Struggling with leveraging

Hello passolo users,

 

as it comes out today I made a mistake using the leveraging mechanism one and a half year ago.

 

I had a source file in which one specific text was not translated, the field was marked as "not translated" and the color was red.

In my target file this text was already translated, the field was marked as "verified" and the color was black.

 

After the leverage process in my target file the text from the source file was taken even though this text was not marked as "verified" with the result, that in my target file there was a wrong text (the fallback text) and a wrong state (verified). As we use a cascading project structure this had quite an impact on all languages.

I can't remember what settings I exactly chose in April 2015 in the leverage dialog, but is there a way to ensure only to take verified texts from the source? What are the right settings to ensure that leveraging will not change any texts in the target that are marked as "verified"?

Currently we use Passolo 2011 but after our official release in the next few weeks we will use Passolo 2016. Not the time to change infrastructure in this phase ;-)

 

Thank you very much,

Torben

  • Hello Torben,

    I wouldn't mind seeing sample files in order to test this on my end but right off the bat I would suggest 3 things here:

    1) 'Hide' any strings in the source file that you do not wish to translate. You have to make sure and update the string list of the target files after doing this. By hiding strings in the source file, you will not even see them in the targets so there's no room for error.

    2) Is there a particular reason you are Leveraging vs. Pre-translating? I would say use 'Pre-translate' instead of 'Leverage'. Leveraging will pull based on the string IDs unless you change that setting. Depending on filetype, string IDs might not be unique in which case you will pull incorrect content. Also, leveraging is really only preferred if you need to bring in other parts such as Properties, States, etc.

    3) Make sure and first filter to all 'Untranslated strings' in the target files. Then select all filtered strings and Pre-translate, using the setting to 'Apply to: selected strings'. This will only apply the pre-translate to the filtered strings and will not touch the other strings.

     

    Thanks

    Luke Hipsher

  • There is no option to just take over verified entries from the source project. The Leverage function was designed to perform an ID based transfer of all translations, states and layouts (for multiple modules and multiple languages) when the source project is newer.

    When Leverage is done language by language you can open all translation lists from one language and apply a user defined filter. The Leverage then can be performed on just the filtered and selected string entries.

    Maybe you can solve your problem by filtering the string entries that were changed accidentally and then perform a partial Rollback to the state from April 2015.

    The development team is planning some more flexibility and additional options for the Leverage functions in order to better support project merging when users are localizing different branches of the same software in agile environments. The new functions will also cover the requested enhancement.
  • Hi Luke,

    thank you very much for your answer. I have to deep dive into pre-translation because due to your answer I may used it the wrong way the last years.

    Nevertheless I leveraged the strings already language by language and manually checked the strings. But we are running into the same issue in the next release so I am very thankful about your answer.

    All the best,
    Torben
  • Hi Achim,

    thank you for your answer. Our process is unfortunately not very clever and the release phase took quite a time with the result that both branches got more and more inconsistent which concurrent changes on both of them. Definitely not the best practice...

    I leveraged each language and each string list step by step. Most went fine I guess.

    We will run into the same issue the next few months (then using Passolo 2016 :-)) and I will consider your and Lukes answers.


    All the best,
    Torben