Ntroduction Wordfast Classic

Wordfast translation memories and glossaries share the same format: tab-delimited text. This format is perhaps the most simple database format you can find - most other translation tools use proprietary formats that render direct data maintenance difficult (illustrating the concept of "captive market"). Wordfast remains committed to user-friendly formats, and to the competition's sustained astonishment, performance is not hampered at all by Wordfast using open formats.

To make a long story short, you can consider that both your TMs and glossaries are regular Ms-Word documents and use Ms-Word to maintain them: edit, proof-read, cut, paste, merge, etc. Countless other popular software can be used to maintain Wordfast data, and should any ad-hoc tool be developed for specific purposes, the openness of the Wordfast format is a welcome simplification for engineers. If the TM is too large for Excel^™, then Ms-Access^™, Ms-Word, FileMakerPro^™, dBase^™, FoxPro^™, Paradox^™ etc will open it anyway. Even the diminutive Notepad^™, JustWrite^™, WordPad^™, SideKick^™, XyWrite^™... can open small to medium TMs.

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