Has your translation ever reverted back to the source language by itself? Thread poster: Amy Duncan (X)
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Amy Duncan (X) 
Brazil
Local time: 21:17
Portuguese to English
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OK, this is just too weird. I was working on a translation using Trados, but I would hit certain phrases and Word would shut down. It happened so many times that I called the client. She suggested I try doing it without Trados, which I did, in Word, doc format. Last night I finished it, saved it and made a backup, with the plan to check it over this morning.
When I opened the file this morning, everything from the first glitch I'd run into with Trados to the end of the document had... See more OK, this is just too weird. I was working on a translation using Trados, but I would hit certain phrases and Word would shut down. It happened so many times that I called the client. She suggested I try doing it without Trados, which I did, in Word, doc format. Last night I finished it, saved it and made a backup, with the plan to check it over this morning.
When I opened the file this morning, everything from the first glitch I'd run into with Trados to the end of the document had reverted back to the source language! So I checked my backup, and it was the same. Then I did a search of my entire hard disk to see if I could find my translation somewhere, but no dice. I called the client, and she said their tech guy said maybe it was my version of Microsoft Office. Since I've never had this problem before, I doubt it. Also, I haven't worked for this particular client in a long time, and have had no problems with my other jobs. Anyway, I had to do it all over again. The document felt "unstable" as I was working on it, and I was anxious to get it off to the client before some other strange thing happened...they got it OK, thank heavens.
Has anyone ever heard of anything so weird? Any clues? ▲ Collapse
| | | | Clare Barnes
Sweden
Local time: 02:17
Swedish to English
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| Read-only document? | Sep 7, 2006 |
This may seem like a stupid question, but was your source text in a read-only document by any chance? I had a similar thing when I managed to translate a read-only document using Wordfast and it reverted from English to Swedish after closing the document... still can't quite work out what I did and it's only happened once!
| | | | Eva Blanar
Hungary
Local time: 02:17
English to Hungarian
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| CATs are strange sometimes, but it was probably a source file problem | Sep 7, 2006 |
Weird things keep appearing. My worst experience was when in a 300+ pages document, on the computer of the client, certain portions appeared in the source language only. (I mean, I open the document, it is in Hungarian. They open the document, and certain portions are in English.) Then, the solution was that I had to copy the whole thing into a new file and so, it worked all right.
At any rate, since that time, I always copy the source file into a new document and I work only with ... See more Weird things keep appearing. My worst experience was when in a 300+ pages document, on the computer of the client, certain portions appeared in the source language only. (I mean, I open the document, it is in Hungarian. They open the document, and certain portions are in English.) Then, the solution was that I had to copy the whole thing into a new file and so, it worked all right.
At any rate, since that time, I always copy the source file into a new document and I work only with that one. The point is that there might be different "scraps" in the original file from deleted texts or pictures or bookmarks that drive your CAT (or even your Word) crazy. The same might happen if the client uses some very specific template.
If formatting is important, I rather select the paragraphs one by one in the clean version to copy them back into the original. That's a safe method: the formatting will be absolutely the same. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Amy Duncan (X)
Brazil
Local time: 21:17
Portuguese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Not read-only! | Sep 7, 2006 |
Clare Barnes wrote:
This may seem like a stupid question, but was your source text in a read-only document by any chance? I had a similar thing when I managed to translate a read-only document using Wordfast and it reverted from English to Swedish after closing the document... still can't quite work out what I did and it's only happened once!
No, it wasn't read-only, just haunted!
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Amy Duncan (X)
Brazil
Local time: 21:17
Portuguese to English
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TOPIC STARTER | Thanks for the tip! | Sep 7, 2006 |
Eva Blanar wrote:
Weird things keep appearing. My worst experience was when in a 300+ pages document, on the computer of the client, certain portions appeared in the source language only. (I mean, I open the document, it is in Hungarian. They open the document, and certain portions are in English.) Then, the solution was that I had to copy the whole thing into a new file and so, it worked all right.
At any rate, since that time, I always copy the source file into a new document and I work only with that one. The point is that there might be different "scraps" in the original file from deleted texts or pictures or bookmarks that drive your CAT (or even your Word) crazy. The same might happen if the client uses some very specific template.
If formatting is important, I rather select the paragraphs one by one in the clean version to copy them back into the original. That's a safe method: the formatting will be absolutely the same.
I'll definitely do that next time! Well, I'm glad (sort of!) that I'm not the only one who's had this experience...I thought I was going bonkers!
| | | | Rahi Moosavi
Canada
Local time: 20:17
Member (2004)
English to Persian (Farsi)
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Always create PDF's from sensitive documents and keep em somewhere. You could always OCR them back to a Word file in times of crisis.
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