That is a very interesting question because I had the same question recently when I bought Trados. I was advised by someone with quite some experience with Trados to set up only a few translation memories, organized by language combination and field. This particular translator said that he had way too many clients (lucky him!) to have TMs for every different one. So I think this might be a factor to consider. But I think in certain cases it definitely makes sense to have different TMs for different clients.

I think I recall reading something in the Trados manual about different translations (for different clients) within one TM.

Good question.

I have to start saying that I have no experience whatsoever with Trados, or with its workflow. Of the CAT tools I use, I see two paradigms.

One is OmegaT+, which stores the TM files on a per-project basis, allowing you to then organise and move these files at will, and deploy them in other projects. Very handy for a first project, but I find it turns into a bit of a "folder hell" after a while, in the sense that TM is there to come up with a solution precisely when you don't think you have one at hand - i.e., in practice, it is impossible to be absolutely sure which TM files are going to be relevant to the project you're about to engage.

I am currently test-driving Swordfish, and it has a different philosophy with regards to TM - segments and terms are handled by a unified database, which can be Swordfish's own, or an optional MySQL or Oracle back-end (the latter is a nice touch, since it implies you can handle an almost arbitrarily-huge knowledge base with this tool).

With regards to my workflow (yours might well be different), the unified database approach is much better. One of the reasons is that I work in a particular specialisation field (contemporary art, humanities, and critical theory), and rarely stray from there (occasional social security and public administration texts). In this sense, almost all my knowledge base is relevant to any project I might be engaging at any given time.

But I am aware that many translators have to deal with a variety of knowledge fields on a daily basis, so I can't be sure.

I am not evangelising or championing any particular CAT tool here, either - I believe you can set up a variety of workflows with most of them.

Just my 0.02 €.

Best.

1. You'd probably have to preserve each single TM in each particular project/client's folder - for various reasons: repetitive jobs with the same client, improvement of the translation, client wants the TM delivered...

2. And then, you'd probably like to have several general containers for translational categories: industry, natural sciences, legal and general, agriculture & food... Only after having perfected the TM, cleaned it of its repetitions, errors, you should copy it into the general container.

3. So you'll probably have to create these general folders (as in 2.)

4. The _same_ applies to glossaries, where you might create a specific glossary for each project, and integrate it into your general glossary for each general category (industry, sciences...) Take into account that it is a good practice to create a third column in the glossary, with project or client's name or a specific category.

5. Do name all your TM-s and glossaries like this: en-de_projectname_tech.suffix, or de-en_projectname_legal.suffix In that way you'll guarantee to yourself that all your TM-s, or glossaries, when put together in a big legacy folder, will be listed according to alphabetical order. An additional precautional measure is to insert, for instance, a string like: en-de_gloss_tech, where the "gloss" helps you distinguish the glossaries from TM-s, despite they are placed in separate folders, one never knows.

Wishing your good work,

Hi all,

My experience is from the client side exclusively but it may also make sense for translators (?).

I organise our TMs using 2 features of Trados: attributes and Master/Project TM dichotomy. Applied to a translator's case, I guess it could go something like this:

1. Have a single Master TM for each field and language pair (e.g. EN-FR Medical)
2. Everytime you analyse a new project, assign custom attributes (e.g. Client=AAA, Project=XXX)
3. Create Project TM during analysis and work exclusively with them throughout the project
4. Once the project is completed, update your Master TM with the updated Project TM

Would love to hear feedback on that and any reason why this might not work for translators!

Cheers,

Nick.