OmegaT
, Translation
, Tutorial
, intermediate
, Tips
Copyright © 2020 Hiroshi Miura
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License,
Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections,
no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Document License".
Cover illustration is from the University of South Florida,
ClipArt ETC in grant of ClipArt ETC Free Classroom License.
Last update: September 2020
Refer to OmegaT version: 5.4.0
Screenshots from OmegaT version 5.4.0 on Windows 10 Enterprise(Build 19041)
Please note that owing to the pace at which OmegaT is being developed, the appearance of the screenshots and possibly some other information may have changed slightly.
This tutorial is for intermediate OmegaT users who has already finished the beginners guide or equivalent, and provide advanced technics to utilize OmegaT efficiently and accelarate your translation work dramatically.
Topics in the tutorial are treated in standard manual,
the tutorial describes topics in detail and hands-on.
The guide consists of the following chapters
OmegaT has the capability to read electronic/machine readable bilingual/monolingual dictionaries
and show terms automatically from source sentence words.
You can use free dictionaries on the Internet, and/or your favorite
dictionary (when it is supported).
There is a list of stardict dictionaries on the Internet. Some may be licensed as free data, some may be a proprietary data.
I'd like to advise you to use dictionary data licensed clearly for you. For your convenience, I put some link which is licensed as free for you
You need to convert these dictionary data into startdict format to use with OmegaT. It requires some IT knowledge, so it is recommended for you to use pre-converted data.
If you know another good licensed dictionary data to use with OmegaT, please update the list.
Launch OmegaT and create a new project. Let's call it Wiki project.
Once you have decided on a subject on Wikipedia, you can use Mediawiki downloader feature of OmegaT, to download contents from Wikipedia page.
Start your OmegaT and open Wiki Project project.
Select menu File > Download from Mediawiki, then you will find a dialog to ask Wikipedia URL.
You now copy URL from above table or your browser's address field, then past it onto the dialog input box.
Your /source folder will now contain one or more Wiki file(s) end with ".UTF8" extension.
===Title===
, [https://some.URL/ | link name]
as-is with its source.You need to keep Wiki tag with your own response. Otherwise, wiki rendering will be broken.
There is another caution for translation using translation memory.
When you are satisfied to translate it, you are ready to use translated contents. You now want to save your result. Select Menu File > Save, then OmegaT save your translations into /omegat folder in the project automatically.
Next, you want to produce translated wiki text to use. Select Menu File > Generate translation.
Please open Windows File Explorer from Windows menu, and go to Wiki Project folder /target.
There will be files which extension is .UTF8 files.
Let's check its content!
Open Notepad application from windwos menu, then Drag-and-Drop the file onto notepad.
You will find a translated wiki contents on Notepad application.
If you want to contribute Wikipedia a bit or check your translation quality, let's go to your local language version of Wikipedia and search corresponding page! When click EDIT button of content on your web browser, you will see translated(or original for local) wiki source there.
A wiki download feature is not only for Wikipedia. There are so many wiki projects on the Internet which use Mediawiki engine. If you are volunteering to translate these wiki projects, the feature is for you.
Here is an incomplete list of known wiki projects that use Mediawiki.
There are several popular translation workflow/assistant services on the web. Here is a list of known services;
We pick two popular serices in the tutorial.
A project on Transifex allows translators to download source and existing translations as files. Navigate to your translation project resources page, then click resource show context menu such as follows:
A file format is a variation of the project settings, such as PO file, YAML, Qt translation(.ts), and so on. Thanks to OmegaT's support for various file format, you download the file into /source and upload resulted translation from /target to website.
Crowdin support offline translation by utilize XLIFF standard format.
Caution: OmegaT 5.4.0 and later support collaboration with crowdin,
that require handling a XLIFF workflow feature.
As usual, you can download source XLIFF into /source directory, and after finishing translation, run File > generate target file then upload resulted XLIFF file in /target to Crowdin.
XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format) is an XML-based bitext format for standardized localizable data exchange among CAT tools during localization process.
There are XLIFF versions. v1.2 is a legacy format and still used widely. v2.x is international standardized version to recommended to use.
XLIFF is XML-based and consist of several tags. Original contents are marked with source and localized contents are marked with target. There is an state attribute which indicate a translation status of marked sentence unit.
There are several options to utilize XLIFF format in OmegaT.
There are several pros and cons for each options.
Standard XLIFF filter is a built-in filter on OmegaT.
It only support very basic XLIFF version 1.2 tags.
It has a notable feature to handle state attribute in OmegaT 5.4.0(beta) and later.
Okapi filters plugin which support XLIFF 1.2, and 2.0 and later. It provide two filters for XLIFF, XLIFF(okapi) and XLIFF2(okapi).
These filters recognize detailed and extensible tags. Note: state attribute is treated read-only in okapi filter, and not able to change.
There are several known file format to localize desktop and web applications depends on what technology utilized.
Here is a table of notable application framework what file type is used.
A filter indicate with '(okapi)' is a filter provided by okapi filters plugin for OmegaT.
framework / langauge | file format | OmegaT filter |
---|---|---|
Swing / Java | properties | Java resource bundle |
JSP / Java | properties | Java resource bundle |
Qt / C++, Python | catalog (.ts) | Qt TS files(okapi) |
Android | resource file | Android resources |
Typo3 web framework | loc | typo3 LocManager |
Django / Python | PO file (.po) | PO |
Sphinx / Python | PO file (.po) | PO |
Angular / typescript | XLIFF | XLIFF |