Trados Studio Level 1 Workbook
Trados Studio Level 1 Workbook
July 2022
Legal notice
Copyright and trademark information relating to this product release.
Copyright © 2000–2022 SDL as part of the RWS Holdings Plc group of companies ("RWS
Group").
SDL means SDL Limited and its subsidiaries and affiliates. All intellectual property rights
contained herein are the sole and exclusive rights of SDL. All references to SDL shall mean
SDL Limited and its subsidiaries and affiliates details of which can be obtained upon written
request.
All rights reserved. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, all intellectual property rights including
those in copyright in the content of this website and documentation are owned by or
controlled for these purposes by SDL. Except as otherwise expressly permitted hereunder or
in accordance with copyright legislation, the content of this site, and/or the documentation
may not be copied, reproduced, republished, downloaded, posted, broadcast or transmitted
in any way without the express written permission of SDL.
Trados Studio is a registered trademark of SDL. All other trademarks are the property of
their respective owners. The names of other companies and products mentioned herein may
be the trademarks of their respective owners. Unless stated to the contrary, no association
with any other company or product is intended or should be inferred.
This product may include open source or similar third-party software, details of which can
be found by clicking the following link: “Acknowledgments” on page 0 .
Although RWS Group takes all reasonable measures to provide accurate and comprehensive
information about the product, this information is provided as-is and all warranties,
conditions or other terms concerning the documentation whether express or implied by
statute, common law or otherwise (including those relating to satisfactory quality and fitness
for purposes) are excluded to the extent permitted by law.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, RWS Group shall not be liable in contract, tort
(including negligence or breach of statutory duty) or otherwise for any loss, injury, claim
liability or damage of any kind or arising out of, or in connection with, the use or performance
of the Software Documentation even if such losses and/or damages were foreseen,
foreseeable or known, for: (a) loss of, damage to or corruption of data, (b) economic loss, (c)
loss of actual or anticipated profits, (d) loss of business revenue, (e) loss of anticipated
savings, (f) loss of business, (g) loss of opportunity, (h) loss of goodwill, or (i) any indirect,
special, incidental or consequential loss or damage howsoever caused.
All Third Party Software is licensed "as is." Licensor makes no warranties, express, implied,
statutory or otherwise with respect to the Third Party Software, and expressly disclaims all
implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose.
In no event will Licensor be liable for any damages, including loss of data, lost profits,
cost of cover or other special, incidental, consequential, direct, actual, general or
indirect damages arising from the use of the Third Party Software or accompanying
materials, however caused and on any theory of liability. This limitation will apply even
if Licensor has been advised of the possibility of such damage. The parties acknowledge
that this is a reasonable allocation of risk.
Information in this documentation, including any URL and other Internet website references,
is subject to change without notice. Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of
Exact repetitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Handling tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Logging in . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
This training course takes you step-by-step through hands-on exercises that show you how
to use Trados Studio ('Studio' for short) in your daily translation work.
The course is for beginners, and this workbook is designed for translators who have no or
little experience with Trados Studio.
You will learn (among other things) how to translate single files, how to set up translation
projects to translate several files as part of the same job, and more generally how to make the
most of Trados Studio's key translation features.
The course comes with a set of sample files, which you can download from the Education
area of your customer account as shown below. To access your account, please point your
Web browser to https://oos.sdl.com , and login with your email address and your password.
Please make sure that you extract the sample files to a location where you can find them
easily during the exercises. Note that you will not be able to open the files in Trados Studio
unless you unzip them first. The sample file set will look like this after unzipping:
As you can see, this training covers the most common types of file, in MS Office and PDF
formats. Trados Studio supports a range of other file formats such as Adobe InDesign,
FrameMaker, XML, HTML, and JSON. Once you have opened a file for translation in Trados
Studio, however, the way in which you process and translate the file is always the same,
regardless of the file format that you are working on. In this beginners' course, we focus on
the most commonly encountered formats of MS Office and PDF.
Tip: You can skip this chapter if you are already familiar with the general concepts of things
such as translation memories.
CAT stands for Computer Assisted Translation. CAT technologies such as translation memories
allow human translators to translate documents faster and with greater quality and
consistency. It is important to note that translation memory tools like Trados Studio are
there to help and support you, the human translator, as you do the translation, and not to
do the translation for you, as machine translation tools like Google Translate try to do.
Exact matches can usually be accepted by the translator as they are, while fuzzy matches
usually have to be modified to fit the current context. In the case of a fuzzy match, the
software will indicate the bits of the source sentence that the translator needs to change in
the translation to make it reflect the source accurately.
Example:
Assume that some time ago you translated the following English sentence, which we will
call sentence#1:
Imagine that this sentence and its translation are stored in the TM. Let us assume that
sometime later you have to translate the following sentence, which we will call sentence#2:
When you reach this point in the translation, the TM will suggest the translation of sentence
#1 as a fuzzy match. You just have to replace the translation for the word red with the
translation for the word green.
