This process refers to “cleaning up” a Microsoft Word document that has been translated using Trados 6.5 Workbench.

Usually, before delivering our work to our client we need to “clean” our documents. During translation, Trados’ Workbench stores the source text and the translated text in the document. The source text is stored in a "hidden" format. After finishing the translation or whenever you need to do so, you can clean out the source text from the document so that only the translated text remains. In this case, “to clean” means to delete the hidden source text.

You may not need to do this, if your client has asked you to send the “unclean” files, in order to add new TM segments to his/her TM. Sometimes clients ask us to send both clean and unclean files, as well as the exported TM segments. (TM is the Translation Memory or database where translated source and target segments are stored.)

Normally, to clean up a document, you just need to follow these steps:

1) Save and close your translated document. (Do not close the MS Word window.)
2) Go to the Trados Translator's Workbench window.
3) Go to Tools > Clean Up
4) Choose “Add”
5) Click on the document that you want to clean. (Sometimes you have to browse several directories, to find your document.)
6) Click on “Clean Up”
7) Click on “Close” when the process has concluded.

This is explained in detail in the Translator’s Workbench Help, which you can access by clicking on "Help" in the Trados Translator's Workbench menu bar.

Whenever a file is cleaned in this way, Trados creates a backup copy of the file. If the translated file is called “doc1.doc”, then the backup file is called “doc1.bak”. It is stored in the same directory. MS Word can also open backup files and you can even save them once again as MS Word files.

In some cases, Trados is not able to clean all of the source text. For example, Trados usually does not erase the hidden source text from footnotes, text boxes, and headers and footers. Therefore, this has to be done manually.

To clean text manually, follow these steps:

1) Open the document in MS Word.
2) Make sure that the Trados template is loaded.
a. To do this go to Tools > Templates and Add-Ins
b. “Trados6.dot” should be selected
c. Click OK
3) Go to the section that you want to clean. For example if you want to clean the header, click on the header of the document.
4) Go to Tools > Macro > Macros > tw4winClean.Main. (You have to scroll down the rather lengthy list, although it is in alphabetical order.)
5) Click on “Run”. This will run the Main Clean macro and clean that section of the file.
6) If you need to clean a text box or any other section of the document that has not been cleaned, click on the text box, and then repeat steps 4 to 5.

Don’t forget to save your file after cleaning it. If you do not find the “tw4winClean.Main” macro, it means that the Trados6.dot template is not loaded correctly. You may have to close MS Word and start it once again.

Now you have a clean document. I hope that you consider this article useful.