How to Translate AutoCAD drawings with Unicode Characters using Trados or other CAT tool
By Victorica Vicente,
victorica [at] sensata . com
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Abstract:
Describes 3 methods on
how to translate AutoCAD drawings with Unicode Characters.
Professional translators are used to work with Translation
Memory software packages that help them to re-use repeated
phrases, and check words in specialized glossaries, but
AutoCAD doesn't have this capability itself.
Introduction:
Translating AutoCAD drawings
is not an easy task, and even more if your source or target
languages are Unicode encoded like Chinese, Japanese, Hindi,
Hebrew, Arabic, Korean, etc.
Option #1
- If you decide to use AutoCAD itself, you may end up frustrated
using the MTEDIT command and without the ability to use
your translation memory software (Trados, SDLX, Wordfast,
etc.).
Option #2
- You may want to open the DXF file directly with a text
editor. The problem begins with the encoding used by different
versions of AutoCAD, some of them use UTF-8 encoding, others
don't. A good tool to open Unicode text files is BabelPad
(freeware); MS Word also handles Unicode.
Then, you need to manually
edit the DXF file (Not the DWG) with MS Word or BabelPad
like this:
1. Search the acdbMtext
word
2. Find the next "
1" (two spaces and number 1)
3. Find the text just
below the " 1" tag.
4. Translate the text
5. Repeat the process
from step 1
6. Save a copy of
your DXF and test it on AutoCAD using the same encoding
as the original DXF file
Of course, you won't be
able to take advantage of your TMs or glossaries this way,
unless you mark everything as "Non-Translatable"
in MS Word and mark only the text found as "Translatable"
(For example: WordFast handles the "tw4winExternal"
and "Translatable" styles in MS word.)
If that wasn't enough
trouble, you may find some Unicode characters encoded like
this: \U+05D4
This is a Hexadecimal
representation that AutoCAD uses depending on the version
that you use. If you encounter this encoding you won't be
able to translate the drawing, you would need to use Option
#1 or Option #3, (unless you do the conversion to decimal
numbers and use the Alt+00000 key combination to render
the Unicode characters).
Also you may find some
AutoCAD formatting characters like this in your DXF file:
\A1;{\fSimSun|b0|i0|c134|p2;\U+89D2\U+5EA6\U+FF1A}
The actual text from this
code is just: \U+89D2\U+5EA6\U+FF1A
Option #3
– Use a commercial software tool
You may want to try these
software tools that do the hard work for you:
DwgTextTranslator ($795
USD)
http://www.cadopolis.com/Store/Addons/DwgTextTranslator-P257C0.aspx
TranslateCAD ($29 USD)
http://www.translationtospanish.com/cad/download.htm
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