Worked perfectly for the problem I needed to solve for a client...
"Removing frames (text boxes) from a word document, after OCR or saving as rtf from pdf document
You saved or scanned a document with OCR software like Abbyy FineReader or OmniPage Pro? You saved as rtf a PDF document and the resultant word document, contains multiple frames?
Frames make the document very hard edit because all text is placed inside frames. We need to remove those frames if we want to edit the document.
How do we do that?
If you do not care about formatting you do this:
1. —Open the file which has frames in MS Word —Save the file as a Plain text file. —Open the new text file you have just saved in Notepad or WordPad or some other text editor. —Now Select all the text by pressing Ctrl+A, Copy and paste that into a New MS Word file. Then Save it with any name you want. Frames are gone.
If you do care about formatting:
2. —Copy everything in the Word document, paste all the text into WordPad, copy all the text in the WordPad document, and paste it back into the Word document.
Or
3. —Select the entire document by pressing Ctrl+A, and then press Ctrl+Q. This will set every paragraph back to its default condition."
But how does this affect the service industry or the individual consultant:
You could claim that it is necessary to twist a little bit the idea to understand it as a valuable resource for the service industry.
Here is my attempt:
a. Broader audience could mean less attraction: The more specific you are the more you could position yourself as THE expert in the field.
If you focus on a small niche, the members of that tribe will easily consider you as the problem solver for their specific issue. The more specific your target niche is, the less efforts and resources will be necessary to outstand from your competition.
Let's consider an example: There could be many English to Spanish translators, but how many are experienced in the broadcast industry? How many of these are experts in signal measurement devices and protocols... If you find the way to proove your expertise in such restricted area, guess who clients in that specific industry will call next time they need a quality translation. With that perspective you could become the king of mambo. Your kingdom will be restricted, but you will lead it. (Of course you will need to find the way to market yourself correctly to the target market.)
b. Be specific: In a Long tail economy, consumers ask more and more for that specificity. They become used to specific messages and to receive offers focused on them. I believe that poor quality mass media advertisement has favored a development of a brain switch in the public: “General ads: not interesting. Please ignore”. If you are not specific enough, people will easily forget about you.
c. Compete for sincere love: The less obvious your niche is, the less competition you will have. Who are you really? Where are the people you can connect with? If you connect at an emotional level you will be remembered. Relationships are what matter the most.
The game industry could still be perceived by some, as a less important division in the localization league. The truth is that the game industry is a complete world in itself. There are really bad quality translations in some games...absolutely true. But doesn't this happen in all industries? However top game publishers (and not so top) aim for translation quality that could compete with the most demanding regulated industry.
I'm so lucky to be involved in different industries and be able to have my inhands personal overview of how localization is maturing in different fields including Financial, IT and Life Science. Although these last mentioned industries are considered to be more "noble", I can confirm that none, including regulated industries, should be, as a whole, be considered as more demanding than the game industry. I will try to explain why in the following discussion.
The "Fan" factor: game players are incredibly tough critics: Game users are fans. They play on a specific title because they chose to (and pay for it). This doesn't apply to any other non-entertainment industry localization. The first consequence of this is that a huge community of users is analyzing, criticizing, suggesting better translation, voice over or feature in regards to any possible tiny detail in a game. The second consequence is that players could really feel spoiled if a game translation, voice over or functionality in a specific language is not working properly. For major MMORPG games, millions of users are interconnected, not only in the game itself but in mega huge communities in continuous movement and discussion. In addition, these fans are fond of their games. And the news about mistakes spreads quickly... Really, really, very fast. I can give an example of the fast spread of information. Just imagine... For a game I was involved in there was a localized voice over part recorded directly by the publisher to launch a demo, in a kind of amateur way. This demo reached journalists who were supposed to simply have a quick overview of the game months before the official release. Even before the scripts reached the studios to record the final version, we already had specialized journalists calling us and asking if we were going to record the voice-over the way it was in the demo... comments on their website was full of angry fans, not understanding why voice over of the second version of the game was not going to be as good as the first one.
The "Expert" factor: real experts will play your game: Imagine you decide to launch a baseball game in France. Who will buy it? People who love baseball. Even if baseball is not an extremely popular game in the country. Users will know the terminology, and therefore will require that the correct terms are used in the game. If you are working on localizing such a game, you better send your linguists to a French baseball field if you don't want the result to be strongly criticized and have a very unhappy costumer at the end of the day.
The "Emotional" factor: Game players are emotionally bound with their games. Consider the implications in regards to the quality standards required. The concept of a virtual life gaining importance in respect to real life is extremely well expressed in the following video (a bit long but worth it), presented by David Perry at the Ted Conference.
The "multidiscipline" factor: The Game industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines. Just check the amount of Special Interest Groups from the International game developers association (IGDA) to get an idea. Localization, like it happens in many other industries was only considered at the latest stage of game development in the past. Today simultaneous shipment ("simship") is essential for any important game in the market. The consequence is that localization is considered already in preproduction and during the production stages. Localization is planned early in the process and, if outsourced, localization vendors are involved since the beginning, becoming real partners. Many publishers are highly conscious that the success of the product in the different markets depends on localization as much as on the quality of the game. To succeed in such a competitive market, Development, Marketing and Sales need to be involved. It is also very important not to forget an essential discipline playing a relevant role in a product aiming to be global, what the real experts on the topic call “Geoliteracy". Cross-cultural awareness is more than essential, to avoid unnecessary risks.
The "multimedia" factor: For localization project managers (or producers, as they are usually called in the game industry), this field could be a very interesting and instructive experience (or a real nightmare). I'm not going to talk about how aggressive schedules can be, because I’m sure there will be examples of impossible turnaround requirements in all imaginable industries. The original factor comes from the fact that game localization usually includes audio localization (not that usual in other localization projects), and very often a very strong involvement with integration activities (integration of localized assets in game code). For localization experts or project managers coming from more "standard" localization (like myself), the game industry has lots of new experiences to offer and new knowledge to acquire. In addition to these activities, game localization is strongly related to testing. Of course this is not a 'game industry' only characteristic, but there is a very strong linguistic testing investment in games, especially in AAA games.
Let’s also not forget that the game industry is huge. In many countries, revenue for games is higher than movie and music together. Check the ESA (Entertainment Software Association) facts if you are curious.
As a last thought, my opinion is that creativity and science coincide in the game industry making of it a crucial technology laboratory.
