Adding spell checking language dictionaries to Trados Studio

Article Number:000001362 | Last Updated:10/6/2023 9:01 AM

Scope/Environment

Trados Studio

Symptoms/Context

This article describes how to add additional spellchecking dictionaries to complement the ones shipping with Trados Studio by default.

For information on how to update existing dictionaries, refer to Updating spell checking language dictionaries in Trados Studio.

Resolution

You can use Hunspell Dictionary Manager from the App Store https://appstore.rws.com/Plugin/54
The Hunspell Dictionary Manager simplifies the creation and deletion of Hunspell dictionaries in Trados Studio. The application is a standalone application with a shortcut created on your desktop and in the welcome view of Studio.
See this article on how to use the app https://multifarious.filkin.com/2018/10/31/hunspell-dictionaries-in-studio/

If you don’t use the app and prefer to do this manually the process of finding and applying additional language dictionaries consists of two steps:

Download additional dictionaries for use with the Hunspell engine. These are typically available from a number of active public open-source sites.
Edit the Trados Studio spell-checking configuration file (spellcheckmanager_config.xml by default) to add the corresponding language.

The procedure below describes how to download a dictionary from the Open Office Wiki Web site (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries). The language downloaded is Irish (Ireland) as Irish is a language that is not supported out of the box.

1. Exit Trados Studio if it is running.
2. In your browser, open http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries and scroll down to Irish (Ireland).
3. Download the spelling file (called ga_IE.zip at the time of writing).
4. Extract the downloaded file into the Hunspell folder in Trados Studio:

for Studio 2021: C:\Program Files\SDL\SDL Trados Studio\Studio16\HunspellDictionaries\
for Studio 2022: C:\Program Files\Trados\Trados Studio\Studio17\HunspellDictionaries\
for Studio 2024: C:\Program Files\Trados\Trados Studio\Studio18\HunspellDictionaries\

The required files in the ZIP file are called ga_IE.aff and ga_IE.dic.

5. You are now ready to edit the spell-checking configuration file spellcheckmanager_config.xml located in the same folder to add the information that Irish (Ireland) has been added as a new language. As a first step, open this file in a text editor such as Notepad.
6. Inside the CONFIG element, add a language element for Irish (Ireland) (it's best to look at the spellcheckmanager_config.xml file for understanding the required syntax and modeling added languages according to the existing ones):

<LANGUAGE>
  <ISOCODE>ga-IE</ISOCODE>
  <DICT>ga_IE</DICT>
</LANGUAGE>

7. Restart Trados Studio. The languages mentioned in this article should be listed now.

Root Cause

Spell checking in Trados Studio is based on the Hunspell engine, an open-source development that is also used in other applications such as OpenOffice and StarOffice. You can download spell-checking dictionaries from public sites and edit the spell-checking configuration file in Trados Studio, thereby extending the spell-checking support for more languages than shipping with the product out of the box.

Reference

The best site for Hunspell dictionaries is at http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Dictionaries. You may wish to explore other sites from there.
Some of the spelling files on the Wiki web site for OpenOffice are part of so-called "Pack" files. In this case, the pack file typically contains both hyphenation and spelling files (which in turn are typically are ZIP files within the pack ZIP file). In this case, you only need to extract the *.aff and *.dic files for use with SDL Trados Studio.
For a (non comprehensive) list of language codes, download the attached list in Microsoft Excel format.

Attachments

LanguageCodes.zip

Send Article Feedback