Auto-propagation not working with non-auto-generated sdlxliff

I have a peculiar issue regarding auto-propagation and hope to find some answers.
 
I'm using Studio 2021 (version 16.2.9.9198, I'm aware an update is needed), as well as Trados Live.
 
For two projects, I had to manually place or switch the target language (FR) sdlxliff file in the local project folder:
 
  • The first project was because the initial project seemingly got corrupted (at least that's what I gathered) and I didn't want to lose my unconfirmed progress, so I recreated the project and manually replaced the FR sdlxliff in the local project folder;
  • The second project was because Studio didn't seem to be able to automatically generate the FR sdlxliff (it "downloaded" the project, then displayed it was ready, but upon opening the editor, an error message would pop up saying the file didn't exist, and it was indeed not in the project folder), so I had to download it from Trados Live and then manually place it in the local project folder to be able to start translating.
 
In both cases, I then noticed that although auto-propagation is enabled, it just isn't working when I confirm a segment. I've done basic troubleshooting (rebooting Studio and computer, disabling and re-enabling the auto-propagation function), but nothing has worked so far.
 
Would anyone know why that is? And how to fix this?
 
Thank you for your help.
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  • Hi ,

    I don’t know what you mean with your replacements issue, but re. the Auto-propagation issue, could you please post a screen-shot with your Auto-propagation settings?

    Also just out of curiosity: Any reason to not update Trados Studio and miss several updates? Why don’t you update Trados Studio and then check if you can still repro your issue?

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  • Hello Jesús,

    To be completely transparent with you, it has not really been a personal choice to not update Trados. Rather, it's because in order to do that, a request to the IT team must be made since I don't have the permissions to do it myself, which is the responsibility of my team leader, and we've been pretty busy over the last few months, so this wasn't a priority. I'm going to push for this, but it probably won't be done until next week unfortunately. I'll let you know if the problem is still there whenever we update.

    In the meantime, I've attached a screen capture of my settings. Apologies, they are in French. I haven't changed anything in there between projects.

    Screenshot of Trados Studio settings in French, showing options for automatic propagation with checkboxes for minimum analysis value, perfect match propagation, and exact match confirmation.

    Thank you for your help and have a great day =).

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    [edited by: Trados AI at 10:25 AM (GMT 0) on 29 Feb 2024]
  •  

    Thanks for the screen-shot. Auto-propagation should work…

    After confirming a segment, do you get a prompt to confirm if you wish to auto-propagate?

    Is this an old issue?

    I’m thinking you may have some formatting differences that you are not showing up in the Editor and you think segments are the same, when they are not. To test this you can create a simple Word document with 2 lines, the 2nd one being the same as the 1st line. Save the document and open it in Trados Studio, no need to attach a TM, confirm the 1st segment and check if it’s auto-propagated to the 2nd one. Does it work?

    I guess you know that working with non-updated versions of Trados Studio may lead to work with bugs that have been fixed in the latest build.

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  • Hello again Jesús,

    I do not get a prompt to confirm if I wish to auto-propagate, which is what made me aware there was a problem in the first place.

    This isn't an old issue and only popped up with these two recent projects. Then again, I'd never had to manually change the target language sdlxliff in the local project folder before, so maybe I'm just discovering this issue now.

    As you'll see in the two screenshots below, there is no formatting differences between the top segment and the other ones below, but they did not auto-propagate at all. This file comes from a PPT with a lot of repetitions and reuse of the same slides.

    Screenshot of Trados Studio showing segments 50 to 53 with source text 'Our-Clients' and target text 'Notre-client le' and 'Client(e)s'. All segments have a green checkmark except the top one with a 95% match.Screenshot of Trados Studio showing segments 1129 to 1133 with source text 'TBA' and target text ' -venir'. All segments are unchecked and have a blue pencil icon indicating they need to be edited.

    I understand that having an up to date software is the best and, has I mentioned, this is not a personal choice. As soon as I update, I'll see if that changes anything, but I'm still investigating in case it doesn't.

    Thank you.

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    [edited by: Trados AI at 10:25 AM (GMT 0) on 29 Feb 2024]
  •  

    All right, it‘s a bug in that old version of Trados Studio you are using…

    or there are actually some formatting differences. I mean, if you are using the below settings you won’t be able to see ALL the formatting differences:

    Trados Studio options menu with 'Editor' settings expanded showing 'Formatting display style' set to 'Show formatting but hide recognized formatting tags'.

    These formatting differences would cause the Auto-propagation to stop working, because your Minimum match value is 100%. That’s why I recommended to created an simple ad-hoc document.

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    [edited by: Trados AI at 10:25 AM (GMT 0) on 29 Feb 2024]
  • Hello Jesús,

    I just went to check for that parameter and it's actually on "Show all formatting and tags".

    Trados Studio options menu with 'Show all formatting and tags' selected in the display formatting style dropdown, highlighted with a red rectangle.

    II'll keep my fingers crossed then that the updates will fix this problem.

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    [edited by: Trados AI at 10:26 AM (GMT 0) on 29 Feb 2024]
  • ,

    ok, so from my point of view there is only option left: the bug.

    Please let us know the result of updating your copy of Trados Studio.

    Have a nice weekend!

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  • Hello Jesús,

    So I talked with my team leader about this while inquiring about the Trados update (I thought I had reported the issue to them, but maybe one of us forgot), and she told me she had had to modify the TM penalties for a big project she had been working on, adding a 5% penalty to some translations so it would stop inputting the oldest translation. I found the parameter and put it back to zero and tadah! Auto-propagation now works again. I hadn't noticed that inconsistency, or rather I thought it was part of the bug I was having.

    So in the end, this wasn't an auto-propagation problem at all but a TM penalty issue. I've now shown my team leader how to modify an individual project instead of a whole File type configuration to avoid this kind of problem in the future. 

    Thank you for all your help (don't worry though, we'll still update Trados).

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  • Hi ,

    Happy the issue was solved.

    Anyway I think there is a misunderstanding here. Let me explain why:

    Auto-propagation kicks in even if there is the no TM, so the penalty doesn’t matter. I’ve tried the following use cases and Auto-propagation works always:

    1. A simple document without a TM attached.
    2. Same document with a TM (no penalty).
    3. Same document, and a TM attached (penalty of 20).

    Screenshot of Trados Studio interface showing a document titled 'lorem.docx.sdlxliff Translation' with six repeated segments of 'Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet'. No errors or warnings visible.

    Thinking of what can be going on, you may mean Pre-Translate. This feature uses indeed the penalty setting.

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    [edited by: Trados AI at 10:26 AM (GMT 0) on 29 Feb 2024]