This section describes the basic process of opening a document in SDL Trados Studio, translating it, and generating a target file. To work along with the instructions in this section, download Chap_03_SampleFile_01.docx from http://www.packtpub.com/sdl-trados-studio-practical-guide/book.
To open a document for translation in SDL Trados Studio, perform the following steps:
- In any view, choose File | Open | Translate Single Document or press Ctrl + Shift + O. Browse to the file that you want to open for translation, select it, and click Open. In this example we open the sample file
Chap_03_SampleFile_01.docx.Alternatively, you can open a file using drag and drop. You must be in the Editor view to do this. Drag the file from Windows Explorer into the Navigation pane, shown in the following screenshot:
- In the Open Document window, shown in the following screenshot, select the desired Source Language and Target Language. If you are using the sample file, please choose English (US) as your source language and a language of your choice as your target language.
- Select one or more TMs by clicking Add and browsing to select an existing TM. You can also choose to create a new TM at this point by clicking Create (choose New File-based Translation Memory, specify a Name and Location for the file, and click Finish). The process of creating and selecting a TM is described in detail in Chapter 2, Creating and Using Translation Memories. If you are working with our sample file, please create or select a TM of your own at this point. The following screenshot shows the Open Document window after we add the TM:
For any other settings, click the Advanced button at the bottom-left corner of the window.
- Click OK to open the document for translation in the side-by-side editor.
The side-by-side editor is made up of five columns, numbered in the following screenshot:
At the top left is a tab showing the name of the active document. The numbers in circles represent the following:
- Column 1: The segment number.
- Column 2: The source text, divided into segments when you open the file for translation.
- Column 3: The segment status and translation origin, indicating what work you have done on each segment at any given point in time, and where the match came from. The icons have the following meanings:
Not translated
Draft
Translated
- Column 4: Where you type the translation.
- Column 5: Information to indicate the context of each segment within the structure of the original document. For example, in the sample file, the H in Segment 1 shows that the text is formatted as a heading in the original MS Word document.
-
To begin translating, click in the first target segment and type the translation. As soon as you start typing, the status symbolchanges from (Not Translated) to
(Draft) showing that you have edited the segment but not stored it in the TM yet, as shown in the following screenshot. Segment 1 of the sample file is a heading, as indicated by the letter H on the right. Notice that the visual formatting of the text as displayed by SDL Trados Studio is replicated when you type the translation.
- When you are happy with your translation, press Ctrl + Enter to store the translated segment in the TM and move to the next segment that needs translating (pressing Enter alone has no effect). Alternatively, in the Home tab, click the Confirm button, shown on the left of the following screenshot:
This action is generally described as confirming the segment. The status symbol changes from
(Draft), to (Translated) to indicate that the segment has been confirmed. Segments that you translate or edit must be confirmed in this way, or they will not be stored in the TM.The default confirm action (Ctrl + Enter) actually moves you to the next unconfirmed segment, skipping any confirmed segments in between. To show more options for confirming segments, as shown in the preceding screenshot, click the drop-down arrow under the Confirm button.
Tip
To go to the next segment down, whether confirmed or not, choose Confirm and Move to Next Segment (Ctrl + Alt + Enter). If you are translating a file that produces lots of 100% matches that you do not wish to check immediately, choose Confirm and Translate until Next Fuzzy Match (Ctrl + Alt + F). You will then move down the bilingual file, automatically confirming any 100% matches, and only stopping at the next match that is less than 100%.
- Now translate and confirm Segment 2. This moves you into Segment 3, which is a fuzzy or partial match as indicated by the figure 82% in the following screenshot:
Tip
Typing accented characters
The ability to type accented characters in SDL Trados Studio is dependent on the keyboard settings in MS Windows, as with any other application that you might run on MS Windows. If you are using an English language keyboard and want to type accented characters in the target segment, you can use the Alt codes (such as Alt + 0233 for é). It is also possible to change the keyboard to follow the target language layout, via the Control Panel in MS Windows.
Whenever you move into a new segment (as from Segment 2 to Segment 3), the TM (or TMs if more than one is active) is searched for matches, and the highest match appears in the target segment (this action is called Lookup). If a match is found, the results are displayed in the Translation Results window, and an icon appears in the segment status column in the side-by-side editor to show the match level. By default, if no matches are found, the target segment remains empty, and the Translation Results window displays the text No matches found.
