Before attending MIIS, Computer-Assisted Translation course was the course I looked forward to most because as a current freelance translator, I wanted to hone my CAT tool competency, which, I thought, if I wanted to become an LPM, would be the most valuable skill to learn. After the first semester, I did acquire a deeper understanding for the CAT tools I’ve used before (Trados and MemoQ) and get a grip on those that were new to me (WordFast, Memsource, and CafeTrans).

Out of all the things I’ve learned in the course, the followings are what I found most useful for my career development as an LPM:

  1. To use other functions on Trados than those in Editor view. I’ve learned how to use Trados as an LPM and reviewer. For instance, I’ve learned how to create project and return packages, review translation, pseudo translate project files, customize filter settings for pre-translation file prep, align texts for TM creation, etc.
  2. To quote using fuzzy grids generated with CAT tools. As a former intern working for a sales team in an LSP, I’ve created tons of quotes using our internal sales system, but I’ve never created a quote from scratch. Looking into rates prompted me to rethink about the rates I agreed to as a freelancer.
  3. To segment Chinese terms with SegmentAnt, extract terms with Antcon, and build a TB on Trados and MemoQ. As an intern working hand in hand with PMs in my former company, I had only known that I could create a term sheet manually with Excel. Now that I’ve learned how to extract most frequently used terms from text, I am confident in accelerating my future terminology management workflow.

Nevertheless, I wasn’t completely right about my expectation for the course. I now find the most valuable takeaway from the course is the customer service lesson from our team project – Venmo website localization.

In this project, our team – MIISion undertook the simplified Chinese official website localization project from Venmo, whose representative was played by our beloved professor Adam Wooten. We translated 6 webpages for Venmo, including Front page, How Venmo works, Business, Card, Purchases, Security, Contact Us, and Sign in.

We prepared the files for translation by pseudo translating them in Trados and identifying potential problems (we were glad that we went extra mile to do so because we were able to find solutions to the problems beforehand and we also impressed Professor Adam), submitted an SOW, and held a client kick-off meeting. It’s worth mentioning that we planned to localize animated png files on the webpages too, but due to time constraints (we didn’t really have time to pick up all the DTP skills in a week), we decided to leave the layout stage for the DTP course in next semester.

Nevertheless, the question is: how do we convey this issue to our client professionally? As an LSP, though a mini-size one, it’s not ideal to let clients know that we are unable to or do not have sufficient time to perform certain tasks. Therefore, after a thorough discussion, our team decided to reframe the problem and present it to our client by stressing how much more DTP will cost and how much longer it will take for this project to be delivered. In order to help our client to save money and time, we suggested the client to initiate another DTP project after the simplified Chinese version of Venmo app is published. That way, with approved translation ready, we can also settle on the specific terms appearing in the animated png images.

During our translation stage, we also found it troublesome to use Trados without an online TM which stores updates from translators immediately, so we wanted to turn to Memsource. Unfortunately, professor wanted us to practice using Trados more, so we could only work on Trados. Our solution to this problem is to run a Translation Marathon Relay.. The first translator created TM and TB, and the other four translators did the translation one after another and review previous translators’ works while enriching the content of TM and TB.

After the regular TEP process, we delivered the following files for our client, including:

  1. Translation Memory (TMX)
  2. Glossary (TBX)
  3. 8 Source Files (HTML)
  4. 8 Target Files (HTML)
  5. Psuedo Translation for client’s references (HTML)

We also gave a presentation on the lessons we learned in the project in this video.