Working with Transit PE

Introduction - Why we use this program?

We use a program to find these repetitions and we translate them before starting the project. We also develop a dictionary list to translate before starting the project. Once this first stage is completed, we then start preparing the individual sections for the translators, usually smaller files of around 3,000 words each. These smaller files are now already about 20 to 30% translated (pretranslated), and they have the dictionary terms marked in red. Or those dictionary terms can already be translated for you. This keeps everything much more consistent, increasing quality, reducing costs, and allows for the project to be completed in a shorter period of time. Furthermore, whether the original files are in Word, Excel, or some large website, they all get imported into Transit, so that the translator always works within the same environment, focusing only on the actual text and not on any complex formatting, speeding up the translation process on that level as well. It is a win win win situation.
We and the customer save money, and the translator makes more, because they are paid for words, phrases and sentences which are already translated for them, while they can translate faster, because they do not have to worry about formatting issues but only actual text.

Our version is very expensive, but the translator can work in the free program, freely downloadable from here.
To view and practice with a sample project, download one here. [Note that Windows sometimes changes the .pxf file endings to .zip while downloading. The .pxf is actually a zipped file, but Transit will not recognise a .zip ending, so you must manually change it back before Receiving it.]

Once you install the Transit program, you can open one of the .pxf files to see how the translation environment looks like, simply by downloading one of the files and then selecting Project > Receive, and open the .pxf file you downloaded. Then go to File > Open > Language Pair. This should show you the Source text, the window you will be translating in, and the little window of suggested dictionary terms. To make your translation environment more comfortable, you can reorganise the subwindows, change the colours, and change many ways how you view things, and the program will remember your settings. More info on this below.

• When you download your .pxf file, you should save it in your Transit directory, which should have automatically installed in your Program Files directory, so that you can quickly retrieve and open it.

• Go to Project > Receive and import your project. Let the program name the folder for you (you may experience problems if you name it to something else). If it will overwrite a previous project you did for us, it is advisable you copy the previous files elsewhere as a backup, so that you do not lose your previous translations. You can erase the subfolders later and they should be located in your Project subfolder of your Transit folder (although it is generally recommended to always save your translations for one or two months after you delivered them to the customer).

• You can change how you view the windows, the colours, and whether or not you want to see the formatting tags. More instructions on this below.

• Go to File > Open > Language Pair to open the file or one of the files in the project you just downloaded.

• Go to the beginning of your target window (the language you will be translating into). Go to the first segment to translate, which should be marked grey or colour highlighted in some way. Notice that the corresponding segment in the Source window is also highlighted.

• Choose Edit > Find to Fuzzy Matches (or press ALT ENTER). This should start the entire process, and the rest should be automatic.

• If no Fuzzy Matches were found for the text, you should remain in that segment and hear a ‘ding’ on your computer. In this case, you will get paid 100% for that segment and simply translate over top. You can press the Insert key on your computer and write over top of the text, or accomplish this in whatever manner you choose, but you must NOT erase any of the coloured formatting codes. In this case, it would be advisable to go to View > Display/Hide Attributes, and select Hide Segment Markers and Display Short Tags. Make sure you do NOT erase the blue #, < > or other such characters. You do not have to worry about formatting but only worry that you do not ERASE these.
  Sometimes a word or phrase within your segment will be bold, italic, or with some other formatting, in which case it will be surrounded with the blue < > markers. You should keep these where they are (surrounding those words) when you reorganise your sentence while translating. However, it is not super catastrophic if you make a mistake here, but the sentence, once exported, can look like bold and italic. So simply try to be careful with this. Otherwise you do not need to worry about any formatting issues.
  Once you have completed the successful translation of that segment (your cursor should still be within the segment and it should still be highlighted), press ALT INS (insert key near the top right of your keyboard). This is extremely crucial, because it will mark that segment as Translated and jump you to the next Untranslated or Partially Translated text (or jump you to the Fuzzy Matches window if it is a repeat translation). If you are not certain about your translation or simply cannot translate it because it is too hard for you, do NOT press ALT INS but simply move your cursor to the next segment (and press ALT ENTER in that new segment to start the process again). This will keep that segment marked as Untranslated (you can see the segment’s status in the status bar at the bottom of your monitor). You will not get paid for it and someone else who can handle that text can later come back to it. If you want to go back to that segment after you finish your file, you can go to the beginning of the file, then select Cursor > Next Untranslated text (you will see the shortcut keys for this, and more is provided below for your convenience).
  But BEFORE you ALT INS a segment and leave it for good, you should proofread it NOW. Otherwise, if you will want to proofread your translation after you complete the document, you will not be able to distinguish your own translation from the previously translated text, and end up wasting your time proofreading sections for which you will not get paid. If you are not certain and want to proofread it later, simply do not ALT INS the segment so that the program can automatically take you to those segments when you are ready to proofread your document (at which time you should definitely ALT INS the segment, unless you are still not certain and want to leave those segments for someone else).

