Hello,

I understand your concern about changing the target language in your established memory on Trados Team and the spell check issue with Spanish (Latin America). Here's how you can go about it:

Step 1: Open Trados Studio and go to the Translation Memories view.

Step 2: Select the Translation Memory (TM) you want to edit and click on "Settings".

Step 3: In the "Language Pairs" section, you can change the target language to another Spanish variety that is recognized by the spell check.

Step 4: Save the changes.

Please note that changing the target language in your TM will not affect the translations that have already been done using Spanish (Latin America) as the target language. However, for future translations, the spell check will now recognize the new Spanish variety as the target language.

As for your concern about losing your memory, rest assured that changing the target language will not erase the existing translations in your TM. They will still be there and can be used for future projects. However, the spell check will only work for the new Spanish variety that you have set as the target language.

I hope this helps! If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

Best regards,

RWS Community AI

Thank you, AI.

My concern is whether the memory from previous translations will now be saved as Spanish variety I select. In other words, that we will be able to use them for future translations or if it would be like starting from scratch.

Nadia Vazquez 

I don’t think all the steps from AI are realistic…

1. Open Trados Studio and go to the Translation Memories view.
2. Select the translation memory you need to change the target variant and press the button Export". This step will export the TM to a TMX file format.
3. Open the TMX file with any text editor, such as Notepad or Notepad++.
4. In the text editor, replace all instances of es-419 (Spanish [Latin American]) to es-ES, for example, i.e., to Spanish (Spain) variant.
5. Save the changes in the text editor.
6. Now in Trados Studio, create a new TM with the same target variant as above (es-ES, for example) and import the TMX file. This TM will have the target Spanish variant you selected above. If you need another variant, you can check this link: https://localizely.com/language-code/es/

Thank you so much for your response. 

I should mention that while we (translators) use Trados Studio, our projects are assigned through Trados Live Team. Therefore, our memory is in the cloud. Would the steps you mention apply?

If so, when it comes to step 4, how do you go about replacing the language code?

Nadia Vazquez 

Nadia Vazquez said:

Therefore, our memory is in the cloud. Would the steps you mention apply?

You can download the TM from the cloud to your Desktop and work from there. Then upload the new TM to the cloud.

Nadia Vazquez said:

when it comes to step 4, how do you go about replacing the language code?

As an example, this is a screen-shot from Notepad:

Thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to show me. 

To sum up:

• Simply editing the TM to change the target language to a spell-check recognized Spanish variant (as AI suggested) will not change the target language of the memory that has already been established with previously translated documents (i.e., it will not create matches for future translations in the new target language despite having changed it).
• What I need to do instead is export the memory and change the target language using a text editor. Then, I need to import the file to Trados Live to create a new TM with the Spanish variant used in the text editor as the target language. 

Thanks again.

And this is a question for RWS:

Why not just make the Spanish Spelling Checker available for all variants of Spanish, instead that we play programmers and make a mess of something we don't know anything about??

 Cristina Heraud-van Tol 

The answer to this is simple.  Neither RWS, nor anyone else that I know of, create spell checkers that really do provide spell checking in all the variants of every language that is supported by Trados.  This is because they don't always exist.

So if you want spell checkers in the variant you prefer you have two options:

1. if you use Microsoft dictionaries then install the language pack for Microsoft Office (if there is one) for the variant you need and then when you restart Trados \studio it will be available for you, or
2. if you use Hunspell, just create a copy of the nearest available variant and then over time build up your own corrected version for the dictionary you chose.

 We did build a small utility that can help with it if you don't want to plan programmer:

https://appstore.rws.com/Plugin/54

But if you like to understand where this comes from and how it all works, there is an explanation here:

https://multifarious.filkin.com/2018/06/11/too-many-language-variants/