The Translation Results window displays the text in the current segment in the white area at the top, and any match from the TM underneath it, as shown in the following screenshot. The blue and red text in the source segment indicates the words that need to be added to and deleted from the new segment compared to the match from the TM (in a similar form to that used in Track Changes in MS Word). In this case, for example, we need to add quite long and delete short in the translation.
Edit the target segment to make the translation correct, and then confirm. When you edit and confirm the segment, the fuzzy match icon changes to a transparent background, as shown in the following screenshot. Notice that the fuzzy match value remains even after you confirm the segment. Thus, the percentage values displayed always indicate the value of the match as originally offered by the TM (the translation origin).
The following screenshot shows the sample file before we edit and confirm Segment 4:
Each match in the Translation Results window has a number, as shown on the left of the following screenshot. As you will see when you get to Segment 4 (which we will now edit and confirm), the highest match (with the number 1 in the column on the left) is automatically inserted whenever you move into an empty target segment.
To insert a different match instead, press Ctrl and the numbers on the main keyboard. For example, to insert match number 2, press Ctrl + 2.
To insert the match currently highlighted in blue in the Translation Results window, click the Apply Translation button or choose Home | Apply Translation (Ctrl + T). You can also scroll the list of matches to insert other matches via the Select Previous Match (Alt + PgUp) and Select Next Match (Alt + PgDn) buttons.
Notice that the yellow bar at the bottom of the Translation Results window shows the name of the TM providing the match in the segment that is highlighted in blue, as in the preceding screenshot.
If you are not getting matches from your TM, look at the Translation Results window. The text No matches found indicates that there is an enabled TM. If you see this text, the problem could simply be that there is no match for the segment. It could also be that you forgot to confirm the preceding segments (and thereby store them in the TM) when you translated them. Alternatively, it could be that the TM is not set to update, and has therefore not stored any of the translations that you have confirmed up to this point.
The text No open translation memories or automated translation servers, on the other hand, means that no TM is enabled or selected for use.
To correct these problems during translation, you can modify the TM options by clicking the Project Settings button in the Home view ribbon or at the top of the Translation Results window, shown in the following screenshot:
The option Translation Memory and Automated Translation is selected by default. Here, you can at any point add, remove, or create memories, and change the settings for those you are already using.
We discussed how to add another, additional TM when you open a document for translation in the section in Chapter 2, Creating and Using Translation Memories , titled Adding a further translation memory. To add another TM during translation, from the Home view, click Project Settings. Under the option Translation Memory and Automated Translation, follow the instructions in Chapter 2, Creating and Using Translation Memories , (if you are working along with our sample file, it is not necessary to add a further TM to complete the exercise in this chapter).
When you use more than one TM during translation, the white bar at the top of the Translation Results window displays the names of the TMs being used (in the order in which they appear in the TM list), as shown in the following screenshot:
To edit a confirmed segment, simply click in the target cell and edit the text. Try this in one of the confirmed Segments 1 to 3. As soon as you start editing, the status symbol will change from Translated to Draft. When you confirm the segment by pressing Ctrl + Enter, the edited version of your translation will replace the version existing in any TMs that are set to update. To check this, move back into the segment you have just edited and confirmed; the Translation Results window will show the updated segment in the TM.
To clear the target cell and start the translation afresh, in the Home tab, click the Clear Target Segment button, shown in the following screenshot:
The progress bar at the bottom right shows your progress through the document in terms of the status indicators, updated in real time as you translate. The following screenshot shows the situation after we confirm Segment 4 and begin typing Segment 5 in the sample file. The current number of characters in the target segment is shown on the right-hand side.
By double-clicking the status bar, you can choose to show the word count as well as the percentage (since the word count will often be a more useful indicator of your progress).
For another useful graphical representation of your current progress, go to the Files view and, at the bottom left, click the Confirmation Statistics tab.
It is advisable to save your bilingual file frequently during translation. Here, we will save and close the sample file, and then reopen it to continue with the translation.
- To save the bilingual file for the first time, choose File | Save, click the Save button in the Quick Access Toolbar at the top right, or press Ctrl + S.
- You are then prompted to choose a location to save the bilingual file (which is, by default, normally the folder that you last selected). Choose a folder where you want to save the bilingual file; for example, in the same folder as your original file.
Note
If you are working in a project, as described later in Chapter 7, Working with Projects, source and target folders are automatically created in the project folder. The bilingual file is automatically created in both. When you save the bilingual file, it is by default saved in the target folder.
