Tag Editor 101
Though there are a lot of people that shun the popular CAT tools and blame them for the early demise of true linguists, we have to take into account the fact that the age of pen and paper is reaching its end.
I’ve heard numerous complaints about CAT tools hindering the speed and accuracy of translations, because it hogs a great part of the translator’s attention, and deflects it towards useless tasks as “keeping an eye on the tags”. One of the most common complaints I’ve encountered is that TagEditor slows proofreading tasks.
A simple exploration of the “unpopular” menus combined with a bit more knowledge about Trados features can go a long way and can vastly improve your proofreading speed.
A small warning is necessary, as this trick can be “dangerous” if you are not careful with what you delete.
First things first, open Tag Editor and go to Tools – Options
Let’s explore the Options section a bit to see a few “hidden” but useful features.
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GENERAL In the “General” tab you will find some options that influence Tag Editor Startup. As you well know the interaction between Tag Editor and Translator’s Workbench is dictated by a strict order of loading (i.e. the order should be TWB and then TE). Tag Editor even prompts you if you want to start Translator’s Workbench. You can choose to start Translator’s Workbench automatically by ticking the checkbox. You can also select which default language to use when starting Tag Editor without Translator’s Workbench. |
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VIEW The “View” tab is where you can edit tag colors and aspect. This can be very useful in case you want to highlight them and make them easy to notice. |
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EDIT The “Edit” tab is where you can edit the AutoText file location. We will not be getting into the subject of AutoText as this is not the point of our incursion in this section of Tag Editor.The “Edit” tab is also where you can change the name that appears under the comments. But the most useful feature so far is the “Keyboard” section. If you are familiar with more languages it has an option to automatically change the keyboard language to the language found in the target field (If that language is installed from the Regional and Language options in your Windows Control Panel); |
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PROTECTION By far one of the most interesting parts is the “Protection” tab. This is where you can toggle certain restrictions and where you can improve your proofreading speed, and also change some features that will help you in more specialized tasks. Most of the elements under “Tag protection” are somewhat self explanatory. My suggestion is, if you want to turn tag protection off, be sure you will be careful not to delete external tags by accident. The best choice is to disable the protection of only internal tags. |
The “Document protection” tab is where you can improve the rate of your proofreading. This enables you to edit text throughout the document without opening the Translation Memory (TM) and opening each Translation Unit (TU) you want to edit. This is where tag coloring has its benefits as you can see more clearly which part of the segment is the source and which is the target.
If you untick “Protect document” you will be able to simply edit everything within the document (delete, insert text, insert tags) without opening the TM or the TU to do that. Just remember that you do need to update the TM also to complete the job. That can be done by cleaning the reviewed bilingual file (.ttx) with “Update TM” selected.
The Perfect Match is another very useful feature in case you wish not to waste time on old translations on an updated document. We will make an incursion into the Perfect Match units in a future article so stay tuned.
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VERIFICATION This tab is related to the Verify (F8) function in Tag Editor. This dictates the strictness of tag check-up when running the verify features. My suggestion is to keep it strict as the “knowledge” of tags and their use is a bit fuzzy in many cases and it’s better to keep them as they are until you are more experienced. |
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SPELLING The final tab is the “Spelling” tab and obviously it is the place where you edit spelling options. Tag Editor is similar in spellchecking to MS Word, even has an option to use the spellchecking dictionaries from your Office Package. |
Feel free to experiment with all these features to discover the settings that suite your work style the most.
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This is great.
This is a great tutorial. Thanks
i love your blog, i have it in my rss reader and always like new things coming up from it.
I liked your article is an interesting technology
thanks to google I found you
I just really like to read new topics from you blog
I like Your Article about Tag Editor 101 Perfect just what I was searching for! .
Wow, superb blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy. The overall look of your website is wonderful, as well as the content!. Thanks For Your article about Tag Editor 101 .
Like the blog
Really Appreciate this article, can I set it up so I receive an alert email whenever you publish a new update?
