memoQ 5 & QuarkXpress 3.3 Thread poster: nordiste
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nordiste 
France
Local time: 03:57
English to French
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A new client has a few documents to translate. They are available either in PDF or in QXpress 3.3 .
These are technical materiall with tables, pictures etc.
The client need only a printable output - preferably PDF.
I wonder what would be the best solution with memoQ 5 (my current version).
I would prefer to avoid a time-consuming editing process on my side.
Any ideas ?
I know QXpress 3.3 sounds quite old. I suppose the brochures go wit... See more A new client has a few documents to translate. They are available either in PDF or in QXpress 3.3 .
These are technical materiall with tables, pictures etc.
The client need only a printable output - preferably PDF.
I wonder what would be the best solution with memoQ 5 (my current version).
I would prefer to avoid a time-consuming editing process on my side.
Any ideas ?
I know QXpress 3.3 sounds quite old. I suppose the brochures go with second-hand machines. ▲ Collapse
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nordiste wrote:
A new client has a few documents to translate. They are available either in PDF or in QXpress 3.3 .
These are technical materiall with tables, pictures etc.
The client need only a printable output - preferably PDF.
I wonder what would be the best solution with memoQ 5 (my current version).
I have read posts from José Henrique Lamen5d0rf where Infix can be a good option to translate PDFs when you don't have the underlying file.
Apparently, it extracts "stories" from the pdf in XML, then puts them back together after translation in whatever CAT tool. The subsequent layout adjustments can also be done in Infix.
Maybe you could browse the fora with infix as the search term.
Philippe
| | | | nordiste
France
Local time: 03:57
English to French
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TOPIC STARTER
I just tried the demo version. It does the job perfectly !
This seems to good to be true.
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| Hold your horses | Jan 22, 2013 |
nordiste wrote:
I just tried the demo version. It does the job perfectly!
Well, after using Infix for several years now, "perfectly" is not the word I would use. I would say "quite alright", but not "perfectly" at all.
While it does work "perfectly" (including the implicit questioning of the double quotes) with simple documents, you will soon find that when you have documents with many boxes, columns of data, or layers of text that are not visible in the PDF file, especially if the items are tightly packed together or with intermixed fonts and styles among the text, work during translation is not that "perfect" since Infix often makes mistakes in identifying what goes where in the text objects it creates.
The situation worsens if you export the text as an XML file to translate it with a CAT tool: when you import back the translated XML file, InFix is rarely able to produce the exact arrangement and formatting of the text. Consequences are wrong line spacing, pieces of text assigned to a wrong paragraph, incorrect positioning of items in columns, wrong margins and indents, missing format...
If your target language has special characters, you also have to replace the fonts in the PDF with a similar font in your machine, since a PDF file only contains the letters used in the file itself, and not the full character set.
While I feel that Infix is an excellent tool when all we have is a PDF file, we cannot reasonably expect Infix to correct the implicit "defects" of PDF files: the fact that each group of similarly formatted letters makes an object, instead of a unit of meaning (a whole paragraph, callout, or bullet) being an object, and the lack of a full character set embedded for each font used in the document.
I think that Iceni would make good use of any feedback we can send to them as translators, especially from those of us who use a CAT tool with the XML exported file.
Feel free to email me if you run into any difficulty with InFix. I will be happy to help!
[Edited at 2013-01-22 07:17 GMT]
| | | | | How about PDF2DTP? | Jan 22, 2013 |
I haven’t tried this myself, but heard about it last year (from the manufacturer though, so not exactly unbiased). Has anyone tried it?
| | | | nordiste
France
Local time: 03:57
English to French
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | the least bad option | Jan 22, 2013 |
@Tomas: thanks for your warning.
I know that PDF is not a good format for translation.
But I don't have any other choices here.
The direct client is a reseller, he has only got a DVD with User Manuals for various second hand tool-machines and no way to get the initial files.
He wants to export these machines to France and need French Usual Manuals.
At the moment we are looking for a reasonable way to do the translations.
I did a small t... See more @Tomas: thanks for your warning.
I know that PDF is not a good format for translation.
But I don't have any other choices here.
The direct client is a reseller, he has only got a DVD with User Manuals for various second hand tool-machines and no way to get the initial files.
He wants to export these machines to France and need French Usual Manuals.
At the moment we are looking for a reasonable way to do the translations.
I did a small test of the whole process on a 10-page extract - so far it looks OK.
Following your warning I will include a good extra-time for carefull proofreading. ▲ Collapse
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| Also the OCR alternative | Jan 22, 2013 |
But I assume you have already assessed this obvious option to convert your PDFs to formatted Word files (Abbyy, Omnipage...) before CAT-tooling them.
I have recently translated a huge amount of PDFs (150kwords) doing just that, and the layout adjustments were bearable. For printing/pdf only, the Word file just has to "look" right. Of course its practicability depends on the source files' layout.
Philippe
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