Working with Anaphraseus in Openoffice
CAT is a term for Computer Assisted Translation. It is software that constantly (when active) stores pairs of translated and original texts in its Translation Memory (TM). When a translator translates a document, the software suggests all the previously translated texts from your MT.
CAT is a term that is not used for machine translation, which is something else. CAT software often works hand in hand with editors like MS Word or Openoffice.org; compares the text stored in TM with that of the document and gives suggestions to the translator.
There are many commercial CAT tools on the market today such as Trados, Minimalist Wordfast or Metatexis. Wordfast, for example, is not standalone software and requires MS Word (it works as a macro in it).
Anaphraseus: CAT with OpenOffice.org
Anaphraseus as an extension for OpenOffice.org is installed directly from the OOo menu: Tools | Extension Manager, where you simply click on the Get more extensions here… text. On the OOo Extensions website, which appears in your default browser after clicking on the text above, you will find Anaphraseus.
You will get a file with an OXT extension (some previous versions used a Zip format). After downloading it, click the Add button on the OOo Extension Manager window and find the OXT file on your PC. When finished, read the license and scroll down to accept it. After clicking the OK button, Anaphraseus will be permanently moved to your OOo Extensions Manager.
Anaphraseus is not platform dependent but OOo dependent. It works in OpenOffice, no matter if you work with Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OS/2 or even OpenBSD. This nice CAT extension is compatible with OpenOffice.org 2.1 and higher; StarOffice 8, Update 5 or higher, and it will give you the following possibilities:
* Term Recognition
* Fuzzy search
* Unicode UTF-16 TMX Export/Import
* Plain text and Unicode UTF-16TM
* User Glossary
After installation, you must restart OpenOffice.org for the changes to take effect. You will then see a new panel with the Anaphraseus icons appearing in the OOo environment.
To make your first translation, create (or import) your 1) Translation Memory; 2) open a document with the desired source language; and 3) start translating it by clicking the Alt+Down button in the Anaphraseus icon panel.
translation memory
The first step is to create (or possibly import) your TM. To do this, click the Anaphraseus Settings icon, select New, and then enter the relevant TMX codes, which you’ll need for cases where you decide to export your MT later (see the Small glossary at the bottom). You will need a separate TM for each language combination; for example, if you translate from German to Polish, this combination i.e. this MT is not good for translation from Polish to German.
The software allows you to work with many translation memories. You can use them for any translation job; for example, bible-italian2eng.txt (Italian to English) or bible-eng2italian.txt (English to Italian) will be your MTs for Bible translation projects (Wordfast and Anaphraseus both use the TXT format in their MTs).
A little CAT glossary
TMX
In computer-assisted translation, you use the Translation Memory Exchange (TMX) format (XML) because translators often need to migrate (export/import) their TMs to a variety of CAT tools that they use. It is a translator’s right to choose any CAT software and in case a group of translators work on a project, they can share their TMs. Many CAT tools use their own (proprietary) translation memory formats, and TMX helps translators and translation agencies share their TMs easily. For example, you export your TM from a proprietary CAT application format (such as Trados, etc.) to TMX format and then import this TMX format into Anaphraseus (or any other CAT tool).
TMX is a type of database with various codes that identify languages (CS-01 for the Czech language, EN-US for American English, etc.).
unicode
If Anaphraseus asks if you want to use Unicode, you should know that CAT software may have trouble displaying words with diacritics like those used in Eastern European languages. By “display” I mean that once the source and target sentences reach the TM, Anaphraseus will compare the source sentence in the document with the one in your TM and show you the target sentence if it meets certain criteria. With the Unicode font it will display all fonts correctly. If you don’t work with Western-style languages, it’s always a good idea to use Unicode.
Clean up
The term “clean up the document” in CAT terminology means to remove the original (source) text from the document, which remains there for editing purposes. Both the source and destination segments are delimited with color markers like {0> and you can’t remove them from the document (of course you can, but only by “cleaning the document”). Authors of CAT tools know that translators need to compare the original text with the translated text even after the translation is finished. Besides the fact that Anaphraseus (and many other CAT tools) saves sentence pairs in your TM, you will also have these pairs embedded in the document until you clean it up.
If the document hasn’t been cleaned up yet, you can always click the Down Arrow button on the Anaphraseus toolbar, compare the source (original) text with the translated one, and continue editing it. When you’re done, choose CLEAN. The software will ask if you want to update your translation memory. All color markers and source sentences will disappear from the document and you will only see your final work (the text you translated).
conclusion
Anaphraseus does not have all the features of commercial applications (like Pandora’s box, etc.), but not all translators need end-to-end solutions every hour and every day. OpenOffice.org has thus become not only a complex and very useful tool for translators, but also a little star on their way to freedom.