Wrong target language

Hi, all.

I confess to being only an occasional user of Trados (Studio 2011) – generally I only use it when specifically requested by clients, and I find it tends to slow me down and create more problems than it solves – but I am trying it right now to increase my productivity on an urgent project.

The client (a long-standing client of mine) insists on US English. Therefore, I selected "English (US)" in the target list when creating the project. In the editor, though, the Union flag appears, and the US spelling is marked as incorrect.

Could it be that I needed to remove UK English from the list? Probably. If both variants are attached to the project, though, why can I not use the SPAG checker for US English? Also, when I click on "Project settings", why can't I alter those settings (to take UK English off)? Trados, as always, appears inflexible and unhelpful.

Thankfully, it is only a 1000-word-odd test segment (I didn't want to risk messing up the whole of a job), and if it seems to work alright, I will simply do it right for the next bit, but it would be really helpful if more experienced users than I could tell me if there is any way to fix the mistake.

Many thanks in advance

Ben

Parents
  • Hello Ben,

    If you selected US English then that would be the language for the job.  Why would you have selected both variants?  You'd have to create a multilingual project to do that, and if you did this then you'll find you have a US file and also a UK file.  So if you did this you would see this in the files view (for example):

    So this project goes from Spanish to en(US) and also en(GB).  But I had to specifically create the project this way to do it.  Where are you seeing the languages?

    Paul

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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  • Hi, Paul. Thanks for your reply.

    I see the languages in the second step of the "New Project" wizard.

    The below shows my default settings (set up thus because I do translate to both varieties of English). I didn't change these on the test project mentioned above... just clicked "Next".

    Obviously what I needed to do was click UK English (in the RH pane), and then "Remove", so only US English was left. (Note: I did this with my next section, and it is working alright). I am still confounded, though, by why I couldn't choose to check in US English when both varieties were attached to the earlier project. And what is the point of "Project settings" if you can't change any of them?

Reply
  • Hi, Paul. Thanks for your reply.

    I see the languages in the second step of the "New Project" wizard.

    The below shows my default settings (set up thus because I do translate to both varieties of English). I didn't change these on the test project mentioned above... just clicked "Next".

    Obviously what I needed to do was click UK English (in the RH pane), and then "Remove", so only US English was left. (Note: I did this with my next section, and it is working alright). I am still confounded, though, by why I couldn't choose to check in US English when both varieties were attached to the earlier project. And what is the point of "Project settings" if you can't change any of them?

Children
  • Hello Ben,

    If you did this then the easiest thing to do would have been to ignore the flavour you didn't want... you should indeed have removed the language on setting up the project.  There is a very explanation of these settings by Jerzy Czopik here:

    I guess you have just made your tea aleady!

    Ignoring the UK won't hurt, just open the US file and work on that alone.  The  you won't see the English flag.  I think your problem is that you have actually opened the English UK and worked on that.  So two mistakes:

    1. You created the project with both languages in the first place

    2. You actually worked on the language you didn't want. You should have changed to US.

    You can create different project templates for all kinds of things, so I think you perhaps just need a little practice and more familiarity about how the tool works.

    Regards

    Paul

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

    ________________________
    Design your own training!

    You've done the courses and still need to go a little further, or still not clear? 
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