A source/target segment pair that is stored in a TM is called a translation unit (TU for short).
The more you translate, the more TUs are stored in your TM, which makes the TM more
likely to provide exact and fuzzy matches for future translation jobs.
Note that we sometimes have to translate things that are not grammatically speaking full
sentences, like this one:
The above is not technically a full sentence, but if it occurs in a document as, for example, a
heading, it will occupy its own segment in Trados Studio.
The determination of where segments start and end is made based on the punctuation and
paragraph marks separating them. By default, the punctuation marks that determine the
end of a segment are:
• full stops
• question/exclamation marks
• colons (if followed by an upper-case letter)
• line breaks
Note: A TM can be configured to use different segmentation rules. However, this is beyond
the scope of this beginners' course.
It is possible to translate in Trados Studio without using a TM. However, it is not normally
advisable to do this, as it will deny you the main advantages of working with a TM, which are
that:
• You do not need to translate the same sentence twice, meaning that you avoid repetitive
work and thereby save time and effort.
• A TM remembers what you have already translated and reminds you of it without
prompting, saving you the cognitive and practical effort of recalling and searching for
previous translations.
• A TM is a great research tool. Rather than going through hundreds of previously
translated documents to find out how a certain phrase has been translated, you can
easily look up previous translations with a single click.
Trados Studio is available in several editions: Starter, Freelance and Professional. The
FreelanceEdition is (as the name suggests) designed for freelance users who need to
translate files for their customers (agencies, industry clients, and so on). The Starter Edition
is similar to the Freelance Edition but reduced in scope and functionality. It is primarily
geared towards users who do not translate on a regular basis and handle only small
translation volumes
The Professional Edition has the same features as the Freelance Edition, as well as a number
of additional features that are designed for users such as project managers in translation
agencies who need to:
https://www.trados.com/products/trados-studio/editions-comparison.html
This section will show you how to set up Trados Studio ready for translation.
It assumes that you have installed Trados Studio on your PC and obtained a license (Freelance
or Professional). When you start Trados Studio for the first time, you have to provide a little
information about yourself and activate the license. Once you have installed Trados Studio
on your computer, the following application icon will appear on your Desktop.
Procedure
1. Double-click the icon to start Trados Studio.
You are then taken through a few setup screens.
2. When you see the page titled Let's set up Trados Studio, click Next.
3. On the following page, you will need to enter your email address. Your user name should
already appear in the Name field. The TM User ID, which has also been pre-entered
into the corresponding field, is the ID that will be stored in the TM whenever you translate
a segment. This means that every sentence that you translate will be associated with
this TM user ID. If you enter, for example, John Smith in this field, all of the segments that
you translate will have a label such as 'Translated by: John Smith' in the TM. Enter your
email address and TM user ID, and click Next.
4. Next you are asked to select your user profile. Keep the Default profile selected and
click Next.
5. Lastly, you can choose to load a set of sample files. These files are not required for this
training course, which comes with its own set of sample files. You can if you wish
therefore uncheck the box Load samples at initial start-up and click Finish to complete
the setup of Trados Studio.
You will now be prompted to activate Trados Studio by entering a license key.
Assuming that you have already obtained a license key through your customer account,
click the Activate button.
If you do not have a license yet, you can also click Purchase License, which will take you to
the online store at https://www.trados.com/landing/inbound/store/studio-trial.html
You can also opt to click Continue Trial to make use of a 30-day trial period. During the 30
days you can use all of the features of Trados Studio, including those that belong to the
Professional Edition. However, Trados Studio will stop working when the trial period expires,
unless you activate a license. If you do any productive work during the trial period (such as
translating files or creating TMs), you can continue using your data once you have activated
the product. The trial period is also long enough for you to complete this training course,
as you will have access to all of the features that it requires.
In the following screen, enter your activation code. You can copy and paste the code from
your RWS account. Then click Activate.
Note: There are some other activation options, which you can access by clicking Alternative
activation options. This will open the following screen:
We will not discuss all of the activation options and scenarios here. As advised above, even
the 30-day trial period is enough for you to do this training course. If you are facing issues
when activating your license online or offline, please find some additional information at
the following website:
https://www.trados.com/support/installation-licensing.html
Note: You only need to go through the above setup steps when starting Trados Studio for
the first time. Once you have completed the setup and licensed the product, Trados Studio
will always launch directly into the user interface, shown in the following screenshot:
When you start Trados Studio for the first time, you will also see the following screen, which
links you to an online Get Started video. If you prefer not to watch it and go straight into
the training, click the small x button in the upper right corner of the window to close the
screen and skip the video.
We will now give you a brief, general introduction to the application's user interface:
On the left-hand side of the application window you will find the navigation pane. From
there you can switch between the different views of Trados Studio, such as the current
Welcome view (which is the current view shown in the preceding screenshot), and Projects
view. The views represent the different areas of functionality in Trados Studio, as we explain
below.