• However, if some Fuzzy Matches were found for your segment, you will be taken to the Fuzzy Matches window. You can resize this window how you like. The program will always remember how you positioned your windows, and you can save your settings for future projects.
  Once in the Fuzzy Matches window, you will see the original source, and the new source, with some words coloured different ways to show you the difference. You will see the Target New window, where your cursor should be. Make any changes here. Once you are happy with your changes, press ALT ENTER, which should take you back to the Target window. If you are happy with your translation, you can press ALT INS, or just jump to the next segment.

• Sometimes you may want to split up sentences or combine them, which may seem difficult if the sentences are individual and separate segments in the source document. Simply let a segment in the target file end on a comma or space, or put a period within a segment. The alignment does not have to be perfect but should be approximate. What is most important is that the text actually flows naturally in the target language. The segments will be lined up next to one another and the document proofread once imported back into Word etc.

• When translating you notice a space at the end of the paragraph or sentence of the original text/segment, you should make sure to add the same at the end of the target segment.

• While translating, make sure to manually save (CTRL S) your translation once in a while, as the program can get quirky, and we don't want you to lose your work. Otherwise, you can select Autosave under Options > Profile > Settings, but I prefer to manually save, in case an autosave tries to run at the same time as a fuzzy match search, forcing your computer to go berzerk, which sometimes happens in Windows.

• If at any point you want to add some terms to the dictionary, select the word(s) in both the source and target windows and the select Edit > Transfer Marked Terms to Dictionary, but you should first find out from us what the procedures are for the particular project you are working on. For example, there might be a lead translator responsible for this, in which case you might be asked to send the dictionary list in a Word file for their approval. Other times, if you are working on the documents yourself, by adding words to the dictionary, we can automatically translate all those words for you after we import your file and before we prepare subsequent files for you, saving you lots of typing work.

• Usually you should perform a spell check, simply copy/pasting the entire document into a Word file and check for typo mistakes that way. If it is a large project with many translators, a proofreader, and you do not make an unusual amount of spelling mistakes, you might not be required to perform a spellcheck, as this can be performed later during the final proofread. It is best to ask in this case, otherwise assume that you should perform your own spellcheck.

• Once you are completed with a file and want to send us your translation, simply select Project > Send and send us the corresponding .txf file (NOT .pxf!!). If you decide to make some changes later, you can Send it to us again and our reimport of this same file will only overwrite your previous translation. The important point is to keep sending us your translations, preferably once a day, based on which we can import it and update the translation memory, for when creating more files (either for yourself or for other translators).

Changing your Work Environment - Making things More Pleasant

If you want to pretty up the program to make it a more comfortable environment to work in, you should find all the options through Options > Profile > Settings. In this area, you can make your text larger and more visible without affecting how it gets exported at the end. Or through the View menu, you can select Each Segment on New Line, or select Display/Hide Attributes to display or not display Character Formatting or Table Structures. You can even change the colouring of text and the background, and many things so that you can focus only on the actual text in a comfortable environment, and not concern yourself with formatting.