- As shown in the following screenshot, SDL Trados Studio automatically gives the file a name in three parts: the name of the original document and its file extension, the language pair, and the bilingual file extension
.sdlxliff.
- Click Save to save your bilingual file.
An asterisk after the filename at the top of the side-by-side editor indicates that you have not saved the file since you last edited it, as shown in the following screenshot:
The asterisk disappears whenever you save the file.
Note
The SDL Trados Studio file in which you do your translation is usually referred to as a bilingual file or SDLXLIFF. The SDLXLIFF is not created until you save the bilingual file in the side-by-side editor for the first time. If you exit the side-by-side editor without saving the file at least once, no SDLXLIFF is created, and you will lose any work that you have done in the SDLXLIFF to that point.
Once you save your SDLXLIFF, your folder will contain two files, the SDLXLIFF (with a green and gold icon) and an sdlproj file (with a blue icon), as shown in the following screenshot:
The sdlproj file is a project file created automatically by SDL Trados Studio when you save an SDLXLIFF for the first time. You can simply leave it your folder. The sdlproj file contains information about settings such as which TMs you are using, and ensures that the SDLXLIFF uses those same settings whenever you reopen it.
Like Microsoft Word, SDL Trados Studio automatically saves your document at regular intervals. When you reopen a document that crashed with unsaved changes, you are prompted to recover the last AutoSaved file, which overwrites the original SDLXLIFF document. The AutoSave interval can be changed under File | Options | Editor, at the bottom of the dialog box (the default AutoSave interval is every 10 minutes).
Let us assume that you need to stop translating at this point for some reason, with a view to resuming later. To close an SDLXLIFF document in the Editor view (remembering to save it first), click the Close Document (X) button at the top right of the side-by-side window, or choose File | Close (Ctrl + F4).
It is possible to reopen a saved SDLXLIFF to resume translation in the Editor by choosing Translate Single Document and browsing to select the SDLXLIFF (not the original document). However, there is a more convenient method.
The project file created by SDL Trados Studio when you first save your document has the same name as that of your SDLXLIFF, and stays in the list of projects in the Projects view even when you close and reopen SDL Trados Studio. This provides an easy way to reopen individual SDLXLIFF documents.
To reopen your document and resume translation, go to the Projects view and select the corresponding project name, and then go to the Files view (alternatively, double-click the project name in the Projects view to jump straight to the Files view). In the Files view, you can open your SDLXLIFF document in the Editor by double-clicking it or, from the ribbon, choosing Open For Translation.
If you do not see your project in the Projects view, choose File | Open | Open Project and open the sdlproj file, and then follow the instructions in the preceding paragraph to open the SDLXLIFF.
If you do not have the sdlproj file, you can open the SDLXLIFF in the Editor view by selecting it via File | Open | Translate Single Document. This is useful if you receive an SDLXLIFF file from someone else for proofreading, for example.
Segments 5 and 6 both contain the phrase idiomatic expressions, but the segments as a whole are not similar enough to produce a match from the TM. When you translate and confirm Segment 5, there is no match from the TM for Segment 6. However, you can still access your translation of any chunk of text by searching the TM for segments (both source and target) in which it occurs. This process is called concordance.
To run a concordance search in the side-by-side editor (in our example, to search for the text idiomatic expressions in Segment 6), perform the following steps:
- Select the relevant text in the source or target segment in the side-by-side editor and press F3. Alternatively, click the Concordance Search tab above the side-by-side editor window, shown in the following screenshot, with the name of the TM:
- Paste or type in the text, and choose Search Source or Search Target from the dropdown next to the search field (shown in the following screenshot).
You can also run concordance searches from the ribbon. Select the text to search, and in the Home tab, choose Concordance Search and then Source Concordance Search (Ctrl + F3) or Target Concordance Search (Ctrl + Shift + F3).
The results are highlighted in yellow, as shown in the following screenshot:
To insert the translation in your target segment, perform the following steps:
- In the side-by-side editor, click at the insertion point in the target segment.
- In the Concordance Search window, select the relevant target text.
- Right-click and choose Insert into document (or press Ctrl + Alt + F3), as shown in the following screenshot. If the Insert into document option is grayed out, ensure that you have clicked in your target segment and try again. Alternatively, copy and paste the translation into your target segment.
If there is no match from the TM, SDL Trados Studio will attempt to search the TM for source segments containing chunks of text toward the beginning of the source segment in the document. The automatic concordance search option is not enabled by default. To enable it, go to File | Options. Under Editor | Concordance Search Window, check the option Perform search if the TM lookup returns no results.
