PrepTags – Officially Launched!

Tada! That’s it! PrepTags is officially launched!

What’s PrepTags? PrepTags is a file preparation software. Now, I know that doesn’t sound too exciting, so allow me to explain a bit:

Every translator can translate Word documents. That’s a given. But what about other formats? What about PHP, ASP, HTML, XML, MIF, PO, and a quazillion other text based formats available on the market? Well, it comes down to the translation tools you use.

They will typically handle some of them by default, but anything which isn’t exactly standard or expected has to be prepared. And if you have any experience with existing file preparation tools, whether integrated in translation tools or standalone, you will certainly know preparing files can be a bit of a nightmare, and in some cases (many) it just isn’t possible.

Let me give you an example: A friend of mine was offered about half a million words to translate for a well-known website, about a year ago or so. Thousands of “XML” files filled up with HTML markup. Of course, the XML wasn’t valid, actually, it wasn’t even well-formed (following the basic rules of XML). After spending days trying to prepare the files, he ended up having to refuse the job because the darn files couldn’t be prepared, no matter what the tool. In fact, the company gave up their translation plans: they couldn’t find a provider to handle the files!

When I found out about it, several months late unfortunately, we decided to do a test run with an early beta version of PrepTags. The result? The whole project could have been prepared correctly within a few minutes. An hour at most.

And the beauty of it is that once a file is prepared, the translator can use his regular CAT tool to translate it. PrepTags prepared files can be translated with Wordfast, Trados, Deja Vu, MemoQ, and any other tool with support for prepared RTF files (a format originally designed for Trados)

So I am proud to anounce that PrepTags is now available for download.

Download PrepTags

There are 3 versions:

• PrepTags Lite: Free and functional but limited to 1 file at a time and without advanced features.
• PrepTags – eBook: €15. Comes together with TransBook. Limited to 20 files at a time, but without advanced features.
• PrepTags Pro: €39. Fully functional and unlimited number of files.

(Same program. You just need to enter a license number to unlock your copy).

I have made a few tutorial videos to help you will the installation and the program itself. You can view them here:

PrepTags Video Tutorials

Feel free to contact me if you have any question, comments, or if you simply want to drop by and say “Hi”.

I hope you find this new tool useful.

Cheers,

Sylvain