TranslateCAD | |
Developer: | TranslationToSpanish.com |
Released: | 2008 |
Latest Release Version: | 1.4.4 |
Latest Release Date: | April 16, 2010 |
Operating System: | Microsoft Windows |
Platform: | NT/2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7 |
Genre: | Computer Assisted Translation tools |
License: | Proprietary software |
Website: | http://translationtospanish.com/cad/about.htm |
TranslateCAD is a tool for computer-aided translation software, designed to extract translatable text from CAD drawings saved in the industry-standard DXF format - regardless of the CAD software used to create such drawings - so that professional translators are able to translate in plain text using a number of CAT tools available.
The translatable text is saved in a Unicode Text file that can be translated using any CAT tool available. The advantages of translating out of the drawing CAD software environment are:
The disadvantages of doing so are:
Once the translator has created the target-language equivalent, TranslateCAD re-creates a DXF drawing that merges the extracted translatable text with the rest of the elements in the DXF file, such as lines, circles, dimensions, page properties, etc.
TranslateCAD is not a CAT tool itself, but a tagger software, that serves as a bridge between the target format and the CAT software.
The translator would need to check (and edit if needed) the target-language drawing in order to accommodate the different lengths of words/phrases into the original layout; applicable specifically when translating between European and Asian/Far East languages, due to the differences found in lengths among ideograms/glyphs and alphabet-based languages.
TranslateCAD reads and writes DXF files, supporting AutoCAD versions from r14 through 2010.
DWG files are not supported directly, although the user may use the Save-as menu within AutoCAD in order to export the drawings to be translated into DXF format. Alternatively, there are a number of shareware or freeware tools that perform this task.