The horizontal area across the top of the Trados Studio window, which contains the colourful
icons, is called the ribbon. The following screenshot shows the ribbon in the Welcome view.
From the ribbon you can access the commands and functions of the application. The ribbon
buttons change according to the view that you have selected, reflecting the tasks that you
will perform in that view. For example, in the Projects view you will find functions that allow
you to manage your projects. The Editor view (which we will be learning about later in this
course) contains translation-related functionality.
Note: Each ribbon is further subdivided into a number of tabs such as Home and View.
During this training course, you will learn what kinds of functionality each of the tabs
contains. The most common functions within each view are generally located on the Home
tab.
Note: We are currently in the Welcome view, which features an essential element of the
user interface, the browse link within the dotted rectangle, highlighted in the following
screenshot:
Through this link you can select one or more files for translation, which is what we will be
doing in the next chapter.
For this exercise, we will translate the Word file Sample_Word. docx. You will find this file in
the sample file set that you have downloaded and unzipped to a folder of your choice.
When you open the file in Word itself, it looks like this:
You will use Trados Studio to translate the file from English into your preferred target
language. The content of the sample file has deliberately been made simple so that you can
focus on the functionality of Trados Studio and not be distracted by the challenges of
translating the text.
Procedure
1. If you have the above file open in MS Word, please close it. Trados Studio cannot process
files that are currently open in another application. If you try to open the file in Trados
Studio when it is still open in MS Word, Trados Studio will show you an error message
saying that it cannot open the file.
2. Ensure that, in the navigation pane at the bottom left of the Trados Studio interface, the
Welcome screen is selected.
On the Welcome screen, click the browse link highlighted in the following screenshot:
Opening a single file for translation is used when you want to work on only one file. Creating
a project, on the other hand, makes it possible to translate more than one file as part of
the same batch or group of material. If that is what you need to do, it is easier to put these
multiple files together in one project, so that you can perform tasks (such as opening them
for translation) on them all together instead of one by one.
When you create a project, a project creation wizard takes you through the project setup
process step by step.
Projects have another advantage, which is to act as a receptacle for any settings that you
configure during the translation process and want to retain for other work that you might do
subsequently. For this reason, you can also create a project to translate a single file if you
wish. In this training we will show how both approaches work. It is then up to you to decide
which suits you best.
First, let us see how the translation of a single file works using the Translate as single
document command.
After selecting the file, you will see the Translation Memory and Document Settings
window shown in the following screenshot. Take the following steps:
Procedure
1. First, select your source and target language pair. By default, Trados Studio selects
English US as the source language and German as the target language. Note that the
language pair selected by default can be changed to suit your preference. We will show
you how to do this later in the course.
As the sample file is in English, you can leave English US as the source language. Select
the target language that you want to translate into from the Target language dropdown
list.
2. We will now create an empty translation memory (TM) to store our translation as we
work. Click the Create Translation Memory button. As discussed earlier, you can open
and translate the document without creating or selecting a TM. However, we do not
recommend this approach, as you will then be unable to benefit from exact and fuzzy
matches while you translate.
3. Enter a name for your TM in the Name field. We recommend that you give the TM a
descriptive file name, ideally one that reflects the language pair and possibly the subject
matter, such as Training TM English-German. This will help you to identify the TM among
others that you create later on.
4. Look at the Location field to check where the TM file will be stored. By default, it is a
path like C:\Users\<UserName>\Documents\Studio 2022\Translation Memories. You may
wish to change the path by clicking Browse and selecting a different folder of your own
choosing to help you find the TM more easily if you want to reuse it in the future. For
the purpose of this tutorial, however, we will keep the default path selected and click
Finish.
5. When the TM has been created (which takes a few seconds), click Close.
The TM now appears in the Translation Memory and Document Settings window.
Note: The TM you have just created is of course empty. It will be 'updated' (populated
with the source text segments and your translations of them) when you do your
translation work. Note that it is also possible to use more than one TM while you
translate. For our purposes, however, we will be using only this one TM to keep the
exercise as simple as possible.
The Editor view is the area of the application where you will spend most of your time as a
translator. The document looks as shown in the following screenshot:
Any document that you open for translation in Trados Studio will appear in this side-by-side
view. The source segments are displayed in the column on the left-hand side. The empty
column on the right is where you will type your translations into the target segments.
Note: You will not be editing the original document (in this case the MS Word file) while you
translate. You will be doing the translation in the bilingual, side-by-side format within
Trados Studio.
Having the document displayed in this side-by-side fashion has the following advantages:
• This view reflects the structure of the TM. Each row in the side-by-side editor will become
a translation unit stored in the TM, because you will be updating the TM as you move
through the document translating row-by-row, populating the TM as you go.
• You can easily compare the source and target segments, focusing on each segment at a
time, which is what you will often do while translating or reviewing.
