Turning Files into Trados Format without Trados

[Angeliki]

Maxprograms (see www.maxprograms.com) has just added yet another little jewel to its set of tools with RTFStyler. Though it may not sound too impressive, what RTFStyler does -- it's a free utility that converts normal RTF documents to Trados-segmented RTF files -- can be extremely helpful.

Those who are familiar with Trados know that the traditional (and still very heavily used) Trados method of translating RTF (i.e. Word) files is within Microsoft Word, where added tagging information turns the file into a bilingual file. Once the translation is finished, the source part of the translation is "cleaned up," resulting in a properly formatted file in the target language. Because of Trados' market leadership in the translation memory sector, a number of tools offer processing to Trados-specific RTF files, including Deja Vu, Wordfast, and Heartsome (note that the owner of Maxprograms is associated with the makers of Heartsome). So, to make a long story short: this tool allows you to work in any of the above tools and at the same time work for clients who send you original Word documents but ask for the Trados-processed "uncleaned" version as a deliverable.