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How do you arrange your translation files/folders?
Thread poster: Dylan J Hartmann
Alexandre Chetrite
Alexandre Chetrite
France
Local time: 15:05
English to French
My organization Mar 25, 2015

Hi,

I use this file structure

One directory "Translations" like almost everybody I guess.

Then

    Translations
  • -> Translations to do
      -> Company X
    • -> Project X
    • -> Project Y

Hi,

I use this file structure

One directory "Translations" like almost everybody I guess.

Then

    Translations
  • -> Translations to do
      -> Company X
    • -> Project X
    • -> Project Y

      -> Company Y
    • -> Project X
    • -> Project Y

  • -> Translations done
    Same structure as "Translations to do"



This way I can easily distinguish between current projects and those that are completed.

I have sub-folders within "Project X" folders for resources, TM's, various also.

Until today I am satisfied with this organization.

UPDATE: I don't know how to



[Edited at 2015-03-25 15:00 GMT]

[Edited at 2015-03-25 15:01 GMT]

[Edited at 2015-03-25 15:01 GMT]

[Edited at 2015-03-25 15:02 GMT]

[Edited at 2015-03-25 17:06 GMT]
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Gabriele Demuth
Gabriele Demuth  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:05
English to German
How do you return the file to the client? Mar 25, 2015

Francis Murphy wrote:

The filename will also contain the client name (abbreviated), client's P.O. number and possibly revision number (for my internal use only). The prefixed date is the date I received the P.O.



Do you return the translated file with the same name they delivered it or do you send your personalized file name?


 
Paulinho Fonseca
Paulinho Fonseca  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 11:05
Member (2011)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
It's good to see so many different ways - Wow! Mar 25, 2015

I get small jobs everyday and one big job once a week and I invoice them on a 30-day basis.
My system is:

C:\Invoices 2015\Client\01\02\03 (months) - I actually keep records but all invoices are made online and keep there in cloud.

C:\Users\Cliente\Desktop\Dropbox\CLIENTS 2015\01\02\03(months)

It has been practical.



 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:05
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Neatly Mar 25, 2015

Q. How do you arrange your translation files/folders?
A. Neatly.


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:05
Member (2008)
Italian to English
what? Mar 25, 2015

Paulinho Fonseca wrote:

I get small jobs everyday


Perhaps you meant "I get small everyday jobs". "I get small jobs everyday" doesn't mean anything in English. "Everyday" is an adjective.

[Edited at 2015-03-25 20:21 GMT]


 
Michael Beijer
Michael Beijer  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:05
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
:| Mar 25, 2015

Tom in London wrote:

Paulinho Fonseca wrote:

I get small jobs everyday


Perhaps you meant "I get small everyday jobs". "I get small jobs everyday" doesn't mean anything in English. "Everyday" is an adjective.

[Edited at 2015-03-25 20:21 GMT]


Jesus H Crites, Tom, don't you ever get tired of correcting people!?

Michael


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:05
Member (2008)
Italian to English
No cloud Mar 25, 2015

DJHartmann wrote:

... I have a folder "!!!Translation" that contains all jobs, current and past, saved in an automatically backed-up cloud folder


I couldn't do that. What would happen if:

1. (This happens): I can't get an internet connection?
2. (This happens): My bank's payment system goes offline for several days, with the result that my monthly subscription to my Cloud provider doesn't go through, and my subscription is cancelled?
3. (This happens): Some geek in Singapore breaks into my account and steals two sensitive translations I've been storing in the Cloud, one the script for a new James Bond movie and the other containing market-sensitive legal information about an industrial process that may or may not be toxic?

[Edited at 2015-03-25 20:31 GMT]


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:05
Member (2008)
Italian to English
No trouble Mar 25, 2015

Michael Beijer wrote: don't you ever get tired of correcting people!?

Michael


It's no trouble. I do think that when someone's learning English it helps them to correct their mistakes. I still make occasional mistakes when speaking Italian, but I'm glad to say that my friends are quick to correct me. It's the only way to learn; otherwise those mistakes, if not corrected, become habitual.

But I wasn't aware I was correcting people a lot. Where have you seen me correcting people before?



[Edited at 2015-03-25 20:46 GMT]


 
Michael Beijer
Michael Beijer  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:05
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
scaremongering Mar 25, 2015

Tom in London wrote:

DJHartmann wrote:

... I have a folder "!!!Translation" that contains all jobs, current and past, saved in an automatically backed-up cloud folder


I couldn't do that. What would happen if:

1. (This happens): I can't get an internet connection?
2. (This happens): My bank's payment system goes offline for several days, with the result that my monthly subscription to my Cloud provider doesn't go through, and my subscription is cancelled?
3. (This happens): Some geek in Singapore breaks into my account and steals two sensitive translations I've been storing in the Cloud, one the script for a new James Bond movie and the other containing market-sensitive legal information about an industrial process that may or may not be toxic?