• You can translate any format that is supported by Trados Studio, including MS Office,
XML, Adobe InDesign/FrameMaker, PhotoShop, and many others, even if you do not
have its native application installed on your PC (which can be useful for translating files
in formats like Adobe InDesign).
• Whatever the source format, the material for translation is presented to you for
translation in Trados Studio in this same way in the side-by-side editor.
• In the side-by-side editor, the translatable text is decoupled from the layout, which
allows you to focus on the content.
• You can translate without worrying about complex or troublesome source document
layouts (such as MS PowerPoint files with lots of small or overlapping text boxes). You
simply translate the material in the side-by-side editor, knowing that Trados Studio will
take care of recreating the document in its native format with the original layout in place
when you generate the translation.
Some may feel that separating layout from content is a potential disadvantage, as the layout
sometimes provides clues as to how a segment should be translated. For example, only in
the actual layout will you see whether a segment is in a paragraph, a table cell, a footnote,
and so on.
Also, viewing the actual layout can give you a better feel for what your translation actually
looks like in its native application, such as MS Word or PowerPoint. It is only there that you
can check, for example, whether your translation fits inside, say, a text box or a table cell.
Rest assured, however, that Trados Studio offers various ways of viewing your target text in
its actual layout, both during and after completion of the translation. We will address this
issue later in the training course.
Given that you could often be working at the screen for many hours during a workday, you
may want to set the font sizes to a more agreeable level. To do this, take the following steps:
1. As we have discussed, the ribbon is made up of several tabs. Each tab features its own
range of commands. By default, whichever view you are in, you will find yourself in the
Home tab, which offers the most common commands that you will need when working
in that view. Let us switch to the View tab to see an example of what you can find on
one of the other tabs.
2. On the very right-hand side you will find the Adapt Font Sizes button, which looks like
this:
3. On a small screen, the Adapt Font Sizes button might not appear, as there may not be
enough space to display all of the buttons. In this case, click the small right-pointing
triangle button shown in the screenshot below, which you will find on the right-hand side
of the ribbon:
4. Now click the Adapt Font Sizes button once. All of the segments in the document should
be shown in the same font size, which may still be too small for you.
5. Click the Increase button a few times until you find the segments easy to read.
6. If you find that the font size is now too big, you can make it smaller by clicking the
Decrease button:
7. Once you are happy with the font size, return to the Home tab of the ribbon.
Note: Once you have set your preferred font size, this setting will apply to all subsequent
translation tasks. There is no need to adapt the font size every time you open a document.
Note that font size adaptation only affects text in the Editor view in Trados Studio. It does not
change the font sizes in the actual source or target document.
Note: The icon in the middle column (the Status column) changes from a white page symbol
to a blue pencil symbol as soon as you start typing. This indicates that the segment is in
Draft mode, which means that you have made some changes to it but not finalized them yet
by confirming the segment. Segment 2, in which we have not yet done anything, still has
the white page symbol, indicating that its status is Not Translated. You can display the
meaning of these symbols by hovering over them with your mouse pointer.
Now that you have entered your first segment translation, you will encounter what is
probably the single most important command in the ribbon, the Confirm button, shown in
the following screenshot:
Click the upper part of the button with the green pencil and the check mark (if you click the
lower part, you will see a few additional functions, which are not required for this part of the
training course).
Of course, you could move to the next segment by using the Down key on your keyboard.
However, this will not store your translation in the TM or confirm the segment.
Tip: You will use the Confirm command very often during translation, and many translators
prefer to use the keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+Enter.
• Trados Studio automatically looks for any matching segments in the TM and - if there
are any - inserts the one with the best match into the target cell. We refer to this as
retrieving a match from the TM.
• In this example, segment 3 is similar to the previous segment, which we have already
translated and stored in the TM. In this situation, then, your translation of the previous
segment is automatically inserted into the target cell. A match like this, where the current
segment is similar to but not exactly the same as a segment in the TM, is called a fuzzy
match.
• Look at the window above the document, which is called the Translation Results
window, shown in the following screenshot. Any matches found in the TM will be
displayed in this window.
• The Translation Results window can contain useful clues as to where a suggested
translation needs to be changed, by highlighting the differences between the current
segment in the document and the matching segment found in the TM. It applies
strikethrough formatting to strings that are not present and underline formatting to
strings that are additional in the current segment. In our example the word simple has
been replaced with the word short.
• Both in the Translation Results window and in the column between the source and the
target segment of the document you will see an icon that indicates the degree of
similarity between the current document segment and the match from the TM. We call
this the fuzzy value. In our example the value is 92 percent. The higher the value, the
greater the similarity. A lower fuzzy value usually means that more post-editing is
required to adapt the suggested translation to reflect the source segment accurately.
Note that these values are algorithmic calculations and do not necessarily correspond
precisely to any 'human' calculation based, say, on the number of words that are
different.
Now adapt the suggested translation in row 3 as required by your target language.
