Apply a "Do Not Translate" style to a Word document without changing the primary style

Dear community members,

The MS Word file types offer the possibility to define styles which should not be translated. I have added in the list a style called "DoNotTranslate". If this is style is applied to some  text in a document, this portion is indeed not displayed in the Editor and not taken into account for the Word count (at least in SDL WorldServer).

My question is the following. Let's say I have a document with the following structure:

Heading1
Paragraph1
Bulleted list1
Paragraph2
Heading2
Paragraph3
Paragraph4

Where Heading, Paragraph and Bulleted list have their own style applying a specific formatting.
My "DoNotTranslate" style applies the same formatting as the Paragraph style.

Now, I only want to translate:
Heading2
Paragraph3
Paragraph4

So I apply the style "DoNoTranslate" to the following sections:
Heading1
Paragraph1
Bulleted list1
Paragraph2

Which will automatically exclude them from the translation and Word account.

But applying the "DoNotTranslate" style has changed the formatting of my heading and my bulleted list and applied the formatting of the "DoNotTranslate".

My question is now: is it possible to apply a style a portion of a Word document without changing the underlying formatting? How should the style be configured?
Was anyone ever confronted to this situation?

Thanks in advance for your advices and replies.

Regards,

Laurent

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  • I like both examples, Paul. With the first one, I prefer modifying our source documents over making changes to the project settings, but maybe I should rethink that. With the second suggestion, I'm always uneasy with marking text as hidden, because we have to ensure that it becomes unhidden before delivering to client. My go-to process is to change all non-translatable text to DO NOT TRANSLATE style, but it is sometimes cumbersome, like Laurent describes.
    Laurent, have you tried to Modify the Style "Heading 1" by renaming it to "DO NOT TRANSLATE + Heading 1"? I'm not able to test this right now. I've noticed that once I apply "DO NOT TRANSLATE" to my document and then add bold, I get "DO NOT TRANSLATE + bold" and Studio respects this as non-translatable. That said, I'm not sure if Studio just reads the style name and will accept anything that starts with "DO NOT TRANSLATE + ...." as non-translatable or whether it goes by which style it is based on.
  • Dear Paul,

    My apologises for the late reaction. I created this on my last day before my holidays and today is my first day back. I will have a look later today/this week and get back to you. Thanks for investing so much time in helping.

    Regards,
    Laurent
  • Hi  ,

    I hope you are well. I am sorry we had not much a chance to chat at the ETUG.

    I know this post is quite old but I wrote before some holidays last year and had not a chance to look into the problematic since then. So, sorry for the late reaction.

    Thank you for your effort in trying to help me solve the issue but, unfortunately, what you demonstrated in the video is not the solution to.

    I just made a screenshot from your video to illustrate my problem:

    The first frame from your document is the content which should not be translated and the second is the content which should be translated. They both share the same formatting since the styles are the same (Heading1, heading2, bulletList, etc.)

    I am looking into a solution where I could apply a style "DoNotTranslate" on top of the existing one without ruining the formatting applied by the base style.

    Thank your for your support.

    Regards,

    Laurent

  • Hi Laurent,

    Perhaps you can just add the hidden font attribute to the styles you want hidden?

    Regards

    Paul

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

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  • Hi Paul,

    Thank you for your prompt reply, as usual.

    Well, the problem is, as you can see on the screenshot, that if I apply the hidden font to the style, it will affect both content I don't want to translate and content I want to translate since I am using the same styles in both context.

    Regards,

    Laurent
  • Hi Laurent,

    Many apologies... but I am totally confused by this screenshot. It doesn't explain anything to me. Your original post showed completely separate styles for translation and no_translation, and the images you showed are exactly the same except you marked one that is supposed to be not_translated as translated. I'm really struggling with understanding the problem here.

    If it's that you have created styles for no_translation based on a style for translation then surely the answer is to create them as a distinct style in Word?

    Sorry Laurent... perhaps if you attached a small example of the problem it would help.

    Thanks

    Paul

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

    ________________________
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  • Hi Paul,

    My apologies for the confusion and thank you for keeping helping me!

    The problematic is quite difficult to explain. In my first post, I described the structure of the document but maybe I was not explicit enough about the fact that the that each level (e.g. heading1 and heading2) shares the same style.

    You are right: I should have added an example from the very beginning, it would have been less confusing.

    Here is a document with the part I want to translate marked with a comment:

    Styles.docx

    I hope that it will give you a better understanding of the problem.

    It might me that the only solution to the problem is to create styles identical those existing in the document but which would solely be used for excluding text from translation.

    Thank you again for your support.

    Regards,

    Laurent

  • You don't need styles to apply hidden attribute. Just select the part of text which should not be translated, then press CTRL+SHIFT+H. This will apply the hidden attribute to this text. When done, use search & replace to replace all hidden by not hidden characters.
    In any case you will need to work manually - either if you apply special styles or when you apply hidden individually. From what I've seen in your screenshots there is no difference in terms of something what could be searchable between the text to translate or not to translate, so automating is obviously impossible.

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  • Hi Jerzy,

    That's not really the point here. The purpose is to be able to hide text in any file created on the basis if a style, and then you don't have to open them select the text and use the hidden attribute. If you use styles and if you create the files on the basis of the styles then no additional work is required even if you have hundreds of them. I think the problem Laurent is having relates to using styles that are based on another rather than creating them uniquely.

    But it would be good to see an example so we have a better idea of the problem we are trying to solve.

    Regards

    Paul

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

    ________________________
    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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  • I believe Jerzy got the point actually.
    Laurent's problem seems to be that he believes that you can prevent text from being extracted ONLY USING STYLES... and doesn't realize that applying HIDDEN attribute is another way.
    Actually, I have never used the styles-based way in MANY MANY years, since client's texts simply NEVER allowed to use such 'generic' way... the only applicable way was to manually select non-localizable parts of text and set the hidden font attribute.

    The days when clients created their files with respect to localization (i.e. when clients had understanding of what localization is and how it works) are over.