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Bilingual Excel does not write modified source segments to target

Walter Blaser

Dear all

At the end of a large project working with bilingual Excel files, I just made a very unpleasant discovery.

During translation, I had to make changes to some of the source segments (in agreement with the client).

After having finished my project and exported the target files, I realise that these changes are not reflected in the target Excel documents. They still contain the original source text.

I also could not find any option in the filetype to influence this behavior.

Is this a flaw or by design?

Walter
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    Hi Walter,

    Good question! I reckon this is the expected behaviour. Changing the source is something that could come from the client and then resubmitted as an updated source... at least this is the principle Trados and Studio has always worked on. This is why we took a while to allow editing the source too, even though there can be good reasons to do it.

    Have you tested this with other bilingual files to see if the same thing happens with TTX, TMX or ITD for example?

    Regards

    Paul

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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  • 0 in reply to Paul

    Hi Paul

    I know about the discussion around allowing source editing. As you say, the main concern was that translators modify the source without informing the author. This is why Studio requires this function to be explicitly enabled.

    In the present scenario where I work on lists of message strings for a simulator, I would assume that if I explicitly allow source editing, changes to the source column should be reflected in the target Excel. I consider this a bit differently from the translation of a Word file for example, where the target file only contains the text in the target language . In this case, the target file contains again the two columns (source and target), it would therefore be logical that both are updated.

    At least this is my opinion on this.

    I haven't done any test yet with other bilingual formats, being under pressure now because I had to find a workaround to this, but I may do this sometime next week. 

    I suggest that this behavior be discussed and if it is the behavior by design, that it be reconsidered.

    Walter
  • 0 in reply to Walter Blaser
    I guess the workaround might be simple enough... export the sdlxliff to Excel with the batch task export to excel, then copy the source column as text only over your target source.

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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    Design your own training!
    You've done the courses and still need to go a little further, or still not clear? 
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