Note: Even after you adapt and confirm segment 3, the fuzzy value of 92 % is still displayed
between the source and the target segment (the segment match value has not changed
to 100%). This is because after translation you will usually want to go through the document
to review it. The original fuzzy match value of 92% will then remind you that you got a fuzzy
match for this segment, and you can then double-check whether you have adapted it
correctly.
Note that, after editing, the fuzzy match value no longer has an orange but a transparent
background:
Whenever you edit a translation suggestion, the background colour disappears. This
indicates that the user has actually edited the suggestion from the TM and provides a useful
means to alert you when you may have forgotten to edit any of the fuzzy match segments.
You may by now have realised that the purpose of the column between the source and the
target segment is to:
In this training course you will encounter the following segment status icons:
• Untranslated - means that you have not yet entered anything in this segment.
• Draft - means that you have entered or edited the translation, but have not confirmed
it since the last change that you made.
• Translated - means that you have translated and confirmed the segment (and
thereby updated the TM).
Note: There are other possible status values in Trados Studio. In this training course,
however, we are only going to look at the three mentioned above, as they will cover all of
our use cases.
Procedure
1. Click inside the target cell of segment 1 and edit your translation as required.
2. Then re-confirm the changed translation.
3. Note that the confirmed segments immediately below are skipped, and you find yourself
in the next unconfirmed segment.
What to do next
You may now wonder what has been stored in your TM: the changed translation, the previous
translation, or both. The answer is that, by default, the TM stores only the most recent
translation that you confirm, thus overwriting any previous translation. This is to make sure
that the TM offers only one translation for each source segment.
To verify this, go back into the target cell of segment 1 and take a look at the Translation
Results window. It should show only the translation that you added recently, as the TM
always keeps the most recent translation.
If a TM were to suggest lots of 100%-match translations for the same source segment, you
would have to choose between different (and possibly sometimes outdated or incorrect)
translation suggestions, which would defeat part of the purpose of using a TM: ensuring
consistency and increasing efficiency.
There are exceptional cases in which you may require different translations for the same
source segment. For this reason, Trados Studio offers a way of adding two or more
alternative translations for the same source sentence. If you ever want to add alternative
translations for the same source segment to the TM, click the lower part of the Confirm
button and then select Add as new translation before you confirm the segment.
As long as you add your alternative translation in this way before you confirm the current
segment, the TM will store more than one translation for the same source segment.
Exact repetitions
Translate the next segment (#6). No match has been found in the TM, so you need to
translate it from scratch. When you confirm this segment, you will move into segment 7,
which has been marked as an exact (100%) match:
This means not only that the segment is identical to a previously translated segment (in this
case segment 2), but that your translation was also automatically inserted into segment 7
at the point when you translated segment 2. This process is called 'auto-propagation' of
segments.
Note: The status for this segment is draft (it is marked with the icon), although it is an
exact repetition of segment 2. Usually, exact matches do not need to be edited, and you can
confirm them as they are. However, in some cases you may need to edit the suggested
translation, typically when:
For our purposes, however, to keep things simple, let us assume that you are happy with
this translation. Simply confirm the segment without making any changes. In one of the
following chapters we will show you what to do if you want to change the translation of a
repeated segment.
Note: To summarise, now that you have seen how a TM works and how it supports you
during your translation... When using a TM, you either get:
• no match at all, meaning that you need to translate the segment from scratch
• a fuzzy match, which means that you (usually) have to edit the suggested translation
• an exact match, which means that you can (usually) accept the suggested translation as
it is
Ignore All means that the word Trados will be excluded from the spelling check for the
current session. Add to Dictionary makes sure that the word is added to the spelling
To find out which spelling dictionary Trados Studio is using in the background, select File >
Options. In the Options window, click Editor at the top of the list, and choose Spelling.
By default, Trados Studio uses the open-source Hunspell Spell Checker. However, through
the dropdown list you can switch to the MS Word Spell Checker. This has the advantage that
any words that you have already added to the spell checker while working in MS Word will
automatically be picked up by Trados Studio … and vice-versa. Select your preferred spelling
checker and click OK.
Note: If you choose the MS Word Spell Checker, the Word spelling dictionary will be used
for all future documents that you translate in Trados Studio, unless you switch back to
Hunspell via the Options.
Nevertheless, Trados Studio is suggesting a 100% match. Even better, the suggested
translation contains the correct number in the format required for writing out numbers in
the target language. In our example,5,000 in English is localized into 5.000 in German (or for
example to 5 000 in French).
This is an example of how a TM can automatically replace and adapt certain elements in a
segment, such as:
• numbers
• dates
• times
• alphanumeric characters (such as A2-B123)
Such elements are called placeables, because the TM can 'place' them automatically into
your target segment. There is also a visual indication to point out which elements in a
segment are placeables. They are marked with a blue underline, which you will also see when
you move to the next segment, segment 10:
To translate segment 10, when you reach that point in the segment, you can insert the date
simply by pressing Ctrl+, (the Control and comma keys) on your keyboard. You could of
course enter the localized date manually, but inserting it with a simple keyboard shortcut is
quicker and helps avoid input errors.
