Macros, scripts, coding

In the early years of my freelancing I worked mostly in Microsoft Word. I either did not use any CAT tool or I used the free version of Wordfast (now called Wordfast Classic) which is a set of macros in itself.

I was looking for ways to make my tedious work of translating in Microsoft Word a bit easier. Soon I found out about macros. Initially I created them by recording, then I learned more about coding them.

Now, though most of my translation work is done outside of Microsoft Word, in CAT tools, I still have most of the macros I created more than 10 years ago. Many of them fell into disuse, but there is one that I use regularly when I need to do some work in Word. It is the macro I called ‘TextFieldFit’. When I draw a text box, I run the macro to reduce the inner margins, remove the border around the box and reduce the font size. I use text boxes to translate drawings that did not get imported into my preferred CAT tool, the SDL Trados Studio.

If you want to use the macro, here goes:

Sub TextFieldFit()
'
' TextFieldFit Makro
' Makro zapisane 15-03-00 przez Piotr Bieńkowski
'
Selection.ShapeRange.Fill.Visible = msoTrue
Selection.ShapeRange.Fill.Solid
Selection.ShapeRange.Fill.ForeColor.RGB = RGB(255, 255, 255)
Selection.ShapeRange.Fill.Transparency = 0#
Selection.ShapeRange.Line.Weight = 0#
Selection.ShapeRange.Line.DashStyle = msoLineSolid
Selection.ShapeRange.Line.Style = msoLineSingle
Selection.ShapeRange.Line.Transparency = 0#
Selection.ShapeRange.Line.Visible = msoFalse
Selection.ShapeRange.LockAspectRatio = msoFalse
Selection.ShapeRange.TextFrame.MarginLeft = 0#
Selection.ShapeRange.TextFrame.MarginRight = 0#
Selection.ShapeRange.TextFrame.MarginTop = 0#
Selection.ShapeRange.TextFrame.MarginBottom = 0#
Selection.ShapeRange.LockAnchor = True
Selection.Font.Name = "Arial"
Selection.Font.Size = 7
End Sub

Believe it or not, I recorded it in Word 97, and then edited it to suit my needs. It still works in the Word version that comes with Office 365. There are some other of my macros here, if you're interested.

I've always been fascinated by coding, the ability to make the computer do something automatically, and there was time when I would read books about Perl and XML/XSLT as bedtime books. :-)
But it wasn't all theoretical, and if you want to check out one script in Perl and two XSLT transformations, follow this link.
So I have basic working knowledge of VBA (the language of Word macros), Perl, Python, XSLT, and I am not scared when I see what's inside a HTML or XML file in their various flavors.

Coding is not for everyone, but I believe that if I had not become a translator, I would have become a coder. I wish I could be both, but there's just not enough time. Sigh...