In Segment 7, there is no match from the TM, but the automatic concordance search finds a TM segment containing idiomatic expressions, as shown in the following screenshot. The figure of 50% indicates the overall TM match for the segment. You can practice this technique again later in the sample file when you get to Segment 11.
You will also notice that Segment 15 has been completed further down the SDLXLIFF, a point to which we return in the next section.
As in Segment 8, numbers (when written as digits, not words) in the source segment have a blue underline. Blue-underlined elements are deemed by SDL Trados Studio to be non-translatable elements, or placeables, which are ready to be placed in the target segment without translation. Instead of typing or copying and pasting a number, you can insert it by pressing Ctrl + ,. This technique is called QuickPlace.
When you press Ctrl + , the digit is highlighted in the source segment and a QuickPlace list opens with the digits in the segment, shown on the right-hand side of the following screenshot:
Select the digit in the list with your mouse or arrow keys (the highlighting in the source segment now moves to reflect your selection). Press Enter to insert the number in the target segment. The number is also presented in the convention used in the target language (here, in the French translation, the thousands are separated by a space instead of a comma).
Auto-propagation is the automatic completion of other matching segments in the SDLXLIFF when a segment is confirmed. If you confirm a segment that is repeated in target segments further down the SDLXLIFF, the 100% match is inserted into those segments automatically.
It is advisable to check and confirm auto-propagated segments with Ctrl + Enter, so that you will know subsequently that you have finished working on the segment.
In the sample file, when you confirmed Segment 7, Segment 15 was auto-propagated as a 100% match, as shown in the following screenshot. You can check and confirm it when you reach that point in the file.
You can configure auto-propagation to behave in various ways, discussed in depth in Chapter 6, Editing and Quality Assurance.
By default, when a segment is auto-propagated to another segment whose content is identical except for any placeables, a 100% match results.
When you confirm Segment 9, Segment 10 is auto-propagated with an unconfirmed 100% match, and the digits 80,000 (in our example, in the French number format) are substituted in the target, as shown in the following screenshot:
Notice that when you confirm Segment 10, color and shading of the 100% match icon does not change, so that you will know when you review your work later that the match was originally auto-propagated, as shown in the following screenshot:
Tip
Auto-localization penalty
In most situations, auto-propagating 100% matches does not cause problems, but you may sometimes prefer to trigger a 99% match instead to give you a stronger reminder to check the translation of auto-propagated segments containing numbers and other placeables that are auto-substituted in this way. To do this, from the Home tab, choose Project Settings. The window opens with the option Translation Memory and Automated Translation already selected. Under Penalties, change the percentage under Auto-localization penalty from 0 to 1. For more information on penalties, see the SDL help pages at http://tinyurl.com/tm-penalties.
Many standard Windows shortcuts will work in SDL Trados Studio (for example, Ctrl + Z (undo), Shift + F3 (change case), and Ctrl + B (bold). In Segment 11, copy and paste the translation of idiomatic expressions (or find it using concordance).
In some situations, the match levels obtained from the TM can be improved by changing the way the document is segmented in the side-by-side editor.
Segment 12 is clearly two statements in one, as shown in the following screenshot:
To split it into two, click at the point in the source segment at which you want to split the segment (in our example, before the word Idiomatic), then right-click and choose Split Segment (Alt + Shift + T). The split segments are assigned new segment numbers, in our case 12a and 12b, as shown in the following screenshot, so that the numbering of the segments further down the SDLXLIFF is unaffected.
You can add soft returns (line breaks within the same paragraph) inside the target segment. To add a soft return, place your mouse pointer at the right point in the target segment and press Shift + Enter. The following screenshot shows target Segment 12 with a soft return at the end of the first line:
This also creates an equivalent soft return in the translated document when it is generated.
It is possible to edit the source segment in SDLXLIFF files based on .doc (MS Word 2000-2003), .docx, .ppt (Microsoft PowerPoint XP-2003), and .pptx files. In the Home tab, choose Project Settings | Project, then activate the option Allow source editing for supported file types. To edit the text, right-click in the active source segment and choose Edit Source (Alt + F2). In the sample file, in Segment 16, the two words are joined together, so we can edit the segment to add a space, as shown in the following screenshot:
Source editing is disabled in certain circumstances, such as for documents that contain tracked changes in the source (for details, see the SDL help pages at http://tinyurl.com/edit-source).
