Translation Memory Creation

Translation Memory, often shortened as “T.M”., when appropriately established and maintained, plays a key role in:

1. Exploring or reusing the already-translated materials when working on document revisions and/or
2. Maintaining consistency among a family of documents.

Translation Memory can be created and saved as a file during the routine translation of the first version of the document. During the translation of the updated document, the T.M. is opened in Word or Tag Editor to facilitate your translation.

If T.M. was not built during the original document translation but the translation of the older version is available, one can use the so-called WINALIGN feature of TRADOS to create the T.M. This approach can also be used when your customer has some translated materials to share with you as references. The customer wants to have the new translations “in line” with the existing ones. This process is depicted in chart above.

A few comments are in order on the flowchart above

1. All new and future translations will benefit from the building of the T.M., including the current project;

2. Additional cost will incur due to the creation of the T.M. using the WINALIGN technique. However, the overall cost may still be reduced in cases where large amounts of text turns out to be repetitive;

3. Generally speaking, only those translation projects of large volume text with high degree of repetition benefit from the use of TM from a cost saving perspective. For small works, the effort of involving TM may cancel the cost saving. However, high consistency is always a gain when the T.M. is used, irrelevant of the size of the projects.