Trados 6.5 FL T-Windows for Excel extremely slow
Thread poster: Frank Gersemsky
Frank Gersemsky
Frank Gersemsky
German to English
Oct 24, 2004

I have just purchased the Trados Freelance 6.5 package and plan to use it to translate text modules that are stored in Excel format.
These Excel files are quite large (approx. 20.000 rows, 20 columns each).
I started the T-Windows for Excel application and set up a new project containg one of the Excel files. When I entered the filename my computer appears to open and analyze the file. This takes approx. 6 to 8 hours. When trying to select the appropriate column or row of the Excel s
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I have just purchased the Trados Freelance 6.5 package and plan to use it to translate text modules that are stored in Excel format.
These Excel files are quite large (approx. 20.000 rows, 20 columns each).
I started the T-Windows for Excel application and set up a new project containg one of the Excel files. When I entered the filename my computer appears to open and analyze the file. This takes approx. 6 to 8 hours. When trying to select the appropriate column or row of the Excel sheet to be translated I have to wait for another 30 minutes. The translation process works quite well but these extremely long delays make the program impossible to use.
I also tried with a much smaller Excel sheet (approx. 200 entries) and the delay reduced from 8 hours to 30 minutes which of course is still unacceptable.
Did anyone have similar experiences with this program?
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Ralf Lemster
Ralf Lemster  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 18:53
English to German
+ ...
Use TagEditor Oct 24, 2004

Hi Swiss_Mic,
Why don't you use TagEditor? Although analysing and opening the file will take quite some time (as Trados converts all information contained in the cells into XML tags), working in TE is much more straightforward than T-Windows for Excel. (Note that this conversion process is only required once - as soon as you have saved it in TradosTag (TTX) format, no further conversion is required.

The reason why T-Windows is still included in the package is to support existi
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Hi Swiss_Mic,
Why don't you use TagEditor? Although analysing and opening the file will take quite some time (as Trados converts all information contained in the cells into XML tags), working in TE is much more straightforward than T-Windows for Excel. (Note that this conversion process is only required once - as soon as you have saved it in TradosTag (TTX) format, no further conversion is required.

The reason why T-Windows is still included in the package is to support existing projects which may have been started in T-Windows.

To save some time, I would recommend opening the file in TagEditor, save it as .ttx and analysing the TTX file.

HTH, Ralf
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Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 18:53
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
Do not use T-Window but TAG Editor instead Oct 24, 2004

When you open the file with TAG Editor (this is possible with Trados 6/6.5) it will last very long too, because TAG Editor wirtes a *.ttx file with all TAGs. After te file is opened however, you will be able to analyse and process it very fast, as it will be saved as Trados RTF (*.ttx). After the file is translated, you can store it again in *.XLS format, which will take a bit longer too, but is for sure faster - and muc better - then using T-Window.

Regards
Jerzy


 
Frank Gersemsky
Frank Gersemsky
German to English
TOPIC STARTER
Translating Excel Files Oct 24, 2004

Hi Ralf,
thank's a lot for this quick reply. I will try to convert the Excel file to TTX format and see what happens. I guess this will also take hours but if it's only once, it could be tolerated.

Just one short question: in the end the result of my translation should again be an Excel file with the same structure as the original one. Does Tag Editor provide this?
(I guess I could find out by digging through the manuals, but there it is always recommended to use T-Win
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Hi Ralf,
thank's a lot for this quick reply. I will try to convert the Excel file to TTX format and see what happens. I guess this will also take hours but if it's only once, it could be tolerated.

Just one short question: in the end the result of my translation should again be an Excel file with the same structure as the original one. Does Tag Editor provide this?
(I guess I could find out by digging through the manuals, but there it is always recommended to use T-Windows for Excel and the documentation for this is pretty poor)

Best Regards,

Frank
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Ralf Lemster
Ralf Lemster  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 18:53
English to German
+ ...
File Formats Reference Guide Oct 24, 2004

Hi Frank,
thank's a lot for this quick reply. I will try to convert the Excel file to TTX format and see what happens. I guess this will also take hours but if it's only once, it could be tolerated.

It depends on your environment, but I'd be surprised if it takes more than an hour (if as much).

Just one short question: in the end the result of my translation should again be an Excel file with the same structure as the original one. Does Tag Editor provide this?

Yes - with the usual caveat that this applies to straightforward spreadsheets.

(I guess I could find out by digging through the manuals, but there it is always recommended to use T-Windows for Excel and the documentation for this is pretty poor)

No digging at all - just have a look at the File Formats Reference Guide. The workflow is described, in detail, on pages 10-2 et seq.

