TM keeps track of every change

Question

Hi there 
 I am working on a translation and facing what I feel is an issue (but it might be very useful to the client, so... ?). 
 Every time I decide to change a segment I already confirmed, the 2 translations show in the TM (the first and the corrected one). If I change it yet another time, I end up with another translation in the TM... and so on. 
 How can I change that and have the TM replace the older translation with the newer one? 
 I'd love to find some answer here :)

Daniel Hug · Answer

Ingrid Fischer 
 When you confirm a segment that is already in the TM, the last confirmed translation be in the TM. It will overwrite previous translations. The only exception to this is when you tell Studio to add an additional transation, which can be very useful, but you have to tell it explicitly each time: 
 
 I don't think you can change this default behaviour. There is a function called LookAhead which is meant to speed up work with large TMs, and LookAhead can sometimes lead to puzzling issues. Check whether it is activated in Files -> Options and de-activate it if it is. 
 
 Daniel

Alison Field · Answer

Ingrid Fischer 
 Hi Ingrid, 
 This is a bug that, since the first version of Studio came out, recurs for me and the wonderful agency I do most of my freelancing for. It has proved impossible to prevent. It is not consistently present. It will disappear for a while then return with a new update or version. It does not happen unilaterally for all Studio users and therefore cannot be identified and resolved. It only happens for a few of us. 
 Years ago when I was employed by that agency and therefore worked on site, part of my job was to ensure the smooth running and troubleshoot Trados for the rest of the team. I found this was happening on everyone's machine and reported it. Fasil Aziz looked at my setup remotely to identify that it really was happening, which he found it was. He also found that there was no identifiable cause that was specific to our setup rather than to the program itself, and that there was no way to prevent it happening. He therefore referred it to Development, who came back after looking into it and said that it was due to conflicting hexadecimal values, i.e. a background property of the segment that should have been the same as that of the translation unit was different, which means that the identical source translation unit wasn't 'identical'. 
 I also experienced 'identical duplicates', where the source AND the target were identical to those of the existing TM translation unit, yet a new TU was created on confirming. 
 The advice given at that time was to delete the old TU then use Ctrl+T to translate the new TU back to the segment, then confirm the segment again. This did then not create a duplicate. This is time-consuming and slows down the workflow, though I have become very fast at doing it. I work mostly as a proofreader now so correct more segments than the average translator would. 
 As most of our translators understandably did not want to slow themselves down by performing the above 'solution', I found that if I exported a TM to .tmx then imported it into a new TM (based on the old TM to retain the many customised settings), all the older duplicates would be overwritten. This we did periodically to prevent our TMs becoming too huge. Not perfect because where a newer TU is wrong it will overwrite the older, correct, TU. Also when one has actually created a new TU on purpose via 'Add as new translation', it will be overwritten so that only one version of that TU remains. 
 If anyone could have solved this issue it would have been me because I worked very hard trying to find a solution and there is none. This doesn't stop me trying again if I have time. I have found no common denominator when comparing my setup to that of others. I have ideas on what is triggering it but if I'm right, there is definitely no solution. Long story. 
 Anyway, what I do when this happens, if I need to do anything, is just right-click the old TU in the Translation Results window and hit Ctrl+Delete. As the TMs belong to the client and I don't return the TM with the job, this doesn't affect them so is unnecessary from their perspective. The reimporting of the SDLXLIFF into their version of the TM will (if I remember correctly) overwrite any uncorrected TUs, fortunately. 
 So, worry not, you're not alone or imagining it. It is some sort of bug/glitch/feature but there's no way to prevent it happening to those rare individuals who experience it. 
 All the best, 
 Ali

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TM keeps track of every change

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