Forum: SDL Trados support
Topic: Save target as... NOT WORKING
Poster: IanDhu
Post title: Cleaning a source file for CAT processing
Problems ("issues") with a source file - cleaning the file for CAT processing
In the following order:
1. Unblock an incoming file
In Windows Explorer, select the file, and right-click on it. Scroll down to 'Properties' and at the bottom of the dialogue box, look at the bottom element. Uncheck the 'Blocked' item.
2. Open & repair
This involves opening the file from within Word, using File > Open. Find and select the source file. To bottom right of the 'Open' dialogue box, there is a button which you can right-click, and scroll down to 'Open and repair'.
3. Save to an earlier or simpler format
I think it's best to select and copy the whole document, and paste into a blank Word file.
In descending order, the formats you can save to are:
- Winword 2003;
- RTF; or
- Plain text (ASCII).
4. With particular reference to files converted from PDF
One or other of the above-mentioned format changes may be necessary because of what I call "hidden dirt" - invisible code information - carried over from PDF into word-processing file formats.
In addition, it is wise to render formatting uniform, so as to avoid an overload of formatting codes in the source file. In the simplest cases, you can select the whole document, assign a single font, and a single size where practical. In the 'Font' dialogue box it is also wise to align the text vertically, taking care to retain exponent and index alignments if any, and to make the (horizontal) character spacing uniform.
With more complex formatting, in the same aim of uniformity, a style sheet can be compiled and applied, to reflect the standard formatting of the source.
In every case, when saving with format changes, it is advisable to rename the changed file descriptively so as to distinguish it from its neighbours and predecessors.