The Ctrl+, shortcut produces a 'QuickPlace' list in Trados Studio, in this case showing the
localized time. Note that the suggested date has been automatically localized to meet the
requirements of your target language. When the list appears, press Enter to insert the
suggested (and localized) date into your target segment. Finish translating the segment
and confirm it. After confirming, you will get an exact match for the following segment, which
is identical to the previous segment. Here, Trados Studio has also automatically adapted
the time, and so all you need to do is confirm the segment.
To save your file, click the floppy disk icon in the quick access toolbar in the top left corner
of the Trados Studio application window, shown in the following screenshot. Alternatively,
you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+S.
If you are saving the file for the first time, you will be prompted to do so in the following
window:
Note that you are saving the bilingual Trados Studio file, and not the file in MS Word format.
When you translate in Trados Studio, you perform the translation in the intermediary
bilingual format presented in the side-by-side editor. The bilingual file is called an SDL XLIFF
file (SDL XLIFF is another piece of Trados Studio terminology that you will get used to using
often). The MS Word source file stays untouched, and you will never change the original
document by saving your bilingual file in Trados Studio.
Another reason why the translation takes place in an intermediary bilingual format is of
course that MS Word, PowerPoint, and other types of files cannot contain the source and
target segments at the same time. SDL XLIFF files, on the other hand, are designed to contain
segments in two languages, which makes it easier for the translator (or reviewer) to
compare source and target content.
By default, the SDL XLIFF file is saved in the same location in which the original file is stored.
The SDL XLIFF document is automatically given the same file name as the original document;
Trados Studio just appends the language pair (here enUS_deDE) and the file extension
*.sdlxliff, as you can see in the Save as type field in the screenshot above.
Let us assume for our purposes that you do not wish to change the file name or file path.
Hit the Save button to save the bilingual SDL XLIFF file in the same folder as the source
document.
Note: We encourage you to have an organised system for storing your SDL XLIFF files,
TMs, source and translated documents, and other material that you work on in Trados Studio,
so that you can always remember and find where you put everything.
Once you have saved a file for the first time as described above, you can save it manually in
the same location by pressing Ctrl+S or by clicking the floppy disk icon. Trados Studio will
also automatically save the document every 10 minutes. For this auto-save feature to work
you have to save the SDL XLIFF file initially by pressing Ctrl+S or by clicking the floppy disk
icon.
You can change the auto-save interval, if for example you would rather have the file saved
every 5 minutes instead of every 10. To do this, first select the menu command File >
Options. In the Options window, make sure that the Editor icon is selected in the top-left
corner. At the bottom of the Editor settings window on the right you will find the setting
Autosave every 10 minutes, where you can replace the value 10 with the interval of your
choice, as shown in the following screenshot:
Note: The auto-save interval is a general setting, which will apply to all documents that
you translate from this point on, not only the current document.
Note: It is possible to customize the source and target formats for numbers, dates, times,
and other placeables, but this is beyond the scope of this training course.
When translating segments with character formatting, take the following steps:
1. First, translate the segment. We recommend that you take care of the translation first,
and then apply character formatting.
2. Select the word in your target segment that needs to be formatted in bold. Then click
the b button in the ribbon.
3. Press the Arrow right key on your keyboard or click elsewhere in the segment to deselect
the word. Note that the word is now shown with bold formatting.
4. Repeat the above step to apply underline formatting to the corresponding word in your
target segment, this time by clicking the u button.
5. Confirm the current segment.
The next segment contains words with character formatting for which you will not find any
button in the ribbon, the green and blue text shown in the following screenshot:
If you cannot apply a specific type of character formatting using a button from the ribbon,
there are two alternative ways to do it. Let us take a look at the first one:
1. As in the previous example, translate the segment first so that you can apply the
formatting later.
2. Select the word in your target segment that needs to be formatted in green.
3. Keep the Ctrl key on your keyboard pressed down.
4. Move your mouse pointer to the source segment and click the word with the green
formatting while still keeping the Ctrl key pressed down.
5. Now release the Ctrl key. Note that the green character formatting from the source
segment has been applied to the selected word in your target segment. You might have
to deselect the word in your target segment to actually see the formatting.
There is also a fully keyboard-based alternative approach where you can use the same
keyboard shortcut that you used when inserting placeables. To apply this approach, take
the following steps:
1. Select the word in your target segment that needs to be formatted in blue.
2. Press Ctrl+, on your keyboard.
3. A QuickPlace list appears that shows the available formatting options from the source
segments. The first option in the list should already be the one to apply. Notice that the
formatting selected in the list is highlighted in yellow in the source segment. Now press
Enter to apply the required character formatting option.
Note: The character formatting options are listed in a smart way, with the formatting option
most likely to apply listed first.
