ATER is an alternative to TagEditor

About ATER in brief

ATER is an editor for TTX files oriented to work on a project consisting of several TTX files and providing handy tools for search and making corrections throughout the whole project.

Limitations

Initially ATER was planned to be a tool for making quick and practical corrections in a translated project consisting of more than one TTX file. Hence there is a fundamental limitation of this application – ATER operates with already segmented TTX files only. However, nothing may prevent from performing segmentation using Translate option in Translator Workbench with Segment unknown sentences option enabled.
The second limitation (which is not so important) is having SDL Trados installed as its DLL is now used for reading/writing TTX files. For this purpose the demo version is quite enough though. Besides, it is possible to remove this limitation later.
While its development the application was tested using computer with Russian versions of OS Windows XP SP2 and Microsoft Office 2003 SP2, and SDL Trados 8.2.0.835 installed.

Three steps of operating with ATER

1) Import – creation of ATER project

In the Project area of the ATER window from the contextual menu select the Settings option and in the appeared dialog box select source language and target language. Then drag and drop the segmented TTX files into this area. A dialog box demonstrating the process of import will be displayed. Project memory may be also imported as TMX files (version 1.4 is preferable). TMX file may be created by performing project memory export from Workbench. It is possible to drag and drop the whole folders, the application chooses only TTX and TMX files. Then the prepared project should be saved as <ProjectName>.ATER file. The project file tree has check boxes - initially enabled – this means that the corresponding file is used in search and export operations. While editing the source TTX files are not required.

2) Editing (translation)

Editing is performed in a conventional text editor, where each record consists of three strings (paragraphs): information string, source string and translation string. Only text in the translation string may be modified; it is impossible to add or remove a paragraph. Font and colour for each string may be changed – see the Options menu.
If to double-click a file, it is appeared in the Edit tab, its upper part. The lower part is used for displaying the contextual search results, but it is also possible to edit your translation there. By default the contextual search is performed using «fuzzy» algorithm every time the cursor moves to another segment. Also you may use fuzzy search by the highlighted section in the source string and search by the highlighted words – see the contextual menu in the upper part.
The Search tab is used for searching for text using several algorithms. It is divided horizontally into two parts: the upper part is used for setting the search options, the lower part displays results (which may be modified).
Search algorithms:

  • Any Word: finds all segments containing at least one specified word. The results are sorted in the order of decreasing the number of the found words in a segment.
  • Fuzzy: finds segments using fuzzy algorithm with specifying the minimum percent.
  • Any part of the text: finds segments containing the required substring in the text.
  • Inconsistency: finds several segments with identical source text and different translations OR identical translation and different source texts. Before comparing the text is normalized, i.e. all punctuation marks, unnecessary gaps and numbers are removed.
  • Spelling & Grammar: finds all segments of the translation text, which grammar checking module considers as containing strange, unknown or incorrect words. Microsoft Office modules are used for performing the check.

    • Search area:
  • Whole project: search throughout the whole project.
  • in Previous results: search in the already found segments.
  • in Translated only: search in the translated segments only.
  • in Not Translated only: search in the NOT translated segments only. When the search box is empty, all not translated segments are found.
  • in Non Exported only: search among the modified segments which are not yet exported into TTX file.
  • in the Segment Modified at Any Time: search among the modified segments, including already exported into TTX file.
  • Remember, that in any case the search is performed throughout all the files with check box "enabled".

    • 3) Export

    Select in the File menu one of the following options:

  • Fast export to TTX: exports segments modified since the last export. Complete list of such segments you may get on the Search tab: select the in Non Exported only search area and leave the search box empty.
  • Full export to TTX: exports all modified segments. Complete list of such segments you may get on the Search tab: select the in the Segment Modified at Any Time search area and leave the search box empty.

    • After the first export of a project the result of both methods will be the same.
    While performing import the actual path to TTX files is saved in the project file; while performing export the expected location of TTX files should be the same. If TTX files cannot be found, user is offered to specify their location. Only TTX files checked in the project tree and containing at least one modified segment are exported. TMX files are not exported. Only the segments previously modified in ATER are modified while performing export to TTX file. DLL files of SDL Trados are used for export (and import).

    About tags

    You may easily move or delete tags. You also may copy tags from the source text. While export a project to TTX file, problems with tags relating to formatting information loss may appear. But this may happen only if the source files are in .DOC or .PPT format. The developer has taken certain steps to prevent such errors, but there is no 100% guarantee, because initially the developer was not oriented to operation with such files. The above problems are absent if the source file are in XML, HTML, SVG, INX formats or in RTF as a result of using S-Tagger.

    "Spelling & Grammar" function

    For spelling and grammar check the libraries (DLL and LEX files) of Microsoft Office usually located by the following path "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Proof\" are used. But there are two problems. The first one is that names of these libraries depend on the language used. For example, for Russian language files for spelling check are MSSP3Ru.DLL and MSSP3Ru.LEX, for grammar check are MSGRRU32.DLL and MSGR_RU.LEX files. The second problem is that for spelling check only DLL files of ver.2 (applied for check in Office 2003 if Russian language used) are used. The first problem may be solved with the help of Options – Spelling & Grammar settings dialog box, but the second one may be solved only by creation a code for support of ver.3 of spelling check libraries.

    Known problems

    While importing a TTX file the following message may appear in the log window: "Failed to get the 263 segment: Unidentified error. This segment follows the segment with the following text in the original: <text of the previous segment>". It means, that while trying to get the segment content with number 263 an error occurred and this segment is not in the project. You may ignore this message and continue working. But, of course, it is better to correct the error. At first you may try to use a simple method: just open the TTX file in TagEditor and then save it and close. If this method does not help, you have to search for the problem segment. If its number is 0, this is the first segment of the file. Otherwise, you may find it by the text of the previous segment, it is specified as <text of the previous segment>. I.e. you should find a segment with the text <text of the previous segment> in the file, open a segment following it, then close the segment and save the TTX file. After that it is recommended to repeat the procedure of the project creation and make sure that the error disappeared.
    Technical details: the error consists in similarity of identificators of translation and source segments:
    <Tu Origin="manual" MatchPercent="100"><Tuv Lang="EN-US">The source text:</Tuv><Tuv Lang="EN-US">The target text.</Tuv></Tu>

    If you are interested in ATER

    If you want to do a real project using ATER, it is recommended to choose a TTX file with the most complicated formatting (with many tags), edit 3–5 segments, perform export of the file and open the modified TTX file in TagEditor. Then make sure, that segments modified using ATER may be opened and saved without any problem, also make sure, that saving the document in the source format (File – Save Target as) is performed without errors.

    The latest version of the program can be found at http://sites.google.com/site/atersom/.
    Your questions, comments and suggestions send to: ater.som@gmail.com