Under Community Review

Refine the alphanumeric matching and suggestions

As I mentioned yesterday in the community forum, Trados Studio is currently VERY poor at analyzing matches between alphanumeric elements. It actually seems to consider ANY combination of letter(s) and number(s) as equivalent to ANY other.

For instance, I had Qs&As to translate, with countless cases of A1., A2., A3., etc., to be translated to R1., R2., R3., etc.

In the applicable translation memory, I already had the following matches, which were the ones required in context (for English to French translation):

• Q1. => Q1.
• A1. => R1.

Nevertheless, here is what Trados suggested me as “matches”:
Screenshot of Trados Studio showing incorrect match suggestions for alphanumeric elements. 'Q1.' is incorrectly matched with 'A1.' at 100%, 'T-2161-15' at 94%, and '(7th) 98' at 70%.

Worse than that, even though the R1., R2., R3... all the way to R14. were already confirmed and in the memory, EVERY TIME I confirmed a Q1., Q2. or else, ALL my confirmed R's reverted back to A's.


• First, I don't understand why “R1.” would not even appear in the match list, while it was ALREADY in the memory AND 100% equivalent.

• Second, “Q1.” should definitely not be shown as a 100% equivalent, as reflected by the fact that the suggested translation “match” is not the right one.

• Third, but not least,  the ONLY logic behind considering “T-2161-15” and “(7th) 98” as matches for “Q1.” or “A1.” seems to be as dumb as “they all are alphanumeric is some way”. Not very promising with regards to possible results... 


As a test, I deleted the confirmed “Q1. => Q1.” segment from the memory, and ONLY THEN did the existing “A1. => R1.” segment appear is the matches. Then I re-added the  “Q1. => Q1.” segment, and the recognition worked properly. But still, the problem should never have occurred in the first place... and Trados should definitely NOT have considered “(7th) 98” as a match for “A1.” considering that its suggested translation ended up as “(A1) 98.” instead of “R1.” 

Louis LaBonté
Parents

  • What happens when you disable alphanumeric recognition at TM level ? I think the alphanumeric matching is great for certain types of technical documents with part numbers etc. but indeed in such cases it is much less useful. So I am just wondering if in such cases you would like to avoid that matching from kicking in at all. Perhaps has a view also on this. Thanks

  • in reply to Daniel Brockmann

    P.S. In addition to what I said last week about that issue, there is one important thing that should be updated in the way alphanumeric recognition and matching percentage work in Trados Studio, and : whenever the proposed translation results from an automatic substitution, it should always come with a penalty (or at least, we should be offered to add a penalty in the options).

    For instance, in the case below, as I mentioned, the correspondences I have in my memory are respectively “A1. => R1.” and “Q1. => Q1.”, so the first one should indeed stay at 100%, while the second one should have a penalty and be marked at 99% or less. As for the last one, I don't think it should be considered as a match at all, not even a fuzzy one. And it should especially NOT be the case for such things as “(7th) 98” (which now does not appear anymore in my results, since I deleted from my TM altogether).

    Screenshot of Trados Studio Ideas showing translation memory matches with 'A1.' at 100%, 'Q1.' at 100%, and 'T-94M-R1.' at 50% with a warning symbol.

    As an illustration, based on that flawed logic, Trados could aguably consider a Mazda3 as a close equivalent to an Audi Q100 or a Porsche 911. As you see, that definitely doesn't reflect reality... 

Comment
  • in reply to Daniel Brockmann

    P.S. In addition to what I said last week about that issue, there is one important thing that should be updated in the way alphanumeric recognition and matching percentage work in Trados Studio, and : whenever the proposed translation results from an automatic substitution, it should always come with a penalty (or at least, we should be offered to add a penalty in the options).

    For instance, in the case below, as I mentioned, the correspondences I have in my memory are respectively “A1. => R1.” and “Q1. => Q1.”, so the first one should indeed stay at 100%, while the second one should have a penalty and be marked at 99% or less. As for the last one, I don't think it should be considered as a match at all, not even a fuzzy one. And it should especially NOT be the case for such things as “(7th) 98” (which now does not appear anymore in my results, since I deleted from my TM altogether).

    Screenshot of Trados Studio Ideas showing translation memory matches with 'A1.' at 100%, 'Q1.' at 100%, and 'T-94M-R1.' at 50% with a warning symbol.

    As an illustration, based on that flawed logic, Trados could aguably consider a Mazda3 as a close equivalent to an Audi Q100 or a Porsche 911. As you see, that definitely doesn't reflect reality... 

Children
  • in reply to Louis LaBonté

    Update: Although I said the the first proposition in the table above “should indeed stay at 100%”, even that is open to debate, since the “1” was switched to “2”. In thw case of Qs&As, that is perfectly fine and even desirable, but I guess in other cases the automatic substitution by increment would not necessarily fit as a 100% match... so maybe the numerical incrementation should also be included as a option that could be switched on of off, depending on context.