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Hello,
I have been working as a translator for more than 10 years and until now I have exclusively used Wordfast.
Now I have purchased SDL Trados Studio 2019 freelance and have a question about how to work with it.
Previously with Wordfast, agencies would send me files to translate from their pool of customers and I would create customer-specific TMs and glossaries (similar to termbanks) and these would grow over time. So for example from Agency XXX I would have the customers Y and Z, so I would have the translation memory files TM-Y and TM-Z as well as the glossaries glossary-Y and glossary-Z. On my computer disk I would have a main folder "Agency XXX" containing separate subfolders for each customer of this agency, such as subfolder Y, containing TM-Y and glossary-Y and other reference material specific to this customer.
Now when I look at SDL I am trying to figure out a method of working with SDL to account for the way I work with multiple agencies, where each of these agencies sends me jobs from their specific customers, sometimes with repeat jobs over many years from certain of these customers.
So, for example, to handle the scenario of repeat jobs from a specific customer of one agency, does it make sense in SDL to set up one project, which would represent this repeat customer, such as "Project-Y", and just keep adding new files to this project as time goes on (assuming that in most cases each new job would involve 2-3 files, averaging around 2-3000 words each)?
This way the project would have a basic configuration suitable for this customer, with the customer-specific TMs and termbases, and all I would do is add new files to be translated as they come. On my computer disk all of these project files would then be located in one folder with multiple subfolders, so all files related to one customer of one agency would be all together.
Or is it better to set up a new project for each new job from a specific customer, and run the project wizard to set up the TMs and termbases each time, or as the case may be, simply translate a single file without setting up a project?
I suppose if new jobs were quite large, involving many, many files, it would probably make sense to create a new, separate project.
Difficult to know the positive and negative aspects without having worked with SDL very long.
I would appreciate any tips or suggestions or any reference material on practical working methods in this regard.
Based on experience, what way do people find the best to organize their day to day work (files and folders) in a practical way, also taking things like automating regular backups of files? Thanks in advance for your ideas.
