This chapter explains how to ensure that the formatting and functionality of your translated document is the same as that of the original. SDL Trados Studio uses tags to retain information about the formatting (such as bold text) and functionality (such as hyperlinks) in your document. You can, if you wish, download the sample file from the Packt website to work along with the instructions in this chapter.
By default, SDL Trados Studio shows all recognized formatting in "visual" form without tags. For example, bold or italic text is displayed as bold or italic text and not as unformatted text with tags. Nevertheless, the tags are present in the text, but hidden. Functionality such as hyperlinks, on the other hand, appears in the source segment with the tags displayed. The following screenshot shows a source segment that contains both visual formatting (bold on the word publications) and text displayed with tags (around the word website) to represent its hyperlink functionality:
When you translate, the formatting of your target text will initially be different from that of the source. Unless you apply the formatting and functionality of the source to the target, the document will look and behave differently to the source when you produce the target version after translation. In this chapter, we describe how to apply formatting and functionality to your target text to prevent such a situation from arising.
When the text content of a segment produces a 100% match against the TM but the source segments in the document and in the TM contain different formatting, a penalty is applied to the match. In the sample file, Segments 1 and 2 are the same, except that Segment 2 contains some text in bold. When you reach Segment 2, the Translation Results window shows the following match:
The yellow arrow symbol under the match percentage tells you that a Different formatting penalty has been applied. This alerts you to the need to edit the match to ensure that the formatting is consistent in your source and target segments. SDL Trados Studio also has a Missing format penalty that would have been triggered if the bold formatting were in Segment 1 and not in Segment 2.