Reversing the language direction of a translation memory in SDL Trados Studio

Export and import

In the example below, we use a translation memory with English (United States) as source language and German (Germany) as a target language:
 

1. Export your existing translation memory to a *.tmx file.
2. Create a new empty translation memory with the reversed language direction. In our example, select German (Germany) as the source language and English (United States) as the target language.
3. Import the *.tmx file created in step 1. While importing the file, Studio assigns segments to the correct language.

NOTE: You cannot update two different translation memories with different language directions at the same time. This is by design. To keep both translation memories updated, always follow the resolution above.

When you reverse a translation memory using the resolution above, you can specify different language flavours on the re-import. For example, you can export from a English (United States) > German (Germany) translation memory and then re-import it into a German (Switzerland) > English (United Kingdom) translation memory. To do this, ensure that on the General Import Options page of the Import wizard, the option Exclude language variants is clear. By default, this option is not selected, so usually you do not need to change anything.
 

Alternative and more information

• You can also use SDL Appstore apps to revert language pairs automatically. For example:

  • SDL Translation Memory Management Utility
  • AnyTM (this app is installed as part of Trados Studio from 2015 onwards)
  Note: These cannot be used in conjunction with server-based Translation Memories.

• More background information can be found in the following blog post: http://multifarious.filkin.com/2014/02/12/supertm.