We received this question from a user: If I only want to translate one column in a table in my Word file, can I use MateCat? Yes, you can!
In a Word file, we may have several columns in a table, but often not all of these need to be translated, as in the example below (in this case, only the column highlighted in yellow is to be translated):
Here’s what to do:
1. If the table is not already bilingual, copy the source text in the target column (as above) and highlight the part that you need to translate.
2. Download the TRANSTOOLS software from the following link (make sure Word is closed before installing): http://www.translatortools.net/download.html
3. Now re-open MS Word and go to the ‘Add-ons’ tab. The software will be installed in this tab (see below)
4. Now click on the arrow next to the button Dual-Language Documents, and then click Hide / Unhide Text (See below). In order to translate ONLY the parts highlighted in yellow, we need to do the following:
Under the Hide text using section: Select Hidden text attribute (Most CAT tools)
Under the Scope section: Select Entire active document
Under the What do you want to do? section: Select Hide everything except colored text (To translate colored text)
5. Click Continue. The text which does NOT need to be translated will now appear underlined with a dotted line. This shows that this text is now hidden text.
6. Open the DOC file in Matecat or Trados: only the text we highlighted in yellow will be considered.
Once the target file has been saved, the yellow column will be overwritten with the translation, and the rest will be left as per the source file.
7. Before returning the file to the client, we now need to ‘unhide’ the text we didn’t translate. To do this, go to the the Add Ons tab again, then select Dual-Language Documents -> Unhide everything (run after generating the target document)
How to translate only a few columns of an Excel file in MateCat?
Here’s how to translate the contents of just one column in Excel, or add the translation in the next column, creating a bilingual file:
Scenario 1: Column A in the Excel file should not be translated. Column B should be translated, overwriting the current text
Solution: hide column A, and resave the file. Then, load the file in MateCat and translate.
Once downloaded, unhide the column and deliver.
Scenario 2: Column A in the Excel file needs to be translated, but the translated text should be placed in column B.
Solution: Copy column A to column B, and hide column A. Then, load the file in MateCat and translate.
Once downloaded, unhide column A and deliver the file which is now bilingual, with the source text in column A and the target in column B. lt_LT