Project Introduction

In class, we learned numerous CAT tools and the importance of having the correct file formats from the client in order to avoid difficulties later in the translation process. In this mock translation project, we applied what we had learned and used SDL Trados, the most commonly used CAT tools in the industry, to complete a mock translation project from English to simplified Chinese and Arabic. Here is the final project deliverables, which includes:

Statement of Work
6 source files
7 pseudo-translated files: 1 Arabic and 6 simplified Chinese
7 translated files: 1 Arabic and 6 simplified Chinese
2 translation memories (TMs): 1 Arabic and 1 simplified Chinese
2 termbases (TBs): 1 Arabic and 1 simplified Chinese
A video detailing our processes and lessons learned

Team members

Simplified Chinese Translators:

Lea Dong
Byron Chang
Summer Zhao
Serafina Zhuo

Arabic Translator:

Sherine Emara

After this project, I learned:

The importance of separating images from text that needs to be translated
The importance of pseudo-translating before projects start
How to educate clients on the importance of editable files
How to merge translation memories on Trados
How to maintain translation memories
The importance of team work

Post-mortem

It seemed reasonable that the four simplified Chinese translators worked separately to produce translations and sent all the translation memories and termbases to one person for merging afterwards. However, we had to manually merge everything. If we had used the package function on Trados to divide the work, all the merging process would have been done automatically when the returning packages were sent back to the person who created them. Next time when dealing with multiple jobs from one client, we will divide the them using package function.