Some Tips

When translating, as when translating overtop of a Word document, we suggest you press ENTER at the start of a new segment and translate in the new empty line directly above the paragraph you are translating. Every time you translate a line or two in the segment, when your cursor is at the end of your newly translated section, you can press RIGHT ARROW, then hold down SHIFT while pressing the DOWN ARROW to select the number of lines you have already translated. Press DELETE to erase them and then LEFT ARROW to return you to the end of the section you are creating. In this way the line of sight between the text you are writing and the text you are reading always stays as close together as possible. Once you are done translating the segment (your segment should always end with a space), with the cursor at the end of your translated part of the segment, press ALT SHIFT RIGHT ARROW to select the rest of the segment and then press DELETE. You are now done with your segment and you can press ALT INS to mark it as Translated and jump to the next segment.

Sometimes you may have to write the same word over and over again. Which is tedious especially if it requires switching the keyboard to the source text. If it is a word or name which does not need to be translated, one method is to erase the source text of the segment until you reach that word, so that you can use it in your translation, pressing ENTER after the word and continuing in the manner explained in the paragraph above. But if the word or name is very frequent throughout the document, Autotext may prove useful. Autotext in Transit works the same as in Word, whereby you first select the text you want to create a shortcut for, and go to the menu Edit > Autotext. At the bottom of the new window you will see the text you have selected, in the top window you can put your shortcut (for example, for the text "I do not want to type this every time", you might choose the letter "I" as your shortcut, since it is the first letter of the text), and then press Add. Now you have programmed your shortcut, which you activate by pressing F3 after typing that shortcut (the letter "I" in our example). Note that your shortcut must always be followed by a space while the cursor directly follows the text for it to work properly. The Autotext can be an entire paragraph etc.

If you need to insert a special character, such as the currency symbol for Euro, go to the Menu and select Options > Character Picker.

If leaving comments for yourself or us according to our translation guidelines, instead of the "<" character, in Transit use the ^ character, as the < character is used by Transit and using it causes problems.

If the fuzzy matches offer a near duplication of something you previously translated but plan to still proofread (which, in the free PE version, probably does not refer to the same document you are presently translating), to save you from having to proofread practically the exact same text over again, after pressing ALT ENTER to copy the previous translation into the Target window, instead of pressing the usual ALT INS to mark that segment as Translated, you might consider leaving it marked as Untranslated and just move to the next segment using your down arrow or the appropriate shortcut key below. That way, when you return to this same segment during your proofread later, the fuzzy match window could offer the updated and proofread text. But then again, you will have to keep an eye out to notice it is an Untranslated segment during your proofread. This issue is not completely resolved by Transit and we are still trying to figure out a way how to avoid having to proofread exactly repeating text.
If you are asked or yourself suggest that the above procedure can be applied to save proofreading work by another translator later, we can arrange a special payment for such "ignored" translations to make this extra measure worth your while. This software can be used to reduce costs, in which case the savings can be distributed in such a way so that translators using it will earn more per hour than if they were to translate everything from scratch. Hence open communication is important to achieve maximum efficiency and earnings for all concerned.

Some Shortcut Keys

If you like, you can download more detailed instructions we have prepared for a large project in the past here. Or the website where you downloaded the PE version has lots of documentation to help you - even a video presentation.

Calculating Payment

Below is our payment information for the sample project you can download above. This one is calculated by the number of characters (normal for the Czech market), but usually the units would be in words.

The "pretranslated" text is something the program would skip over and which the translator would not even notice.
The 50-100% are referred to as Fuzzy Matches. When you get to a segment that has been partially translated like this, you will be taken to the Fuzzy Matches window as explained above.
The "remaining not translated units" require a full translation, as you are used to.

For the different scenarios above, below is considered a generous pricing scheme in the industry. Imagine being offered a sentence which requires you to look at it, realise that it is correct (because the only difference is some number, which the program has correctly suggested), perhaps add one word, press a quick shortcut key and you get paid 30% of the entire sentence. You will certainly be making more money for your time than getting paid 100% for translating the entire sentence.

When you work on a file for us, this information will be copied into an Excel file, computing your final balance and later sent to you or posted online. Or if you would like to know this information in advance, you can download and use this one. Just copy in the word/unit number, punch in your price into the green cell, and everything should be computed for you automatically. Otherwise, in your free PE version you can also access Projects > Status, and you will find some information there, but it is not as extensive as the information we are using.