Multitrans Prism

The tool itself is very simple and you can use it in Internet Explorer 11 or upwards or Google Chrome. For operating system, you'll need Windows 7 or higher.

The Tasks button on the screen will take you to the list of available tasks. You should have one or more tasks available for you under either Work to be done or Work in progress, depending on whether the PM has accepted the task already for you. Each task corresponds to one file. They will appear in the space indicated here, with details such as language combination and word count, and you can open a particular task by selecting it on the list and clicking Details.

Once inside a task, you can click on the GO icon to open up the editor.

If pressing the GO icon doesn't open the editor in a new tab, check the status of the traffic light-like icon of the task. Red means that the task is not started, yellow means it has been started but not finished, and green means it has been finished. For a task to be accessible, the previous step has to be green (see the green traffic light above the red one), so either the PM needs to accept the task so the translator can start, or the translator needs to finish it for the reviser to start. In case you can't access your task, check with the project manager or the translator to see if they have marked their task as completed first.

From inside the task, you can download the original source file(s) for refence by clicking on the sheet icon next to the file name under Reference Documents. Sometimes, you might also be able to download bilingual .xliff files to translate outside Multitrans using some other CAT tool, but depending on the client, this option might not be enabled for all projects. If it is enabled, you can download the bilingual files by clicking on the sheet icon next to the Project Management in the list of project workflow steps.

However, before going ahead with this, please check with your client and tell them you would like to use another CAT tool if possible, and they will most likely export the materials themselves and send them to you. Please note that if your client has enabled the bilingual download function but specifically told you to use only Multitrans for translating, you should follow the client’s instructions.

Translating in Multitrans Prism

The online editor is pretty simple and straightforward, but there are some settings that need to be checked before starting your work.

Before beginning translation or review in the Web Editor, be sure to check your Translation Memory. In the Web Editor, go to the Settings menu and select the TextBase/TM tab. Make sure you have at least one TextBase/TM selected on the top under Input TextBase to receive fuzzy matches as you translate. If you have the option, make sure to select an Output TM too, since that will be where you segments will be stored at the end of the project. The presence of an Output TM is dependant on how the project was prepared by the client.

Type your translation into the empty target segment next to the source and press Enter to move to the next segment. The colour of the small triangle at the bottom right of a segment tells you the type of match applied to it based on the leverage of the project. This page details all the different colour statuses.

If a segment has tags, they will be mapped in order of appearence with 1, 2, 3 and so on. So in order to insert them, you can use ALT+1 to insert the first one, ALT+2 to insert the second one, and so on. 

The Settings menu can be used to customise the way the "text base" (which is how Multitrans calls a TM) displays and matches words. There are several options to use and you might want to customise it according to the project you have. For example, the Preserve  capitalization might be very relevant when translating from languages like German.

Toggle on the Translation Agent using F8 to see TM and TB matches. After this, the TM matches and glossary hits will appear at the top of your web editor (if available). There is no concordance function to speak of.