Under Community Review

Add option to overwrite existing translation if better match found during interactive translation

Use case:

Translator1 creates Project1 where MT prefills all segments with a lower quality than the minimum match value, and translates Document1, using a server-based TM.

Translator2 creates Project2 where MT also prefills all segments with a lower quality than the minimum match value, and translates Document2, using the same server-based TM as Translator1.

Document1 and Document2 contain one identical segment which was prefilled with MT because no high-quality match existed in the TM.

Translator1 (adjusts and) confirms a segment in Document1 during interactive translation. When Translator2 clicks on that same segment in Document2, the TM match created by Translator1 in Document1 will be displayed in the TM results window as a 100% or better match. Depending on whether Translator1 actually adjusted the TM match before confirming it, Translator2 might additionally see the warning “Different target in translation memory” at the bottom of the TM results window in Document2. But the translation of that segment is (obviously) still prefilled with “AT”, because the TM match didn’t exist yet when Translator2 created Project2:

Trados Studio segment showing 'Hello' with a machine translation 'AT' prefilled and a 100% TM match 'Hallo' in the results window.

If Translator2 now carried out the “Pre-Translate” batch task again, the better match from the TM would overwrite the MT translation. But this is not feasible because it would mean that translators would constantly have to rerun pre-translate just in case someone else might have confirmed an identical segment in a different document.

Could you therefore please add a function to Studio to enable the automatic overwrite of an existing translation if a better match is found during interactive translation (i.e. when clicking into a segment). This option should, similar to the Auto-Propagate function, also include a pop-up if desired by the translator, because some translators will want to be notified before Studio actually overwrites a segment that they might have already changed but not yet confirmed. This obviously does not only help with MT segments but also with prefilled fuzzy matches from the TM.

Popup window titled 'Auto-Overwrite with better match' asking to overwrite existing translation in segment 1 with a better match 'Hallo'.

Sophia Wessin
Parents

  • Hi Daniel, yes, Ctrl+T doesn't take up much time, that's true. The problem is that you wouldn’t have to press Ctrl+T for every unconfirmed segment if Studio already noticed automatically that a better match is in the TM. If it did, either the suggested pop-up would appear, or it would replace the old with the better translation automatically, whatever setting suits the translator better (if they have the "automatic overwrite" function enabled). Currently, you are notified only when there is a 100% match in the memory which is different from the translation in the current segment (not if there’s a better match) and this notification is very easy to overlook.

Comment

  • Hi Daniel, yes, Ctrl+T doesn't take up much time, that's true. The problem is that you wouldn’t have to press Ctrl+T for every unconfirmed segment if Studio already noticed automatically that a better match is in the TM. If it did, either the suggested pop-up would appear, or it would replace the old with the better translation automatically, whatever setting suits the translator better (if they have the "automatic overwrite" function enabled). Currently, you are notified only when there is a 100% match in the memory which is different from the translation in the current segment (not if there’s a better match) and this notification is very easy to overlook.

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