Creating TM from existing translations

[Mohinda]

We have used MadCap Lingo to translate help into 5 languages. As we upgraded from one version of Lingo to the next there have been lots of issues with segments going out of alignment and multiple translation entries for many segments. We don't want to use our existing Lingo master projects for future translations. We wish to create a new Lingo Project for each language and apply a clean TM. I would really appreciate any help/advice about a best tool for creating a clean TM from our existing translated MadCap Flare projects.

[kwag_myers]

I did something like this, but I'm not sure I'd call it Best Practice. I opened each language in Lingo and created a bundle. Then merged the bundles. It worked, but I think I would try using Align if I ever did anything like this again. Either way is going to be time consuming, but you have a better chance of getting a pristine TM with Align, in my opinion.

[Mohinda]

Thanks for your reply. I never thought of creating bundles in Lingo and then merging them. I will definitely try this.

I have tried Lingo Align, it is very time consuming and requires a lot tidying up because it ended up many segments going out of alignment. Without the knowledge of the language you can't fix a lot of misalignments. I may have to follow this route but it will definitely require final check by translators.

[Mohinda]

Please give me a bit more info about creating and merging bundles for creating TM. I think I missed some important point about the process that you used.
I tried creating translation bundle from the German Flare project. First I created a new Lingo project by adding files from the Flare project. It means German is the source language. I selected English as Target language. Then I created a translation bundle. Am I supposed to merge the bundle in the new Lingo project that I created? What do I need to do next?
Thanks

[kwag_myers]

I have to apologize, because I'm having a difficult time remembering my exact process and I've conducted several tests with no success. However, I don't have any raw projects to work with as all mine are already done and doing them again doesn't seem to work.

You should be able to bundle the English translation and merge it with the German. In Windows 7, the default directory for the bundle is C:\Users\kwag.myers\Documents\My Translated Projects\English.liprjf\Exporting.

I have a light workload today, so I will keep working on this. I have another idea I want to experiment with and will post with the results.

Edit: Still no success. I'm afraid your only option may be Align. Again, I'm very sorry I couldn't be of more help. It's going to bother me until I figure it out (again). If I come up with a solution I will be sure to post it.