PlusTools

PlusTools is a free tool that can handle multiple tasks, including preparing tagged files for translation, extracting terminology, and alignment.

You can use PlusTools to align your old translations. There are two methods.

Download & Installation

PlusTools is a MS Word Template. Click here to download PlusTools.

The ZIP file also includes a comprehensive manual on how to use PlusTools.

In general to install and use PlusTools for aligning your old translated documents.

• Extract the ZIP file in a folder dedicated for PlusTools.
• Open MS Word -> Tools (Menu) -> Templates and Add-Ins.
• Click "Add" and locate the PlusTools.dot file. Make sure it is checked.
• Enable Macros, if you receive a prompt.
• Open View (Menu) -> Toolbars and select PlusTools toolbar.

MS Word 2007:

• Click the Office button (at the left top).
• Click "Word Options".
• Click "Add-ins".
• Expand the "Manage" list, and select "Word Add-ins". Click "Go". Click "Add", and locate PlusTools.dot.

Security Settings:

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If the installation fails, lower your macro security level to accept all macros:

Tools menu > Macro > Security

For Word 2007 users:

• Open "Word Options"
• Trust Center > Trust Center Settings
• Under "Macro Settings", select "Enable all macros".
• Restart MS Word.

It should appear now in the Add-ins pane. If you cannot see it, press Alt+F2.

If you like to start PlusTools with MS Word, place PlusTools.dot in MS Office STARTUP folder, that should be in a path like this:

C:Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office12/STARTUP

Method 1: Alignment Depending on PlusTools Options Only

The First Step:

• Open the two files to be aligned. Open only the source text file and the target text file.
• If you cannot see PlusTools icon, open Tools (Menu) -> Templates and Add-Ins and check PlusTools.dot
• Click PlusTools icon or press Alt+F2 to open PlusTools window.
• Under the main tab "Tools" and the sub-tab "Files", check the two files.
• Under the main tab "Align", make sure you select the source file from the first drop-down menu and the target file from the second drop-down menu.
• Click "Start Alignment" and wait until a table appears; it contains of two columns, one for the source text and the other for the target text.

The Second Step:

Now, PlusTools include other buttons to correct mismatched segments.

• Use "Split" if a cell contains two segments. It will divide the text in one cell into two cells. Place the cursor where you want to start splitting and click "Split".
• Use "Del" to delete one cell. Just place the cursor on the cell and click "Del" from PlusTools toolbar or Alt+D on your keyboard.
• Use "Merge" for merging two cells. Place the cursor on a cell and click "Merge" from PlusTools toolbar or Alt+M on your keyboard. This will merge the current cell with the next one.
• Use "Ins" for inserting an empty cell. Place the cursor on a cell and click "Ins" from PlusTools toolbar or Alt+I on your keyboard. This will insert a new cell before the current cell.

The Third Step:

• After making all the required manual modifications, click the first left button of PlustTools toolbar.
• Under the main tab "Align", click "Create TM".
• It will asks us to define the TM language codes. Please remember that you have already select one file to be the source file and another one to be the target file. So, make sure you enter the language codes accordingly.
• If a prompt asks us to activate the new file as a glossary, click "Cancel" as it is a TM not a glossary.
• It will asks us to save the new TM and we have no option other than clicking "OK".
• Open "File" menu, "Save as". Type a proper name for the new Translation Memory in Latin letters only and specify the path where you want to save the TM. From the drop down menu "Save as type", select "Plain Text". If you would like to save the TM in Unicode, choose "Other encoding" and then "Unicode".
• Now, you can close this word file to select the Translation Memory in Wordfast (Classic or Pro), as usual, to use it for new translations.

Useful videos: Part 1 - Part 2

Method 2: Alignment Depending on Wordfast Segmentation Options

PlusTools depends on its own segmentation rules, and you cannot customize them in PlusTools itself. If you want alignment process to depend on the already customized segmentation rules of Wordfast such as End-of-segmentation punctuation, Segments Setup, and the Abbreviation list, you can use Wordfast Extract tool.

The First Step:

• Make sure you have customized all required segmentation options of Wordfast.
• Open the source file.
• Open Wordfast set-up window, and under the main tab "Tools" click extract.
• This process will create a new file called Wf_Extracted.txt. It contains the segments, each in a separate line.
• Open "File" menu and select "Save as".
• It is better to modify the name to be clearer. you can add the word "source", for example.
• If another file of repetitions appears, just close it. We do not need it right now.
• Repeat the same process with the target file.

The Second Step:

• Open the two extracted TXT files in MS Word. Do not open the original Word documents. Instead, open the two TXT files resulted from the Extract process.
• Click PlusTools icon or press Alt+F2 to open PlusTools window.
• Under the main tab "Tools" and the sub-tab "Files", check the two files.
• Under the main tab "Align", make sure you select the source file from the first drop-down menu and the target file from the second drop-down menu.
• Check the option: "These documents have been segmented with Wordfast".
• Click "Start Alignment" and wait until a table appears; it contains of two columns, one for the source text and the other for the target text.
• Complete the Alignment process, as usual.

This way is very useful also if you want to align several files. So, you can open all the source files and use the Extract tool once to have one extracted source TXT file. Then, open all the target files and use the Extract tool to have one extracted target TXT file. You will have only two *text files* including all the text of your several source and target Word documents. As mentioned before, we will use only those two extracted files in the alignment process to create a TM for the original Word documents.

--Yasmin Moslem 23 December 2011