Under Community Review

"Do not translate" segment status

Occasionally, we are asked to translate only certain sections of a text.

One solution is to convert the text that is not to be translated to hidden text in the Word file (for example).

However, I think it is usually safer to make as few changes in the source file as possible in case we forget to "unhide" the text before delivering the translation.

Could we have an additional segment status in Studio ("Do not translate") that could be used to mark up the relevant segments so that they cannot be edited, are automatically excluded from batch tasks such as "Pretranslate", "Analyse", etc. and can be hidden from view using the display filters?

 

Andrew

Andrew James Wood

  • Hi Lieven,

    I see your point. Our agency specialises in just two languages, so that issue wouldn't affect us. The file type settings approach is an very interesting one - generally the more customisation options there are (and the easier they are to use), the better, I'd say.

    I completely neglected to mention the context side of things in my original post and that is perhaps the most important point. Working in Trados Studio, translators are already deprived of the helpful context provided by the layout of a Word document. Once repetitive headings, explanatory comments and great chunks of text are taken out on top of that, you can sometimes be left with a disjointed series of sentences and have to refer back constantly to the source text (assuming, of course, that the translator has realised text has been hidden in the source file).

    As a translator, I'd say that an extra segment status would be a simple, quick fix that would make a significant difference - even if I had to mark up the segments myself.  If there were a way text could also be marked up in the source file, all the better!

    I suppose it's a tricky balancing act - streamlining the project management side of things without compromising the translation process, and vice-versa.

    Andrew

  • Hi Andrew,

    We also hide text not to be translated and unhide it before delivery. I can see the benefits of your proposed solution as a way of having this text appear as context information in Studio. On the other hand, such marking-up needs to be done for each of the target languages, for example, which may prove very time-consuming.

    Maybe it would be more useful to add more options in the File Type Settings to exclude text from translation, e.g. based on highlighting (see Excel settings) or proofing language? Such text would then be excluded from translation automatically when converting to XLIFF (so this doesn't need to be done separately for each of the target languages). And then maybe another setting to show excluded text as context information in Studio (as read-only, non-translatable, greyed-out segments)?

    Best regards,

    Lieven

  • SDL Passolo has such a feature where you edit the source list (before copying/updating text to translation lists) and set text resources not to be translated to "read-only".

  • Yes, you can lock segments, but they are then still included in the "Not translated" word count (unlike other segment statuses). It would also be useful as a translator to know for sure and certain that particular segments are to be completely ignored.

    Granted, it's a minor point, but I find the running word count at the bottom right of the editor incredibly useful for tracking my output and planning my workload. Incidentally, it seems that whenever Trados crashes (happening an awful lot with 2017 at the moment btw) that word count gets permanently corrupted. Actually, I'm not entirely sure where best to send feedback about problems like that - all these forums seem a great idea but they're not the easiest to navigate.