Rewind a little

  • Thread starter Continental Translations
  • Start date
C

Continental Translations

OK, lets start from the beginning as I agree I am not making much sense.

What i'm after is a database do keep a list of all my freelance translator
and their contact details (name, address, telephone number etc.....) All of
my contact entries will be automatically given a Contact ID (that being my
primary key for this table) Now, for each freelance translator, they will
each have one or more language pairs, the first language being the 'source'
language and the second being the 'target' language which they work between,
ie French into Spanish and English into Spanish. So, for example, my first
contact, William Brown, will be able to translate between French (source
language) and German (target language), and English (source language) and
German (target language). Now, I am not too sure whether I should put these
language details in the 'Contact Details' table or in a new table. I also
want to be able to add a price per 1000 words that each 'contact' charges.

Eventually, what I want to be able to do, is search on a few principles. For
example, I want to be able to search via surname, source language, target
language, source language AND target language together and price.

Any help??
 
C

Continental Translations

I forgot to mention. Each contact will have 1,2 or 3 specialist themes also.
So for example, contact 1 will translate between French and Spanish, with
specialism in Marketing and Engineering. I would also be able to search by
'specialisms' too as well as language combinations and specialisms
 
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Dirk Goldgar

Continental Translations said:
OK, lets start from the beginning as I agree I am not making much
sense.

What i'm after is a database do keep a list of all my freelance
translator and their contact details (name, address, telephone number
etc.....) All of my contact entries will be automatically given a
Contact ID (that being my primary key for this table) Now, for each
freelance translator, they will each have one or more language pairs,
the first language being the 'source' language and the second being
the 'target' language which they work between, ie French into Spanish
and English into Spanish. So, for example, my first contact, William
Brown, will be able to translate between French (source language) and
German (target language), and English (source language) and German
(target language). Now, I am not too sure whether I should put these
language details in the 'Contact Details' table or in a new table. I
also want to be able to add a price per 1000 words that each
'contact' charges.

Eventually, what I want to be able to do, is search on a few
principles. For example, I want to be able to search via surname,
source language, target language, source language AND target language
together and price.

Any help??
Click to expand...

You're going to need at least 3 tables:

Contacts
---------
ContactID
ContactName (should actually be multiple fields)
ContactAddress
ContactPhone
PricePerWord

Languages
-----------
Language (that is, the name of the language)

ContactsLanguages
--------------------
ContactID (from Contacts)
SourceLanguage (from Languages)
TargetLanguage (from Languages)

Note that the structure I propose for ContactsLanguages is based on your
statement that the translators' abilities are "directional"; that is, a
translator who can translate English to German isn't necessarily able to
translate German to English. I'm not sure that's true, though. If it
isn't, if a translator can translate from any of the languages he speaks
to any of the other languages he speaks, then all you need is:

ContactsLanguages
--------------------
ContactID (from Contacts)
Language (from Languages)

I'm also assuming that each translator's price per word doesn't depend
on what languages he's translating between. If that's wrong, then the
price info has to go into the ContactsLanguages table, or into a
separate TranslationFees table, depending on factors I don't know yet.

To enter the information about each translator's languages, you would
use a subform on the Contact Details form. The subform would be based
on ContactsLanguages, and would be linked to the main form by the
ContactID field that the forms share.

Searches for suitable translators would be based on a query that joins
Contacts with ContactsLanguages, thus identifying which translators have
which source and target languages. If ContactsLanguages isn't
"directional", then the query would actually join to that table twice:
once for
the source language and once for the target language. Details depend on
the exact structure of the tables.
 
D

Dirk Goldgar

Continental Translations said:
I forgot to mention. Each contact will have 1,2 or 3 specialist
themes also. So for example, contact 1 will translate between French
and Spanish, with specialism in Marketing and Engineering. I would
also be able to search by 'specialisms' too as well as language
combinations and specialisms
Click to expand...

Do the specialties relate in any way to specific languages for the
contact, or do they relate to the contact, not to any subset of the
contact's languages? If the former, you would want additional tables:

Specialties
-----------
SpecialtyName

ContactsSpecialties
--------------------
ContactID (from Contacts)
Specialty (from Specialties)

Again, you'd use a subform on the Contacts form to enter specialties for
each contact.
 
C

Continental Translations

Dirk,

Thanks for your replies! Appreciate your help! Just putting it together now!
 
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