To add a translation to the TM as an alternative translation alongside the existing target segment in the TM (instead of overwriting it), from the Advanced tab, choose Add as New Translation (Ctrl + Shift + U) and then press Ctrl + Enter. In the sample file, we add an alternative translation for Segment 16.
If there is more than one translation in the TM for the same source segment, a multiple translations penalty is applied, reducing the match level by 1% to 99% (indicated by the green plus icon underneath the match percentage). To see this, move back into Segment 16 and look at the Translation Results window, shown in the following screenshot:
Note
Penalties are there to prompt you to reflect on whether or not you should accept the first match that you are being offered. If a match is 100%, you are perhaps less likely to consider the alternatives before accepting. It is possible to adjust the level of the penalties that you apply by going to Project Settings, as with the Auto-localization penalty described earlier in this chapter.
Select the first of the segments. To select the subsequent segments, hold the Ctrl key down and click in the segment number column on the left of the side-by-side editor so that the background color of the subsequent segments becomes yellow, as shown in the following screenshot, in which Segments 13 and 14 will be merged:
Now right-click and choose Merge Segments (Ctrl + Alt + S).
SDL Trados Studio does not let you merge segments over hard returns created in the original document. However, source segment editing provides a workaround; that is, by editing two source segments, you can cut and paste text from one to the other.
Segments 17 and 18 in the sample file are separated by a hard return in the sample Word document, and the Merge Segments command will not work. As shown in the following screenshot, we can get round this by editing the source segments to cut and paste the text from Segment 18 to Segment 17. To do this, first in Segment 18, we choose Edit Source (Alt + F2), select the text in the segment, and copy it to the clipboard with the Cut command (Ctrl + X). Then, in Segment 17, we choose Edit Source again, and paste in the text from Segment 18 at the end of the segment. In our sample file, the combined segment now produces a 100% match, as shown in the following screenshot:
Be aware, however, that this can leave empty segments in your SDLXLIFF file, which may need tidying up in your target document when you generate it later.
On occasion, this approach can prevent you from generating the target file, so it is a good idea to check that you are able to save the target file before making extensive changes (see the section later in this chapter titled Generating the translated document). If you cannot generate the target document with an empty source segment like this, you can leave some dummy text (such as ?????) in the source segment, as long as you remember to remove it from the target file later. Do not confirm such segments, as they contain no meaningful text.
For segments that are unlikely to appear in this form again in a future document, an alternative is to translate the segments without confirming them, as shown in the following screenshot. The translated text will appear on separate lines when you generate your target document, but the TM will not be cluttered up with unhelpful text fragments.
The keyboard shortcuts in SDL Trados Studio can be customized. You can add a new keyboard shortcut for a particular action or change the existing ones. However, you will need to know the name of the action to which you are assigning a new keyboard shortcut, so check this information in the SDL Trados Studio interface before you proceed.
As an example, we will add a shortcut for switching to Alternative Translation Layout, which has none assigned by default. Choose File | Options | Keyboard Shortcuts. In the list of shortcuts, under Editor, find the row containing Alternative Translation Layout and click in the Shortcut column. On your keyboard, press the desired shortcut key combination (such as Ctrl + Shift + Q), then click OK to exit the Options dialog box.
If you choose a shortcut that is already in use, it will be displayed in red to indicate that the shortcut is not available. Place your mouse pointer over the red area to see a tool tip telling you what action that shortcut is assigned to, as shown in the following screenshot:
In this case, to revert from Alternative Translation Layout to the standard layout, press the new shortcut again.
The Formatting and QuickInsert groups (shown in the following screenshot) sit in the Home tab and feature a number of buttons for inserting standard formatting (such as bold and underlining) and special characters (such as €, ©, and ™):
To display the corresponding keyboard shortcut, place your mouse pointer over the icon.
To insert individual symbols such as €, place your mouse pointer at the right point in the target segment and click the symbol in the ribbon. To insert formatting such as quotation marks around some text, as in the following screenshot from Segment 19, in the target segment, select the text and then click the appropriate quotation mark button:
As in Segment 21 (you can translate Segment 20 first), SDL Trados Studio will attempt to translate automatically segments that contain only placeables (such as URLs or numbers), giving the segment the translation origin icon AT, shown in the following screenshot:
The same icon is used to indicate matches from any automated translation providers, such as SDL BeGlobal, that you have chosen to use.