Odd behaviour with uploading translated content to Language Cloud servers

Hi,

I’ve noticed some odd behaviour with Language Cloud as regards uploading of translated content to its servers and would like to request clarifications as to whether it is intended or not. The behaviour may be summed up as follows: when I open a translated SDLXLIFF and add the “SDL Language Cloud” provider, my approved translations are automatically uploaded to LC servers and are showed in the “Translation Results” window as “ATs”.

Out of pure interest, I ran some tests to observe how the provider would behave in different scenarios. The conditions and results of these tests are set out below:

1. Conditions: SDL Language Cloud provider added in Project Settings, “Enabled” and “Lookup” ticked.
Actions: I translated and approved a segment, then reactivated this translated segment.
Result: my translation was automatically uploaded to LC servers and appeared in the “Translation Results” window.

2. Conditions: SDL Language Cloud provider added in Project Settings, however “Enabled” is unticked.
Actions: I translated and approved a segment, then reactivated this translated segment.
Result: my translation was automatically uploaded to LC servers and appeared in the “Translation Results” window.

3. Conditions: SDL Language Cloud provider NOT added in Project Settings.
Actions: I translated and approved a segment, then reactivated this translated segment and added the SDL Language Cloud provider in Project Settings.
Result: my translation was automatically uploaded to LC servers and appeared in the “Translation Results” window.

The above results raise the following questions:

1. In scenario 2, why was my translation uploaded to LC servers despite the fact that the “Enabled” field was unticked?
2. In scenario 3, when exactly was my translation uploaded to LC servers? I didn’t have the LC translation provider enabled when I approved the segment, so I guess the uploading must have taken place right after I added the translation provider to the project and the provider saw that the currently activated segment was approved? Are approved segments automatically uploaded to LC servers without any user input (i.e. without the actual confirmation of the segment)?
3. General question: since most of the time I’m working with confidential documents, I’m rather worried about the fact that in scenario 2 and, especially, scenario 3 my work results are uploaded to an external server without any prompts. Is there any way at all to disable uploading of my translated content when working with LC?

Parents
  • Hi Dmitry,

    I think it would help if you shared a screenshot of what you think is happening at each stage. We do not take translated segments and offer them up as new translations via the language cloud MT provider. How do we know it's any good? I can also tell you there is no mechanism in the software to send corrected translations back in the current implementation of this provider.

    Regards

    Paul

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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  • Hi Paul,

    Thanks for your quick reply!

    Well, clearly there is such mechanism, otherwise how would my approved translations end up on LC’s server? :-)

    Here are three screenshots corresponding to the three scenarios mentioned above. They show the same thing really: that my approved translations are somehow absolutely identical to the translations proposed by LC.

    Scenario 1 (LC provider added in project settings and enabled, segment translated and approved, result of reactivating segment shown): http://i.imgur.com/t6q9IAu.png
    Scenario 2 (LC provider added in project settings but “Enabled” unticked, segment translated and approved, result of reactivating segment shown): http://i.imgur.com/8f64giO.png
    Scenario 3 (LC provider not added in project settings, segment translated and approved, then provider added in project settings, result of adding provider shown): http://i.imgur.com/RWYTUuC.png

  • Hi Dmitry,

    I can see how you might think that, but the mechanism is not what it looks like at all.  What you are seeing is apparently a bug in Studio which will be resolved with the next update this month.  The AT status attributed to the segment when you first get the result from Language Cloud is being incorrectly recorded by Studio.  The subsequent result you are seeing is coming from your TM with the AT status and not from Language Cloud.

    I guess you could test this two ways at least:

    1. Disconnect your TM and see what result is returned from Language Cloud.  Your corrected result or the original suggestion from Language Cloud?
    2. There is a small application called "Fiddler", freely available, and it allows you to monitor the traffic to and from your computer.  You could use that to verify what I'm telling you.

    Regards

    Paul

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

    ________________________
    Design your own training!

    You've done the courses and still need to go a little further, or still not clear? 
    Tell us what you need in our Community Solutions Hub

  • Hi Paul,

    I did some additional testing and can confirm that it is indeed a purely visual bug. If you select an approved segment with the LC provider enabled, the LC provider behaves as if the MT output is substituted by your translation, which obviously led me to believe that my translations are somehow uploaded to an external server. However, if you reopen your document with only the LC provider selected in Project Settings and reselect the segment that had allegedly been uploaded to LC server (for lack of a better description), the LC provider once again proposes its original MT translation option.

    1. In my original tests I did not have any TMs enabled (in all three screenshots you can see that only the LC provider is enabled in the Translation Results window).
    2. From what I could tell, Fiddler also didn’t detect anything out of the ordinary.

    Once again, thank you for your input!

Reply
  • Hi Paul,

    I did some additional testing and can confirm that it is indeed a purely visual bug. If you select an approved segment with the LC provider enabled, the LC provider behaves as if the MT output is substituted by your translation, which obviously led me to believe that my translations are somehow uploaded to an external server. However, if you reopen your document with only the LC provider selected in Project Settings and reselect the segment that had allegedly been uploaded to LC server (for lack of a better description), the LC provider once again proposes its original MT translation option.

    1. In my original tests I did not have any TMs enabled (in all three screenshots you can see that only the LC provider is enabled in the Translation Results window).
    2. From what I could tell, Fiddler also didn’t detect anything out of the ordinary.

    Once again, thank you for your input!

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