By now, you should be able to work your way around with most documents. Click here to return to the first page.

Please send me your comments on those pages (or the Web site as a whole) here . I will update these pages to cover more functions at a randoms intervals, when I have the time for it, that is. Your input is very valuable for me to understand what you need help with. If you have questions you can not sort out on these pages nor with the manual, please contact groups.yahoo.com/wordfast

Segmented documents

As explained in the introduction, Wordfast segments documents, keeping the translated segment right after the source segment. Segments are separated by separation markers called "segment delimiters".

{0> Source segment <}X{> Target Segment <0}

X represent a number between 0 to 100. These segment delimiters are protected against accidental deletion.

They hold the structure of segments in the document and vital for Wordfast to function properly. They always follow each other in the above sequence. An "opening delimiter", the source segment, a "closing delimiter", a numerical value, an "opening delimiter", the target segment and a "closing delimiter."

If for some reason (ie: typing while the next segment is not yet open) you have to correct the segment structure, know that you can cut, copy and paste segment delimiters. So if you need to remove a segment delimiter, select it and press Ctrl+X.

In a segmented document, the source segments and the segment delimiter are in hidden text. This means that you can display the text without source segments and segment delimiters by unselecting "hidden text" in "Tools/Options" - View tab. This allows you to preview your translation. When Wordfast is open, you can toggle the hidden text on and off using Ctrl + comma (,).

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Excerpt from the manual :

"A document was closed with an open segment:

If starting a session does not solve the problem: Go the segment that was left opened and do the following:

1. Open the Bookmark dialog box from the Insert menu. Delete all bookmarks that begin with Wf (such as WfTU, WfSource, WfTarget etc).
2. Delete all paragraph marks within the problem segment. Save your document and resume the translation session."

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A very note-worthy remark :

Trados and Wordfast use the same segment delimiters, and Wordfast is fully able to clean up or handle Trados segmented documents. The other way around is also true, except on very specific circumstances that will be described later. If Trados can not clean a document segmented with Wordfast (This is usually not the case, but it could happen), it can be fixed, but this is little complicated to describe here. Please contact Wordfast's list on http://groups.yahoo.com/wordfast for help.

Sometimes you will receive an already segmented document -Trados or Wordfast - from an agency. (Where all target segments are filled with the source segment, or pre-translated.).Wordfast will handle it as an usual document with the difference that the target segment will present whatever was on the target segment before you started Wordfast.

If you want to empty the target segment, you can use "Ctrl + Alt + X".

New, updated web site at:
www.your-translations.com
Wizard translations has moved to a new website and offers English-French translations services and translation management essentially, but also handles multi-lingual projects, in collaboration with a number of selected translators around the world. Updated content and tutorials