MS Excel for translators: useful functions for translators and other tips and tricks (by Attila Piróth)

This webinar gives an overview of MS Excel's selected functions that are particularly useful for translators. A careful selection of mathematical, logic, text and search functions as well as alphabetic ordering and other functions are presented with the aim to show that Excel offers diverse features that can help the project manager's or freelance translator's work.

Examples will be shown using Excel 2002 -- the same techniques are readily adaptable to higher versions.

Outline:

1. MS Excel: basics
• Relative and absolute cell address
• Copying formulas
• Alphabetic ordering
• Some useful mathematical functions

2. MS Excel's logic functions
• Filtering identical cells
• Merging glossary distributions from multiple contributors

3. MS Excel's text functions
• Handling character limitations
• Preparing a translation memory using MS Excel's text functions

4. MS Excel's search functions
• Lookup and automatic filling of cells using a two-column reference database
• Utilization tips

5. Excel to Word and Word to Excel conversion
• Glossary management
• Remedy for the line-break problem (Word to Excel conversion)

6. Preparing an incomplete Excel file for translation
• Separating completed rows from incomplete ones
• Creating a TM from completed cells
• Adding the new parts (translated in Word) and ensuring the correct order of rows

7. Questions and answers

Learning objectives:

• Overcome the common fear surrounding Excel
• Move between Word and Excel, circumventing the line-break problem
• Understand the utility of cross-referencing in Excel, using relative and absolute addresses
• Appreciate the great variety of tasks that can be solved using Excel's functions
• Get to know some particularly useful logical, text, and lookup functions of Excel, and understand when they should be used
• Use alphabetic ordering to prepare an incomplete Excel file for translation – to create of a TM, separate translated and non-translated parts, change the order of the lines and switching back to the original order after manipulation, etc.
• Understand how to make use of an Excel table that contains legacy translations

Target Audience:

The webinar presents file preparation techniques which can be useful for freelance translators and project managers alike. Beginner-level users of Excel will be able to follow the webinar without problems -- but even intermediate-level users are expected to learn a good deal of useful tips. The material covered in the webinar will be made available for attendees, so they can do the exercises for themselves -- after (or during) the session.

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Participants should not delay in making payments to ensure classes are not canceled due to low enrollment. We suggest then you purchase your spot as soon as possible.

Several techniques presented in this webinar are used in conjunction with MS Word's Find and replace function. Some familiarity with Word's F/R function is therefore recommended; all what is needed (and more) is covered in the webinar MS Word: Find and replace features and other tips and tricks.

 Attila Piróth    View feedback | View all courses

Bio: After completing his scientific and translation studies in Budapest, Hungary, Attila gave undergraduate courses on scientific terminology and translation for 4 years. He became a freelance translator in 2000, and passed the ATA certification exam in his main language pair, English to Hungarian. Attila is a regular speaker at ProZ.com conferences. He lives in Bordeaux, France. In 2007, Attila set up a team of French<>English translators with a double aim: to provide linguistic aid to humanitarian organizations and to help freelance translators start their career. In 2009, an internship for two translators was set up at the main beneficiary of this team effort, Solidarités. Within the framework of this internship, Attila gave ten training webinar sessions (of 2-2.5 hours each) to the interns and other team members. To see more details about his experience as an educator, click here. More details on the Solidarités collaboration are available here.