[Edited at 2015-03-25 20:31 GMT]


1. With Dropbox and 99% of the others, the files are both on your computer and online.
2. It is highly unlikely that the HSBC's entire payment system will go "offline" (whatever that means) for several days. Also, they don't cancel your subscription without sending you zillions of reminder emails.
3. Email is as insecure as cloud storage. Do you use email to send and receive your src/trgt texts? If you're really scared about that, use a cloud provider with local encryption and a zero knowledge policy (like SpiderOak, Wuala, Tresorit, etc.*), or something like BoxCryptor, to encrypt your Dropbox/OneDrive, etc.

Michael

[Edited at 2015-03-25 20:43 GMT]

* See: http://lifehacker.com/the-best-cloud-storage-services-that-protect-your-priva-729639300

[Edited at 2015-03-25 20:44 GMT]


 
Dylan J Hartmann
Dylan J Hartmann  Identity Verified
Australia
Member (2014)
Thai to English
+ ...

MODERATOR
TOPIC STARTER
Better to be backed up Mar 25, 2015

Tom in London wrote:

I couldn't do that. What would happen if:

1. (This happens): I can't get an internet connection?
2. (This happens): My bank's payment system goes offline for several days, with the result that my monthly subscription to my Cloud provider doesn't go through, and my subscription is cancelled?
3. (This happens): Some geek in Singapore breaks into my account and steals two sensitive translations I've been storing in the Cloud, one the script for a new James Bond movie and the other containing market-sensitive legal information about an industrial process that may or may not be toxic?

[Edited at 2015-03-25 20:31 GMT]


1. The folder is stored on your computer, then backs itself up to the cloud. You have 2 identical copies, one on your computer and one in the cloud.

2. Free = no cancelled subscription

3. There is a similar likelihood of the same geek hacking into your computer, if he was targeting you for some apparent reason. I would say that the security of some of the big providers would certainly be harder to crack than your office PC.

But if you don't use the cloud, what happens if your computer crashes while you're working on a large project? What if the computer hard drive fails? If you use Windows, what if you get a virus?!

There are many possibilities, however it's better to be on the safer always backed-up side of things. This was very useful while finishing my Master's degree, as there was no longer the tragedy of 'my computer died and I lost all my work.'


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:05
Member (2008)
Italian to English
How I arrange them Mar 25, 2015

"1. With Dropbox and 99% of the others, the files are both on your computer and online." What's the reason for that?

"2. It is highly unlikely that the HSBC's entire payment system will go "offline" (whatever that means) for several days."

That has happened at least twice with Natwest. Thousands of people went into the red, couldn't make or receive payments, etc. Natwest only admitted it **when it was happening** and it took them weeks to get everything sorted out. As f
... See more
"1. With Dropbox and 99% of the others, the files are both on your computer and online." What's the reason for that?

"2. It is highly unlikely that the HSBC's entire payment system will go "offline" (whatever that means) for several days."

That has happened at least twice with Natwest. Thousands of people went into the red, couldn't make or receive payments, etc. Natwest only admitted it **when it was happening** and it took them weeks to get everything sorted out. As for HSBC: haven't you been following the news?

"3. Email is as insecure as cloud storage."

Only if you leave your emails on the server. I don't. I delete them **from the server** very frequently (usually daily) after saving them as text files into a folder on my hard drive. When saving them I give them names containing words that will be easy to find 6 months later, using Spotlight.

So I'm still quite sure that I shouldn't use the Cloud to store things. I do use it to transfer big files, using things like WeTransfer - but those services automatically delete everything after about 24 hours.

I just store all my work files in a standard folder hierarchy on my own hard drive, which I clone at least once per day. Nobody knows what's there except me. You, for instance, could never access any of it. A typical standard job folder on my hard drive would consist of folders and subfolders as follows:

"Agency X job 3209"
___________________
then 3 subfolders entitled

"Correspondence" (this could contain dozens of emails saved as text files)
"Invoicing" (this contains everything relating to payment including POs, invoices etc. )
"The material" (see below)
___________________

The subfolder entitled "The material" is further subdivided into two more folders entitled "Italian" and "English".

_____________

And that's all. I avoid making my folder hierarchy too deep, because MS Office sometimes fails to save a file if it's too deeply nested. Or it crashes. I found this out the hard way

Furthermore:

I don't get viruses. I have been using the Mac operating system since 1998 and have never had a virus.

In the unlikely event that my HD crashes I can immediately restart the computer using the most recent clone (which I update several times a day), carry on with my work, and sort out the HD issue later.

The whole thing has to be **fail-safe** so that if anything bad happens in the middle of a job, my client never knows about it. The only bad things that are left are if I don't do a good translation or don't deliver it on time.

[Edited at 2015-03-25 21:26 GMT]
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Dylan J Hartmann
Dylan J Hartmann  Identity Verified
Australia
Member (2014)
Thai to English
+ ...

