3. On the Wizard, select Tab-delimited text format. Define the desired destination (you may also want to set the encoding to UTF-8 just in case) and press Save and Next. Do not forget to press Select All two screens after that.
4. When the Wizard has successfully finished, go to the location where the tab-delimited txt file was stored and open it with Notepad. It will look something like this:
The world is currently experiencing a financial and economic crisis of proportions unseen in many decades. All sectors of he economy are taking a hit and so is the Translation Industry. From my personal experience, I see that a number of agencies I have been working with for years are struggling; some of them handle their limited projects only with their internal translators and a few of them are even thinking of going out of business. Freelancers, however, are better positioned in this crisis compared to agencies. Independent translators need limited resources (bank loans, premises, equipment and other running costs) to provide their services and so they can survive even a severe drop in their work volume. On the other hand, agencies have to bear very high (and increasing) running costs that shape their pricing policy and, ultimately, make them unappealing to prospective clients.
In light of the crisis, translation buyers are looking to cut down on their expenses but also maintain a certain level of quality. In the past, those clients had sufficient income and cash flows in order to outsource their projects to another company with a relatively high cost. Nowadays, professional and reliable freelancers prove to be a good alternative for them, for two reasons:
1) Low cost. Freelancers charge considerably less than agencies, for the above mentioned and many other reasons.
2) The volume that freelancers can handle and the quality level they can offer increases every day, what with all the new QA tools, translation memories, cloud shared content, automatic translation, dictionaries …you name it.
Of course, the crisis does not hit all companies in the market. Reports suggest that the largest Language Service Providers like Lionbridge, Thebigword and SDL, are actually recording increase in profits and number of translation orders. This is partly due to the fact that ‘blue-chip’ corporations -which are the ones with the greatest translation needs- do not trust their work on freelancers, mainly due to volume and project management considerations. Instead, they prefer to outsource their projects to ‘one stop shops’ with proven record and large marketing campaigns.
This leads us to the preliminary conclusion that those that can withstand or even benefit from the crisis are freelancers and large translation companies. At the moment, prospects don’t look good for mid-size and smaller agencies. Time will show us if this is definite or just a sign of the times. Until then, we, as freelancers, should try to improve the services we offer and invest in our profession in every possible way; because the crisis will be over sooner or later and we do not want to find ourselves against the wall.
A lot has been written about SDL Tradios Studio 2009, the new TM platform by market leading giant SDL. Few can deny that as a platform it combines a lot of the ground-breaking (at their time) characteristics of its rivals and predecessors (SDLX, Trados 7 and 2007, DejaVuX) in a single interface with many new features. Autosuggest (!), Multiterm at your fingertips, Translation Memory management just a few clicks away and many more.
Hence, it strikes as odd that most of the major translation agencies have not yet migrated to the new platform. Do they not want increased consistency (with Autosuggest)? Do they not want the ability to use multiple Translation Memories and avoid all the “importing”-”exporting” marathons?
It could be that everyone is afraid to take the first step. The industry needs a courageous pioneer to stir things up. At the moment, clients are still asking for legacy bilingual files (produced with older versions of Trados) and not those “weird” .sdlxiff files. And those few who have decided to migrate to the new suite, well …they have been doing so for quite a while now! Freelance translators seem more ready to try and test new platforms, even though their financial position is far weaker than that of agencies.
Many freelancers wait for their main clients to let them know when the migration will occur, and until then their bright new shiny SDL Trados Studio 2009 remains parked in the “Program Files” directory looking at the folder on top (“SDL International”) and wondering why it is still there!
I am not sure If I can give a definitive explanation as to why agencies hesitate to take this step, but I can make a few assumptions:
1) Some mid-size and smaller agencies may indeed be hesitant due to the high cost involved. Investing in SDL Trados 2007 (perhaps with 10-15 different licenses, which adds up to a significant amount) was itself a big step and they would prefer to wait a few months or even years before they repeat such an investment. Add to that the cost involved in Trados education and certification, and you have a valid argument.
2) Bigger companies with hundreds of service providers may be waiting for the majority of their translators to migrate and then make the move. While this is a legitimate approach, one has to point out that change starts from the top, i.e. agencies need to inform their translators of their intentions and even contribute to the cost of their migration. This might sound extreme, but the return on this investment will probably be geometric in terms of productivity, consistency, and quality.
3) SDL may have not sufficiently communicated the benefits of the new system to the big players. It sure gave the wrong signals by selling Studio 2009 as a combo with Trados 2007, mainly because the Winalign feature was not incorporated in the new platform. I am sure there are many more reasons as such an investment cannot be made overnight.
4) Some agencies may have already weighed the benefits and disadvantages of Studio and come to the conclusion that migrations would not be beneficial for them – again legitimate.
But what should a freelance translator do? Invest a considerable amount of money to upgrade to this platform or wait for the clients to decide? IMO, it is a useful investment and you can always convert files to ttx with the “old” Trados and translate them with Studio 2009. This surely complicates the project management aspect of your work, but it is counterbalanced by the increase in productivity, consistency, and quality.
The world is currently experiencing a financial and economic crisis of proportions unseen in many decades. All sectors of he economy are taking a hit and so is the Translation Industry. From my personal experience, I see that a number of agencies I have been working with for years are struggling; some of them handle their limited projects only with their internal translators and a few of them are even thinking of going out of business. Freelancers, however, are better positioned in this crisis compared to agencies. Independent translators need limited resources (bank loans, premises, equipment and other running costs) to provide their services and so they can survive even a severe drop in their work volume. On the other hand, agencies have to bear very high (and increasing) running costs that shape their pricing policy and, ultimately, make them unappealing to prospective clients.