This is interesting but I have a very simple question. Why shell out for the SDL Trados Tag Editor (however it happens to be bundled)? Surely, any really good tag editor could do the same job for free? I simply cannot believe that SDL Trados has the only ‘foolproof’ text editor.
Through the years, SDL has been developing software programs that have become industry standards. It’s not the case of encouraging big software companies, it is just the case of popularity among translators and agencies (earned in various ways). As some linguists tend to be “rusty” when it comes to technical know-how (I apologise if I offended the ones that have technical skills also), they tend to stick to the programs that are popular in order to avoid learning 10 software programs when agencies ask for specific programs to begin with. We’re not calling SDL the best in the domain, but it is one of the popular developers which agencies have become fond of.
Hey, thank you for sharing your opinions in Tag Editor 101. This is actually a very nice blog.
Many thanks for an incredible publish, would read your others content. many thanks for your thoughts on the Tag Editor, I felt a little bit struck before i read this article. Thanks again! You earn an excellent moment. Article displays quality info.
Wow, superb blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you made blogging look easy. The overall look of your site is great, let alone the content!. Thanks For Your article about Tag Editor 101 .
Very good blog post. Much obliged.
Hello! This is my 1st comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and tell you I genuinely enjoy reading your posts. Can you recommend any other blogs/websites/forums that deal with the same subjects? Thanks!
Nice post at Tag Editor 101. I was checking continuously this blog and I’m impressed! Very useful information specially the last part
I care for such info much. I was looking for this certain info for a very long time. Thank you and good luck.
Excellent post at Tag Editor 101. I was checking continuously this blog and I am impressed! Extremely useful info particularly the last part
I care for such info a lot. I was looking for this certain information for a very long time. Thank you and good luck.
17 comments
This is great.
This is a great tutorial. Thanks
i love your blog, i have it in my rss reader and always like new things coming up from it.
I liked your article is an interesting technology
thanks to google I found you
I just really like to read new topics from you blog
I like Your Article about Tag Editor 101 Perfect just what I was searching for! .
Wow, superb blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy. The overall look of your website is wonderful, as well as the content!. Thanks For Your article about Tag Editor 101 .
Like the blog
Really Appreciate this article, can I set it up so I receive an alert email whenever you publish a new update?
This is interesting but I have a very simple question. Why shell out for the SDL Trados Tag Editor (however it happens to be bundled)? Surely, any really good tag editor could do the same job for free? I simply cannot believe that SDL Trados has the only ‘foolproof’ text editor.
Through the years, SDL has been developing software programs that have become industry standards. It’s not the case of encouraging big software companies, it is just the case of popularity among translators and agencies (earned in various ways). As some linguists tend to be “rusty” when it comes to technical know-how (I apologise if I offended the ones that have technical skills also), they tend to stick to the programs that are popular in order to avoid learning 10 software programs when agencies ask for specific programs to begin with. We’re not calling SDL the best in the domain, but it is one of the popular developers which agencies have become fond of.
Hey, thank you for sharing your opinions in Tag Editor 101. This is actually a very nice blog.
Many thanks for an incredible publish, would read your others content. many thanks for your thoughts on the Tag Editor, I felt a little bit struck before i read this article. Thanks again! You earn an excellent moment. Article displays quality info.
Wow, superb blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you made blogging look easy. The overall look of your site is great, let alone the content!. Thanks For Your article about Tag Editor 101 .
Very good blog post. Much obliged.
Hello! This is my 1st comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and tell you I genuinely enjoy reading your posts. Can you recommend any other blogs/websites/forums that deal with the same subjects? Thanks!
Nice post at Tag Editor 101. I was checking continuously this blog and I’m impressed! Very useful information specially the last part
I care for such info much. I was looking for this certain info for a very long time. Thank you and good luck.
Excellent post at Tag Editor 101. I was checking continuously this blog and I am impressed! Extremely useful info particularly the last part
I care for such info a lot. I was looking for this certain information for a very long time. Thank you and good luck.
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