Note that the list contains not only the character formatting options from the current
segment, but also from the previous and following segments, such as bold and red. In some
cases, you may want to use a formatting option from another (surrounding) segment. This
is why the list offers more than just the formatting items from the current segment.
Also note that when you select an item in the list of formatting options, the corresponding
string in the source segment is highlighted with a yellow background. That makes it easier for
you to determine which formatting option you are actually about to apply, in particular if
the QuickPlace list contains a lot of options. To change the formatting option to be applied,
simply select the desired option from the list with your mouse or arrow keys.
Note: To remove character formatting, select the formatted string, then press Ctrl+Space
or use the Clear Formatting button in the ribbon.
Note that (unlike in MS Word), it is not possible to remove, for example, bold formatting by
clicking the b button again.
You might wonder why Trados Studio cannot just apply character formatting
automatically. The reason is that the application does not 'know' which words in the target
segment need to be formatted. For example, Trados Studio does not know that the
German translation for the word sentence is Satz. It is up to the translator to decide
which words in the target segment require formatting.
However, there is an auto-format function, which automatically applies the required
character format to the corresponding words in your target segment. After translating a
segment, you can easily use auto-format by right-clicking inside your target segment and
selecting the context menu command Auto-Insert Tags, shown in the following
screenshot:
Trados Studio will then use artificial intelligence to determine the words that need to be
formatted. Note, however, that the artificial intelligence only works when your TM contains
at least 1,000 segments (and will produce better results with several thousand segments).
As our newly created TM only contains about a dozen segments, the auto-format feature
will not work on our example text. Now that you know that this feature exists, you will be
able to use it in production once your TM has grown to a certain size.
The fact that a segment can be found in a cell is indicated in the right-most column of the
side-by-side editor, highlighted in the following screenshot. This part of the editor is called
the structure information column.
Next to each segment is a box that signifies whether the corresponding segment belongs
to a paragraph (P), title (T), subtitle (ST), table cell (TC), and so on. By hovering the mouse
pointer over the box, you can make the full description appear in a tooltip. This is useful if you
have forgotten, for example, what TC stands for.
Knowing whether the text of a segment occurs inside, say, a table cell or heading in the
original source document can provide useful context information, as segments may have to
be translated differently depending on whether they occur in a footnote, table cell, title,
and so on.
While the structure information column gives you helpful clues as to the document layout,
you may sometimes want to see the actual document layout. You can easily do this by clicking
the preview button in the quick access toolbar in the top left corner of the Trados Studio
application window. This is the button with the magnifying glass icon, highlighted in the
following screenshot:
Alternatively, you can also press Ctrl+Shift+P. This preview will open the document in MS
Word proper. Note that any segments that you have not yet translated are shown in the
original language.
If your screen space is limited, you may want to close MS Word and go back to Trados Studio.
If you are working with two screens, you can move the MS Word window to a second screen
and use the document for reference while you are translating.
Close the preview in MS Word and go back to the document in the Trados Studio editor.
Translate and confirm segments 20 to 29, which contain only plain text.
Note: This type of preview will open the file in the native application. It will not be available
unless you have the native application installed on your PC.
Handling tags
Take a look at the following segment (#30), which contains a picture symbol:
This symbol is a placeholder for a picture in the sentence in the original source document
that is embedded within the segment. In Trados Studio, the actual image is not shown, but
represented by what we call a placeholder tag. To translate the segment, take the following
steps:
1. First, translate the segment. The approach to applying character formatting that we
discussed earlier also applies to translating segments that contain tags: translate first
and insert the tags later.
2. Now you can think about where to place the placeholder tag in your translation. Put the
mouse pointer at the point where the tag is to be placed in the target text. This will
normally be the same position as in the source segment relative to the surrounding text.
3. Then press Ctrl+, the same keyboard shortcut that you can use to apply formatting,
insert numbers, dates, and so on. This will show the QuickPlace list, which contains the
tag that you need to insert.
4. Press the Enter key to place the placeholder tag in your target segment.
5. Note that in the source segment there is a space in front of and after the placeholder
tag. Make sure that this is also the case in your target segment.
6. Confirm the segment.
In this segment, the tags act as placeholders for dynamically generated number fields. The
author of the document did not insert the numbers themselves, but instead created fields
which dynamically calculate the page number and the number of words in the document.
When you translate this segment, you will not therefore enter the numbers (1 and 175)
themselves, but instead insert the placeholder tags representing the number fields into your
target segment.
You can of course do this via the Ctrl+, keyboard shortcut, but we will instead take the
opportunity to show you an alternative way of inserting tags. It is in fact the same technique
that you used earlier when applying formatting. Take the following steps:
The above method of inserting placeholder tags might be preferable if a segment contains
multiple placeholder tags. By clicking the corresponding tag in the source segment, you
can see more clearly which tag you are currently inserting. This is useful when you need to
insert multiple tags that all have the same name (imagine for example a segment that
contains several picture placeholder tags).