MODERATOR
TOPIC STARTER
Sounds good Mar 25, 2015

Tom in London wrote:

A typical standard job folder on my hard drive would consist of folders and subfolders as follows:

"Agency X job 3209"
___________________
then 3 subfolders entitled

"Correspondence" (this could contain dozens of emails saved as text files)
"Invoicing" (this contains everything relating to payment including POs, invoices etc. )
"The material" (see below)
___________________

The subfolder entitled "The material" is further subdivided into two more folders entitled "Italian" and "English".

_____________


This seems quite meticulous and I can see the benefits of this type of organisation in the long run.

Tom in London wrote:
I don't get viruses. I have been using the Mac operating system since 1998 and have never had a virus.

In the unlikely event that my HD crashes I can immediately restart the computer using the most recent clone (which I update several times a day), carry on with my work, and sort out the HD issue later.


That's right, viruses only for Windows. Time machine, comparatively few crashes, and no viruses are what Macs are great for.


 
Meta Arkadia
Meta Arkadia
Local time: 21:05
English to Indonesian
+ ...
Vote for Spotlight Mar 26, 2015

DJHartmann wrote: Time machine, comparatively few crashes, and no viruses are what Macs are great for.


Macs are great for everything, especially text. And although I agree that Time Machine is a great feature, Spotlight beats it hands down. Whereas TM is a life-saver you only use when you're in trouble, you use Spotlight all the time for just about everything.

Tom in London wrote: "Agency X job 3209"...


That's the way I used to organise things. I gave up.

Earlier this year, I did an annual report for an agency. It looked very familiar, and yes, a Spotlight search showed I did an annual report for the very same end-customer in 2006, for another agency. And my Big Mamma reduced my translation efforts from 10 k words to 2.

Cheers,

Hans


 
Merab Dekano
Merab Dekano  Identity Verified
Spain
Member (2014)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Simple way Mar 26, 2015

"D" drive is dedicated to "translation"

Main folder: "translations" (all names are in Spanish, though)

Sub-folders: "clients" (among other relevant sub-folders, such as "dictionaries", "reading material", etc.)

Sub-sub-folder: "names of each client" (each client gets a separate one)

Sub-sub-sub-folder: "source text", "reference material", "target text", "po", "proofread" "remarks"

I also keep a separate folder for all invoices I is
... See more
"D" drive is dedicated to "translation"

Main folder: "translations" (all names are in Spanish, though)

Sub-folders: "clients" (among other relevant sub-folders, such as "dictionaries", "reading material", etc.)

Sub-sub-folder: "names of each client" (each client gets a separate one)

Sub-sub-sub-folder: "source text", "reference material", "target text", "po", "proofread" "remarks"

I also keep a separate folder for all invoices I issue. I check my bank/PayPal account every day. The file name contains name of the client and due date. When the money arrives, I add a "+" to the file name. So, if it is checked with "+", I know the invoice has been paid. If it is not checked with "+" and due date has expired, a friendly reminder is sent to the relevant party. Example:

[123] [client xyz] [26 March 2015]+ (this would mean that this invoice was paid on the indicated date)
[456] [client abc] [26 March 2015] (this would mean that this invoice has not been paid and perhaps I have to send a reminder)

I never drop any files on my desktop area. If I did, I know it could easily get out of hand.

Perhaps my system is not high tech, but it has been working for me just fine. I also started analyzing each customer's "performance" in terms of income share, but sadly gave up (it requires too much time and is largely "nice to have" kind of information).



[Edited at 2015-03-26 07:38 GMT]
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Daniel Olsson
 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:05
Member (2008)
Italian to English
How I keep track of payments Mar 26, 2015

Merab Dekano wrote:

..... if it is checked with "+", I know the invoice has been paid. If it is not checked with "+" and due date has expired, a friendly reminder is sent to the relevant party.


It's interesting to read how other people do this. In my case I just keep a spreadsheet of all my income. It runs from the beginning of the financial year to the end.

Each job gets a row in the spreadsheet. The columns from left to right read "invoice name and number", "job description", "invoice issue date", "expected payment date", "amount in Euro" "amount converted to GBP" and finally "amount actually received in GBP".

All jobs paid are in black text.
All jobs not yet paid are in red text.
If they are overdue, the red text is in bold and a reminder, polite or impolite, is sent.

At the bottom of the spreadsheet there is a running total that tells me how much I have earned, so far, in this financial year, with a separate little calculation that tells me how much that is per month. There is also another calculation that updates unpaid invoices in Euro on the basis of the current Euro-GBP exchange rate.

Each month I check this spreadsheet and add the new invoices I have issued in that month.

It's an easy way to keep track of everything.

It's also very handy at the end of the financial year when I'm doing my tax return; I immediately know what my income is. At the end of the tax year, I file away the spreadsheet along with all of my other accounting documentation, copy the spreadsheet and delete all of its contents, and start filling it in again for the new tax year.

Works for me!

[Edited at 2015-03-26 10:02 GMT]


Daniel Olsson
 
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