How to Translate AutoCAD with Wordfast

Dear Colleagues,

There is an interesting tool that helps you to translate AutoCAD DXF drawings (versions 2000-2007).
http://www.translationtospanish.com/cad/download.htm

It is a shareware tool called TranslateCAD. You need to get a license, but it has a nice user interfase and offers technical support.

The trial version works well for drawings with 50 words or less (even if the drawing is a big file).

It fully supports Unicode to facilitate the translation of any language.
Since it generates a small text file, you may use with any CAT tool (Trados, Wordfast, DejaVu, SDLX, MetaTexis, etc.).

I hope it helps! :)

So, let´s say, you upload the Cad file, and then you get a txt file?
and does it work the same way backwards? once I get the translation in txt file, I can import that text into the autocad file?

Ok
I have the trial version now.
This is what I did, you tell me if I missed something.
I picked a dwg file, and I opened it with Autocad and save it as dxf.
I open this dxf file with this program, and then I get 2 txt files. (one is a kind of log? and the other is the text to translate).
Now, I can save that txt as an rtf file, or is that ok if I open that txt file in tag editor? (which trados opens this txt directly??)
Once I have the txt back translated, I did the same process backwards.

is this ok?
does anyone have the licensed version? is it worth buying it?

Hi everyone!!

I also downloaded the trial and tested it with a drawing and worked pretty good.

Also, I imported a "more than 50 word" txt and it worked! I think the constrain is only for exporting :D

ah,so you mean you could import more than 50 words with the trial version, but you can only keep it to 50 word to export...
that´s good to know too...

anybody else has tried it?

I re-float this thread as I know one of my colleagues in the forum was looking for some information on this application.
I own a license for this TranslateCad and it usually works out pretty good. You need to be very careful not to touch/delete any of the code created when exporting DGWs into DXFs and then into TXT (the "trans-1" file, actually the only one bearing any translatable text). TXT files are opened as Excel or MS Word files and processed through TagEditor or Workbench.

Here goes an example of what it looks like when you open the file with MS Word (ready to be processed with Workbench)... Remember that all translatable text is included within the trans-1 *.txt file.

Here goes an example of what it looks like when you open the file with Excel and you can process it with TagEditor...

And here is the original trans-1 file in TXT and opened with Notepad. Don't even try to open the trans-2 one because it has chunks of code that does not need translation but which is mandatory to rebuild the AutoCad files for the target language...

Hi, Gentle, Finally!!! :) ... i'm using the application right now and i find that some texts are in different tags instead of being in just one. Any ideas on how to fix this?

It happened to me once: it is caused when the drawing uses bold formating within the MTEXT, or when the original text is split into several lines.

I hope it helps.

P.S. if you have purchase a license, I would suggest to write directly to the tech support at the company, they answered my questions quickly and kindly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by picus

P.S. if you have purchase a license, I would suggest to write directly to the tech support at the company, they answered my questions quickly and kindly.

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picus is right! These are nice people with an excellent customer service. Earlier this week I was having trouble reconverting a couple of AutoCad files back after translating them with Tag Editor. I indeed created a clean Trans1 file which I converted into a DXF but that could never be opened in AutoCad showing an error located in some line with a specific numeric entry which I was never able to identify.
Customer Service from TranslateCad tested the files and recommended me the use of another application named SolidWorks DWG that worked out absolutely fine, opening the DXF and allowing me to save it as DWG (in whichever version you might want).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gentle

Customer Service from TranslateCad tested the files and recommended me the use of another application named SolidWorks DWG that worked out absolutely fine, opening the DXF and allowing me to save it as DWG (in whichever version you might want).

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I came back to this thread expecting to find an important data on the use of DraftSight instead of AutoCad to process the text embedded in AutoCad DWG files. Unfortunately, I did not manage to write this down and had to start testing it again. Just so you know: If you convert DWG into DXF with DraftSight, make sure to use the Save as...R2007-2009 ASCII Drawing (DXF) format. By using Binary or any other options you won't be able to recover the text. Hope you find this tip helpful for the future! :-)