How to Share an OmegaT Project Through Dropbox

Friday, January 11, 2013

If you are newbie, please take a look of two of my previous posts about How to Install OmegaT (Windows) and How to Create a New Project In OmegaT.

Working together on an OmegaT project is very easy, if you use a Dropbox folder to share the TM. Then two translators work together on the same project, it can be convenient to share the translation memory. Today, file hosting and synching services (such as Dropbox) are more and more common. So we've thought of publishing a few guidelines to share a translation memory in TMX format, compatible with OmegaT.

OmegaT and TMX files

The idea on which this procedure is based is that the open source CAT tool OmegaT can load and use TMX files in real time, when they are placed in the translation memory folder (by default: /project_name/tm/). You don't need to reload the project anytime these files are updated. Therefore, each translator should create his own project, setting it so that the translation memory folder location matches the /omegat/ path of the other project and vice versa. The project_save.tmx is indeed created in the /omegat/ folder. During the translation, the translation units are placed into this folder, everytime the project is saved. You should set OmegaT so that the project is saved quite often (2-3 minutes), setting this time in the corresponding main menu item (Options > Save...). If you want to manually save the project, just click Ctrl+S (Cmd+S on Mac).

How to share a TM with Dropbox

The described procedure makes use of Dropbox, but you can apply it to other file sharing systems. The steps are the following:

    1. Create a subfolder inside your own Dropbox folder (in our example: /Shared/)
    2. Go to www.dropbox.com and access the control panel
    3. Click on Sharing tab
    4. Click on the first button left, “Share a folder”
    5. Choose “I'd like to share an existing folder”
    6. Click on Next
    7. Browse to the /Shared/ folder
    8. In the following screen choose “Invite collaborators to this folder” and add the email address of the person you want to share the folder with. If you want, you can also add a comment.
    9. The chosen person will be notified by email. From that moment he will be able to access the main project folder and all its subfolders.
    10. Now you create two OmegaT projects inside the shared folder, such as /Dropbox/Shared/Translator1 and /Dropbox/Shared/Translator2

    11. In OmegaT project properties, set: