Under Community Review

Retain source comments untranslated in target generated files

Hi everyone!

We have come to a project where the comments from the source Word file didn't need to be translated but kept in the target file and we learned that this cannot be done anymore (it seems it was a feature back in Studio 2017). We discovered a workaround to mark comments for translation and then lock the segments for them to remain unchanged when generating the target file but it may be really time consuming in projects with many comments or with large scope (you need to check the segments in the editor looking for the tag "COM" in the column on the right.

María Santamariña Ruiz de León
  • in reply to Diana Palenzuela

    I just confirmed Paul's workflow, in Studio 2022 and 2024

    1) When creating the project, apply the option 'Extract comments for translation' (Project settings > File Types > Microsoft Word 2007-2019 > Common

    Screenshot of Trados Studio option with 'Extract comments for translation' checked and 'Retain Studio target comments in target file' unchecked.

    2) In the Advanced Display Filter 2.0, in the 'Document Structure' tab, choose COM/Comment/A comment and apply filter

    Screenshot of Advanced Display Filter 2.0 in Trados Studio showing document structure elements with 'Paragraph' and 'Comment' selected.

    3) Only the segments with comments will show. You can then copy all source to target, lock, etc.

  • in reply to Paul

    Hi Philippe and Paul, thank you for your replies.

    Philippe, it is not as simple as that - the RegLab process is complex and sometimes the client, client reviewer or member state reviewer leave comments, they are not exactly 'internal'. Sometimes clients ask for some comments to be translated and not others (based on which other layers of review the document goes through) and it is not intuitive to know which comments to translate.

        please see if the workaround suggested by Paul would work in your team.

  •  

    I can update based on the way to handle this because the filetypes behave the same way as far as I can see.  Certainly the workaround may be easier than the suggested approach.  Source comments have a COM Code in the Document Structure Information.  So if you open the file for translation with the comments included, then select all the segments with source comments by typing COM into the Advanced Display Filter and filter on them you'll now have only the comments showing in the Editor.  Now you can either reverse the filter and you won't see them, or you could lock them, clear the filter and then decide whether to hide locked segments or just leave them so you can read them while translating.  Either way it's only a couple of clicks.

     

    It sure is :-)

  • Isn't it up to the translator to have enough judgement to avoid translating internal comments?

  • Hi! Can I please have an update on this?