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

Laurent Pierret

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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  • 0 in reply to Laurent Pierret
    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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  • 0 in reply to Jerzy Czopik
    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

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  • 0 in reply to Paul
    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.
  • 0 in reply to Paul
    Hi Paul
    In such case you need a separate style for that. It is not possible to have a style with hidden or not hidden characters as one. But creating same styles with just "Hidden" as attribute should be a piece of cake - you can clone styles in Word. To do so click the text formatted with the style you want to clone and chose "New Style". A new style will be created based on the previous one. Name it and add the hidden attribute. But then you will need to use this style accordingly in your documents, so I do not see a difference to manually apply hidden to parts of the text. When creating files, you need to open them - or do I miss a point here?
    Best regards, Jerzy

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  • 0 in reply to Evzen Polenka

    Unknown said:
    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.

    I would be very surprised indeed if Laurent did not know this, and I really think the problem he has is related to being able to control the behaviour of the styles in Word so that one does not inherit the behaviour of another.  But happy to stand corrected if the resolution is that simple.

    Unknown said:
    But creating same styles with just "Hidden" as attribute should be a piece of cake - you can clone styles in Word. To do so click the text formatted with the style you want to clone and chose "New Style". A new style will be created based on the previous one. Name it and add the hidden attribute.

    That is exactly what I have already suggested... waiting for a response from Laurent.

    Unknown said:
    so I do not see a difference to manually apply hidden to parts of the text. When creating files, you need to open them - or do I miss a point here?

    I think you do Jerzy.  If you are the author of the documents and you are working to a styleguide that supports a better translation workflow then getting the style correctly setup so that Studio automatically deals with translatable/non translatable content is a huge time saver.  If you had 100 word files to handle every time you got a project it would be painful and error prone if you had to open each one up and set the text as hidden.  That method definitely has it's place, but unless I'm completely mistaken I don't believe this is what Laurent needs.  probably best to let him explain it as I doubt we are really disagreeing.

    Regards

    Paul

    Paul Filkin | RWS Group

    ________________________
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  • 0 in reply to Paul
    I think you do Jerzy. If you are the author of the documents and you are working to a styleguide that supports a better translation workflow then getting the style correctly setup so that Studio automatically deals with translatable/non translatable content is a huge time saver.

    I don't doubt that for a second. When creating a new document in Word (or in any other program) I would ALWAYS use styles. This is what I've done when writing my handbook for Studio for example.
    But when you have any number of already created Word files, from which you would like to exclude some pieces of text from translation, I cannot see any other way as to open the files one by one and select non-translatable text, adding necessary changes there. How could that be done WITHOUT opening the text?
    This is of course quite easy to do while creating the document - no doubt, you just apply styles as necessary and are done. But you cannot do that in several Word files without opening them. The only scenario I could think of would be creating a template with alternative styles, base the documents on that one and use the alternative styles in the document. Then you could tell Studio not to translate this or that alternative style as needed. But this would mean, that a static content of the document can be excluded from translation... I still cannot really follow, how to do that for several documents without opening them.
    Best regards, Jerzy

    _________________________________________________________

    When asking for help here, please be as accurate as possible. Please always remember to give the exact version of product used and all possible error messages received. The better you describe your problem, the better help you will get.

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  • 0 in reply to Paul

    Unknown said:
    If you are the author of the documents and you are working to a styleguide that supports a better translation workflow...

    That is the point - vast majority of document authors don't have the faintest idea how localization works, therefore they DO NOT create documents with localization workflow in mind.
    Not mentioning the fact that document authors mostly do not know that the document "consumers" will ever have the need to localize the documents...
  • 0 in reply to Jerzy Czopik

    Unknown said:
    But when you have any number of already created Word files, from which you would like to exclude some pieces of text from translation, I cannot see any other way as to open the files one by one and select non-translatable text, adding necessary changes there. How could that be done WITHOUT opening the text?

    It can't of course... but we are trying to answer the question from Laurent.

    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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  • 0 in reply to Paul
    If someone needs let's say a manual for variants of an equipment, I would either consider using a more decent tool as Word, for example FrameMaker with variables or something xml based like Cosima or Schemat ST4. But if you wanna use Word, build the manual of chapters, represented by single files. That way changing the content would affect only some of dozens/hundreds of files. Dealing with one file one manual in Word is then too complicated.
    This said I must admit, that Word is the last software I would chose for writing a manual. I have "commited" a manual for Studio in Word. The result was OK, but inly only that - a book layouted in Word is in fact crap.

    _________________________________________________________

    When asking for help here, please be as accurate as possible. Please always remember to give the exact version of product used and all possible error messages received. The better you describe your problem, the better help you will get.

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  • 0 in reply to Paul
    Hi everyone,

    Wow, a big thank you to everyone who contributed to the discussion. I picked Jerzy's solution as the preferred solution, even if it is not the most perfect one for me since we are still slightly altering the document by applying hidden text, which you have to make the client aware of. Nevertheless, it does not affect the layout nor the styles and can be applied on various portions of text, independently of the styles used.

    I apologize if my question raised some misunderstanding and would like to thank again everyone for contributing to the discussion. I agree that MS Word is not the best solution for drafting big documents where often small portions are changed and need to be retranslated.

    Regards,

    Laurent