Missing source text

For some inexplicable reason, some ST sentences in the Word 2007-2016 file I'm working on are omitted and cannot be translated in Studio 2017 Professional (Vers. 14.0.5821.4). When I generate a target file, the sentences in question are still in the source language.

My hunch is that this has something to do with footnotes. The four sentences that are missing all come after a sentence with a footnote. Two of the sentences also contain a footnote, which, oddly enough, do appear in Studio. The document has some 50 footnotes; there are no issues with the other sentences/footnotes.

I disabled the Word 2007-2016 filter to see if that would solve the problem, but that didn't work. I deleted all of the comments in the document, also to no avail. I also saved the document as a .doc and as an .rtf and attempted to reimport the document, only to be confronted with the following error message: "Attempt to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that another memory is corrupt."

Due to the confidential nature of the project I unfortunately cannot provide you with any example text/passages from the document.

This is an issue that I was confronted with once in the past (I believe when using Studio 2015 Professional), which I solved by resaving/reimporting the file as a .doc.

Based on a few threads in this forum, I am not the only translator to have experienced this issue. Needless to say, this is a serious problem, especially for large projects such as this (400+ pages) and/or when pressed for time! The issue was only discovered after a spellcheck/formatting check was performed as a final step before delivery to the client. Consequently, I am very unnerved that this might be a persistent issue, especially since the client has sent many similarly formatted files. The thought that seemingly random sentences might simply be left in the source language is highly unsettling.

Is there a solution to this problem or has an update been made available? Please advise.

Many thanks in advance,

Gabriele

Parents Reply Children
  • Hi Stefan,

    Re the .docx settings, Microsoft Word 2007-2016, the one I'd try first is 'Extract hidden text for translation', not because I know that would work; it just seems the most likely to me.

    Re the .doc settings, Microsoft Word 2000-2003, I was thinking you might be able to un-exclude the footnotes by removing whichever footnote marker/s in the list apply, if any.

    Also, you don't risk anything in changing the settings because you can try out your changes via the Preview function without committing to your change. If the preview SDLXLIFF isn't what you wish, you can just close the preview and click 'Cancel'.

    I've never needed to use the above, haven't even played with it but wouldn't hesitate if I needed to. One doesn't always have the chance to know exactly what one is doing when trying to fathom out how to make a file work because one can't always know for example what 3rd party content is in a document and the effect it will have. It's a good idea when one is experimenting with settings, to only change one thing or one definable combination of things at a time and see the effect that has, before trying something else.

    Trial and error is also a very good way to learn how things work. Lots of the things I know came from learning by my mistakes ;-))) As I often say, my knowledge is like a lace tablecloth, covers the whole table but is full of holes!

    One thing to always remember... Project settings always overrule the profile settings created via File>Options so if you are using an existing project template to set up new projects with this sort of file, you would have to make the filetype settings changes in that before adding the files for translation.

    In fact you could use the New project wizard specifically for experimenting with the filetype settings which you would access here...

    ...before adding the file/s and when successful you could save the project settings as a template at the last stage of the project wizard. Then you could use that project template every time you needed to cope with a file that has these normally excluded footnotes.

    All the best,

    Ali

  • Thanks so much for your exhaustive explanations, Ali. I will certainly come back to them when I encounter the problem again with another job before it is fixed. At the moment, however, I'm in the middle of a 40,000-word document and I think the least time-consuming option will be to just carry on with "All content" visible.

    Stefan
  • Hi Stefan,

    Understandable ;-) I hope it goes well for you...
    Enjoy the rest of your evening!

    Ali :)