A format translators, especially game translators, often encounter is Excel. This is because Excel allows developers to neatly group their data into columns, one column containing a unique identier for each string in the software, a source column containing the source text, context columns containing extra information about the source text, et cetera. Importing these files, which can often be huge and consist of dozens of tabs, is often a very painful process. Not in Cattitude.
Importing the files themselves is pretty straight-forward. Here I use the local version of Cattitude and define the project directory. In the online version you’d upload the files first as a zip file and then choose the same project directory.
Once we press the Translate button we move to the actual Translation Screen. If the project contains XLS/XLSX files, for each file the following window will be presented…
Obviously we want to import the source text for translation. But one of the great things about Cattitude is that it allows you to present lots of other information right below each segment. More about that later.
Defining your project
This screen looks a bit intimidating at first, but it’s actually pretty easy to understand once you know what’s going on. First things first: this is a really big Excel file containing dozens of tabs and tens of thousands of words. Smaller Excel files only cover a few rows.
The first worksheet is called COD. Column B contains the so-called String ID, a unique identifier used in the software/game itself to identify the text in the source cell. You can import it for extra context information, as often the String ID will give more details about how the string is used. For example, if the source cell says Start and the String ID says mainmenu.button.name, then we know this text is used for a button in the main menu. Other columns are:
Source Column – This column contains the source text.
Target – This is the column to which your translation will be exported.
Context Column – These are context columns containing extra information about the source text. Developers often add extra comments giving more context about the string in the source cell, like John walks into the room and talks to Sarah. As there may be multiple columns giving context (think Speaker, Listener, Location, et cetera), you can import multiple columns by separating them with a pipe |.
Limit Column – This column contains a number specifying the maximum number of characters the translation may contain, if there are length restrictions (for example because the space on the screen is limited). For more information, see https://www.c4ttitude.com/blog/limit-matches-a-unique-feature/
Column Start/End – These define from which row until which row you would like to import text.
Source/Target Row – This is for worksheets in which text is not grouped by columns, but by rows. In this case the sequence of the strings is horizontal and not vertical.
Context Row – The same as Context, but then for rows.
Ignore Colors – Here you can define a color or multiple colors that should be ignored during import. For example because these cells have been translated already.
Only Color – Here you can define a color or multiple colors that should be the only colors that should be imported. For example because all the other cells have been translated already.
With the Copy button you can copy the column/row definitions to the worksheet below it. Copy Down copies them to all worksheets below it. Once you press Update, the Excel file is imported.
The beautiful thing about Cattitude’s Excel filter is that you can make changes on the fly, and that updates are reflected in your translation window immediately. There’s no need to open menus and go to different screens, there’s no need for re-import and you can do all this while looking at the actual Excel file itself. You don’t have to close the Excel file first, like in other CAT tools.
After you press Update, your screen will look like this:
The main translation screen
The Translation Screen
We’re in luck, as this is a very complicated file that shows you lots of possibilies. This file had been partially translated already, which is why you see three columns instead of two: the source text, the current translation and the proofread translation on the far right. Blue segments are locked rows (this is something you can define too).
As you can see, there’s lots of contextual information below each segment. What’s even more beautiful is that it’s just there, without you needing to hover your mouse or click buttons to present it (which in practise means you will miss out on lots of important information, as you’ll only read it when you’re stuck and therefore will miss context information you think you know but assumed wrongly).
Chap01_COD_DanaMeetsVageranMerchant_DanaRozeYoungster_02 DANA ROZE – YOUNGSTER / / / tells us that we’re currently in Chapter 1 of the game. Apparently a person called Dana Roze, her young self, meats a “Vageran Merchant”. This is very important information for languages like Japanese, which has male and female language, each with different grammar and vocabulary.
There’s no limit, so you can make the translation as long as you want. Had there been a limit, Cattitude would have checked for that too, to make sure you stay within the constrictions.
Adding RegEx
After import you’re of course free to define extra RegEx Tags for possible HTML-like codes in the Excel file, so that…
<a href=”https://insertsomereallylongrandomurl.com”>Hello world!</a>
Will be neatly displayed as
[1]Hello world![2]
Software developers are known to each invent their own codes for the text, often specifying in what color it should be displayed or even triggering animations and cut sequences! RegEx makes sure that no matter what format your client uses, you can separate all this code from your text and keep your translation memory clean.
Project Cache
Excel files can be huge. This project consisted of 4 separate files, one even bigger than the other, and importing it the first time took more than 7 minutes (that’s not Cattitude’s fault: any CAT tool would have taken just as long if not longer). Once imported it stays in a cache though, so that opening the project after that is only a matter of seconds (until you make changes in the import definitions).
Project Management
Now what if you’re a project manager and have to translate and export to multiple languages? You can simply switch to another language using the language selector on top. For my own convenience I have switched to another project that nicely illustrates this. This project was from English to Japanese. We now want to add English to Simplified Chinese.
As soon as I press the language selector for Chinese, a new Excel Project Definition window appears. Above it, it says nothing has been defined for this language yet. I can now simply copy the existing Japanese definition for this project and use that as a base to work from.
Safe Export
Sometimes Excel files are so messed up, that CAT tools can’t export them anymore. Though this is very rare, Cattitude has an extra built-in safety feature for that. Besides the normal export, it also generates a brand-new Excel file containing only the translation in one column. This file contains exactly the same worksheets as the original Excel file. This way you can always copy and paste your translations worksheet by worksheet to the original file in case everything that can go wrong did go wrong.
This filter was used for a game called Syberia: The World Before, containing 83,000 words. The Excel filter worked flawlessly and proved its worth.
