Okay I miswrote font "adaptation" when I meant to write "mapping". I'm trying to figure out how those two are different, to be honest. Nothing I do with mapping seems to make any difference. I'm generally curious about what some "before" and "after" images look like.
As for adaptation, I've tried that one many times before too because it was the most obvious and straightforward looking. But I've never been able to get it to work either.
For one, the settings never stick. They always go back to "Afar" and "default". So here are my changed settings before starting a project:

Then I start a new project, run a batch task, get this:

Unchanged, and definitely not Arial. When I go to file to see what happened to the settings, they're back to default.

Thoughts?

Evzen,

Unknown said:

The settings say that if document specific formatting is used, it will override the font you are trying to set... i.e. I suppose it's exactly this case, because you explicitly formatted the source text as MS Gothic.

But this will always be the case then. The font set for adaptation of the target will always be overwritten by the source font? What's the point of this setting then? In what scenario does the font adaption setting actually stick? As for "explicitly formatting the source to MS Gothic"... it was just the default setting which Microsoft sets as its default display font for Japanese. Excel has one default font (not like PPT that has a font theme setting for two languages). So essentially it's impossible to display a target in a different font in Trados or produce an English file through Trados with Arial font (or anything else) as long as the default language of the source file is MS Gothic (which it always is)?

Under what scenario do font mapping and font adaptation actually work? I've taken the Studio training up to Advanced and still no clear examples of successful application of these settings. 

Thank you.

Unknown said:

The font set for adaptation of the target will always be overwritten by the source font? What's the point of this setting then?

If the source format can and DOES specify the font explicitly, then this font will be used in Editor. This is not only very logical behavior, but also "forced by technical nature of the files parsing and processing", so to say.

Formats NOT specifying font (e.g. by their nature, like plain text or XML) will make use of this setting.

Unknown said:

In what scenario does the font adaption setting actually stick?

I still believe that the setting actually DOES stick, i.e. that it is remembered by Studio (that is the usual meaning of the term "stick" in this context). But due to the technical nature of the source format it just cannot be applied (because it's overriden by the Excel's font setting).

Unknown said:

So essentially it's impossible to display a target in a different font in Trados or produce an English file through Trados with Arial font (or anything else) as long as the default language of the source file is MS Gothic (which it always is)?

Setting the Font mapping in the appropriate File Type settings should ensure that the selected font(s) will be used in the generated target file (but NOT in the Studio editor during translation!).

Hi Keenan Cooper

It isn't the clearest explanation really, but this:

Seems to mean that sometimes, for some languages, the display font will be overridden by the font of the underlying document.  So if your document was a plain text file for example then you'd see it works as expected.  With the excel file the font is overridden unless you turn off wysiwyg mode and then you see what you're looking for (I set it to Comic Sans):

The font mapping works without a problem and will generate the target file in the font you set.

Evzen,

Thank you for you identifying the proper way to use font mapping using a screenshot, and clearly stating its purpose. I was for the first time able to produce target excel and powerpoint files in the font of my choosing without problems. I've been trying to get this basic function to working properly for a while with no success. Thank you.

Partially what throws me off even now is the preview function at the bottom of the font mapping screen. Since font mapping is for selecting the font of the target in the target file, then how can that be previewed? I would think that it would preview by loading a source file, doing a quick pseudo translation into the target language, change the font to what was selected, then show what it would look like it in, in this case, Excel. But when I select a file, the preview shows two columns like within Editor view, simplify showing side-by-side copies of text without changing any fonts. If it's the file is Japanese in MS Gothic, then it's two columns of that. Same for English files or xliff files. No change. Not a deal breaker, but is the preview function working properly? Or kindly explain how am I missing it.
Thank you.

Paul

Ok. Progress.

"Seems to mean that sometimes, for some languages, the display font will be overridden by the font of the underlying document."

So it depends on the language and not the document type? I'd be completely fine if the description said: "font adaptation is not available for Japanese to English". Or if it was document-specific: "font adaptation is not available for Excel unless wysiwgym mode is disabled" or the like. Are any of these conclusions accurate?

"With the excel file the font is overridden unless you turn off wysiwyg mode and then you see what you're looking for (I set it to Comic Sans):"

Whoa, you got it work. But I've googled this for about the last 5 minutes and I cannot find any way to "turn off wysiwyg mode" in either Excel or Trados. Is this code related? 
Do font adaptions work for any other language pairs work in excel without that wysiwgy setting? German to English perhaps? 

Thank you. 

Unknown said:

So it depends on the language and not the document type? I'd be completely fine if the description said: "font adaptation is not available for Japanese to English". Or if it was document-specific: "font adaptation is not available for Excel unless wysiwgym mode is disabled" or the like. Are any of these conclusions accurate?

It means that when there is an underlying font in the file, sometimes it will not work.  I have not done enough testing to be able to say more than that.  But I have had successful results in the past, when using wysiwyg mode and clearly with your files we do not.

Unknown said:

Whoa, you got it work. But I've googled this for about the last 5 minutes and I cannot find any way to "turn off wysiwyg mode" in either Excel or Trados. Is this code related? 

Nope, it's simply a display thing.  Go to File -> Options -> Editor and change the display to show all tags but no formatting.  Formatting would be wysiwyg.  Frankly I think all translations should be done in this mode anyway.  The no tags options are good for review since the tags don't spoil the flow of the text, but for translation it makes more sense to work with them on... in my opinion.

Unknown said:

Partially what throws me off even now is the preview function at the bottom of the font mapping screen. Since font mapping is for selecting the font of the target in the target file, then how can that be previewed?

This is not related to the font mapping part of the settings, but to the File Type in general. It allows you to preview how the parsed bilingual file will look like when the source file is parsed using the current settings.

It was introduced in Studio 2017 to simplify setting and tuning the file type options.
In earlier versions, when you configure and/or finetune file type settings, you have to go through tedious process of making the change(s), then inserting source file, letting Studio parse it and 'copy to target languages' and only then you can open the bilingual file in Editor to see the result... mostly to only find out that it's still not what you wanted, so you have to delete the source file, change the settings and go through all that hassle again and again and again, until the setting is satisfactory.
With the preview one can see the changes using a single click...
(Still, I believe that the preview does not respect the segmentation settings in a particular TM... it probably uses some default language rules)

Yes! It was the "formatting display style" rule that was the culprit. As you said, changing it to "show all tags but do not show formatting" did the trick. In all the texts I've read, (and I just read the help files from each window) I've never read that this setting would affect font adaptation. That vital information felt somewhat hidden. Time to share the good news with my coworkers.
Also, may be worth adding to a description somewhere that after setting a font, it won't take effect until the project is reopened. It was quick to figure out, but still left me scratching my head for a second when this happened:

Yes! It was the "formatting display style" rule that was the culprit. As you said, changing it to "show all tags but do not show formatting" did the trick. In all the texts I've read, (and I just read the help files from each window) I've never read that this setting would affect font adaptation. That vital information felt somewhat hidden. Time to share the good news with my coworkers.
Also, may be worth adding to a description somewhere that after setting a font, it won't take effect until the project is reopened. It was quick to figure out, but still left me scratching my head for a second when this happened: