I’m glad that worked for you. In the interim I’ve had some feedback from a long-established OmegaT user and he advises against doing the above (sorry, it’s what I’ve found works, but he makes good points below):

OmegaT never deletes segments from project_save.tmx. If you change the translation of a segment (e.g. in a second draft), the segment is modified. But if you remove the segment from a project altogether after that segment has been translated, i.e. by deleting the source text file containing it, or by making changes to the source text file (as a result of which the segment concerned ceases to exist in exactly that form), OmegaT retains these segments in project_save.tmx. They enter a form of limbo, because they can no longer be modified within OmegaT (because they are no longer presented to the translator for translation/modification. However, OmegaT does not delete them because they can be useful. They turn up in Find results, for instance, and are marked as “Orphan segments”.

His recommendation is to create a new project for every doc you translate. Then, after you export it and are happy with it, take (or copy) the level1-tmx file and put it into a master folder of TMs that you can use in future. The added advantage to this is that the level1 file doesn’t capture all the inline formatting nonsense that you sometimes have to deal with from converted Word documents (all that stuff).

I’ve started doing what he suggested and it works great!

I did what you mentioned above and it did indeed work!

As long as you rename it, OmegaT will read from this filename – the translator can simply then rename the TMX file afterwards.

Good question! I’m not entirely sure.

I read the following link yesterday:

http://www.proz.com/forum/omegat_support/158125-how_to_update_previous_translation_memory.html

and the bit near the top from Samuel Murray seems to indicate that if you take an existing TM and rename it project_save.tmx and put it in the omegat directory for your given project, OmegaT will write to it. To quote from Samuel Murray:

“4. The TM that OmegaT reads from *and* writes to, is called project_save.tmx, and it is in your project’s /omegat/ folder.”

I’ve not tried this, but it seems logical. I think I’ll experiment a bit with it later today.

Good luck and let us know what results you get.

Thanks for your reply!
So just to clarify, even if a client sends a TM they want you to add to, you still have to start a new project with a new TM, and then merge it afterwards?

I’ve seen the additional merger but, like yourself, thought there would be the option to use an existing TM as the main project TM.

I’ve found in the interim that there’s a merge tool on the OmegaT site that you can use to merge two TM files. I’ve tried it and it seems to work, so hopefully that is the easiest solution.

Instead of allowing you to build one central TM for a given topic or customer, it makes a new file for each project which the user manual then tells you if you want to use again, you have to manually copy to your next project (etc. etc. etc.).

Is it really not possible to have one TM for a given topic or customer and just build that without the endless copying and renaming of previous TM files?