Gluing and ungluing TagEditor files

If you ever handled projects that include tens or even hudreds of small TagEditor files, you know the pain not to forget any of those tiny files and to handle complex folder structures. I used to perform all activities manually until recently, when I found out that my SDL Trados 2007 suite offer a small utility called SDL Trados Glue. Let’s take a look at this very useful program.

It is hidden deep in the SDL Trados 2007 menu (Trados/Tools), but worth exploring. Recently, I have experienced an increasing number of projects coming in numerous TagEditor files – usually these origin from the FrameMaker source. I learned I could save valuable time gluing the files together, translating resulting single file, and ungluing the resulting data. The process is fairly straight-forward with one important note.

1. I usually create a “To be done” subfolder in my project-specific folder and copy all files to be translated there. This is important point – do not delete any files from this working folder after creating the master file for translation; you will need this folder later.

2. Open the SDL Trados Glue. Click the “Glue” tab and browse for the source data (in my case “To be done” folder) in the “Original files folder” field. I usually keep the “Master file(s) folder” field unchanged (points to the source files folder).

3. Click the “Glue files” button.

4. Locate the “_MasterFile*.ttx” and translate it as usually using the TagEditor and Translator’s Workbench. I usually keep a separate untranslated copy of the master file for the purpose of archiving.

5. Once you are done with translation, open the SDL Trados Glue and click the “Unglue” tab. Browse for the translated master file in the “File to unglue” field. Important! Translated master file and original files must be in the same folder that was used when creating the master file. If you move or rename this folder, unglue will not be successful, since the master file contains absolute paths to the source TTX files.

6. Click the “Unglue files” button. If everything goes fine, the original folder (in my case “To be translated”) now contains translated TTX files.

Under the line

From time to time I face a problem when translating large TTX files. The interaction with Workbench (with large TM loaded) is sometimes very slow and this reduces the efficiency of my work.

I am currently programming an application for splitting large TTX files. There is a paid version around, but I enjoy programming. I will probably share the result with the community, if I come into a successful conclusion.

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