enough regular work the tool should pay for itself a lot sooner than 12-months!

I do not know how other translator manage this, but I think You advice will be enough for my needs for now and maybe in the future there will be some plugin available.. 

Tnak You for ou time Paul and if I find quicker way I will let you know