Best regards,
Ralf


 
Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 18:53
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
Yes it does Oct 24, 2004

It does even keep line breaks (ALT+ENTER) in Excel, which was impossible for T-Window. TAG Editor manages Excel files in a very good manner. As usual, a little check afterwards is necessary, in order to keep formatiing up to date.

Regards
Jerzy

PS
I have translated a - small - sheet containing diagrams, created in Excel - even they got translated with TAG Editor. Maybe it was because the file was small and easy, but nevertheless, TAG Editor saved me a lot of
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It does even keep line breaks (ALT+ENTER) in Excel, which was impossible for T-Window. TAG Editor manages Excel files in a very good manner. As usual, a little check afterwards is necessary, in order to keep formatiing up to date.

Regards
Jerzy

PS
I have translated a - small - sheet containing diagrams, created in Excel - even they got translated with TAG Editor. Maybe it was because the file was small and easy, but nevertheless, TAG Editor saved me a lot of time.

[Edited at 2004-10-24 10:31]
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Frank Gersemsky
Frank Gersemsky
German to English
TOPIC STARTER
Excel Processing in Trados working but still quite slow Oct 31, 2004

First of all thank you very much for your suggestion not to use T-Windows for Excel but rather using the TagEditor for translating documents that are stored in Excel format.
I have opened the Excel file in TagEditor and stored it in the .ttx format. Now opening the file and resuming the translation is much faster.

Still the process to convert Excel to TTX format takes extremely long. First I had to upgrade the main memory of my computer by another 256 MByte to prevent the sy
... See more
First of all thank you very much for your suggestion not to use T-Windows for Excel but rather using the TagEditor for translating documents that are stored in Excel format.
I have opened the Excel file in TagEditor and stored it in the .ttx format. Now opening the file and resuming the translation is much faster.

Still the process to convert Excel to TTX format takes extremely long. First I had to upgrade the main memory of my computer by another 256 MByte to prevent the system from crashing.
One of my source files contains approx 20000 rows and 20 columns. Each cell contains something between a single word or a couple of sentences.

I had to chop the file into small pieces of 1000 rows each to be able to do an Excel to TTX conversion within one hour.
I tried once with 5000 rows, the "Analyzing" process has been started 7 hours ago and is still not finished.
My computer might not be the fastest one, but I presume (hope) that something is wrong in my general setup.

Does anyone have experience with translating Excel fiels of a similar size?
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Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 18:53
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
What kind of PC are you using? Oct 31, 2004

You stated, that you needed additional 256 MB memory, so I assume, you have 512 MB now. This should be sufficient, while 256 MW are extremly few, especially for Windows XP. I do work wit a notebook with 256 MB memory, 1,6 GHz Intel PIV mobile, and this is sufficient, but I suppose not for half a million cells.

Regards
Jerzy


 
Frank Gersemsky
Frank Gersemsky
German to English
TOPIC STARTER
PC not powerful enough ? Nov 1, 2004

Before the upgrade my PC just had 128 MB of memory which made it impossible to work with TRADOS TagEditor even with small Excel files (< 20.000 cells). I added 256 MB of memory now at least the memory seems to be sufficient. TRADOS is quite memory hungry, it sometimes occupies more than 200 MB.
My processor is an Intel Celeron with approx 500 MHz. Four years ago this was the best I could get))
Maybe it's time for a new
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Before the upgrade my PC just had 128 MB of memory which made it impossible to work with TRADOS TagEditor even with small Excel files (< 20.000 cells). I added 256 MB of memory now at least the memory seems to be sufficient. TRADOS is quite memory hungry, it sometimes occupies more than 200 MB.
My processor is an Intel Celeron with approx 500 MHz. Four years ago this was the best I could get))
Maybe it's time for a new one.....
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RWSTranslation
RWSTranslation
Germany
Local time: 18:53
German to English
+ ...
Excel --> XML Nov 1, 2004

Hello,

has someone tried to save an excel file as XML file with Office 2003 or OpenOffice and translate this with TagEditor ?

With kind regards

Hans


 
Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 18:53
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
Defintely yes Nov 1, 2004

Frank Gersemsky wrote:

Before the upgrade my PC just had 128 MB of memory which made it impossible to work with TRADOS TagEditor even with small Excel files (< 20.000 cells). I added 256 MB of memory now at least the memory seems to be sufficient. TRADOS is quite memory hungry, it sometimes occupies more than 200 MB.
My processor is an Intel Celeron with approx 500 MHz. Four years ago this was the best I could get))
Maybe it's time for a new one.....


384 MB RAM on Intel Celeron 500 are not enough for Windows, Trados and TAG Editor. I would consider an upgrade to a new system (Intel or AMD > 1,5 GHz) with at least 512 MB RAM and the possibility to upgrade this in the futre.

Regards
Jerzy


 


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Trados 6.5 FL T-Windows for Excel extremely slow







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