By default, Trados Studio only shows the name of each tag (such as picture), but a tag may
contain more information than just this name. When you hover over a tag (either in the
source or target segment) you will see the full tag text in a tooltip. This can help you to
identify the tag and verify that you have inserted the correct one, for example:
In some cases, it is not easy to see whether there are white-space characters around a tag.
Non-printable characters such as spaces and tabs are by default not marked in the Trados
Studio editor, but it can sometimes be useful to make the whitespace characters visible. To
do this, click the ribbon button Show whitespace characters, shown in the following
screenshot. This can help you ascertain where the spaces around the tags are located.
As an exercise, translate the following segment, which contains two picture tags.
We will now show you how this real-time preview works. This will also give us the chance to
see what the segments with the pictures look like in the actual layout.
3. The Preview window now shows a kind of miniature version of the Word document:
As you can see in the example above, the preview visualizes the pictures inside the segments.
This gives you an idea of what the document looks like, while in the Trados Studio editor
you see only the placeholder tags.
Note: Trados Studio separates content from layout. The advantage of this is that you can
then focus on the translatable content. However, the layout can sometimes provide helpful
information for translators. This is where the Trados Studio document preview functions
come in handy, as they offer you the best of both worlds, a translator-friendly environment
and a WYSIWYG preview.
If the Preview window is too small, you can resize it or even move it to a second screen by
following these steps:
1. Click the Auto-hide button in the top right corner of the Preview window. This is the
small button that looks like a pin, highlighted in the following screenshot:
2. This will lock the Preview window in place. When the window is auto-hiding (not locked
in place), it disappears as soon as you move the mouse pointer out of it, which in some
circumstances can be frustrating.
3. To move the Preview window now that it is no longer auto-hiding, move the mouse
pointer over the Preview title bar and, keeping the left mouse button pressed down,
4. If you have a second screen, you can now try moving it to that screen. If you are working
with only one screen, move it to the left-hand side of the Trados Studio application
window.
5. To resize the Preview window, move the mouse pointer to one of its corners until the
mouse pointer turns into a double arrow. You can then resize the window as required to
make the document more readable.
Now that you can see both the document preview and the target segments in the Trados
Studio editor, test out the real-time preview by doing the following:
1. Click in any segment in the Trados Studio
editor. This also works the other way around. Click in any segment in the document
preview and the corresponding segment in the Trados Studio editor will be selected..
Note that the corresponding segment in the document preview is selected.
2. Translate and confirm the next untranslated segment 32 in the Trados Studio editor and
Despite the obvious usefulness of a preview that is fully synchronized in real-time with your
translation in the Trados Studio editor, the Preview window can take up space on your
screen, especially if you are working with just one screen, so you may wish to close the
document preview. To do this, click the x button in the top-right corner of the Preview
window, highlighted in the following screenshot:
You may now be concerned that you can no longer see the Preview tab on the right-hand
side. Indeed, when you closed the Preview window, the Preview tab also disappeared. To get
it back, take the following steps:
1. Select the View tab of the ribbon.
2. Click the button Reset Window Layout.
Note: The Preview tab has reappeared on the right-hand side. The Reset Window Layout
button is well worth remembering. You will by now have noticed that there are lots of
windows in the Trados Studio editor, like the Translation Results window. If a window
(accidentally) gets closed, you can always restore it by following the steps above. This means
that you can experiment with the layout safe in the knowledge that you can easily restore
it if something unintended happens.
Handling the Preview window (such as by dragging and resizing the windows in the Trados
Studio editor) can take a bit of practice, but it will soon become second nature to you.
This time the tags are not picture placeholders, but are used to define hyperlink addresses.
Of course, you could proceed as before, by first translating the segment and then applying
the character formatting and inserting the tags through the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+,.
However, in this case, there is an easier way of handling the segment. Click the Copy Source
to Target button in the ribbon or press Ctrl+Ins:
This will copy the entire content of the source segment (including character formatting and
tags) into the target cell. Once you have done this, you can simply leave the tags in place and
translate the segment by overwriting the parts that require translation, and then confirm
it.
Note: When you do this, if you have already translated all or part of the segment in the
target cell, the content of the target cell is overwritten, even if the segment is confirmed.
The two following segments (#34 and #35) contain only the actual hyperlink addresses
that are targeted by the clickable strings (the underlined blue strings in segment 33).
Trados Studio has recognized that these segments contain only hyperlink addresses, which
it automatically inserts into the target cells for us (hence the AT symbol for Automated
Translation). We will assume that the hyperlink addresses do not require localization, so you
can now confirm them as they are.
Now that you have finished translating the document in Trados Studio, make sure that
between all segment pairs in the editor you see a confirmation icon, as shown in the
following screenshot:
Procedure
1. Select the File tab of the ribbon.
2. Click the command Save Target As…
3. In the Save As window select the path to which you want to save the target file. Select a
location for your file, preferably one that you can remember easily.
4. Trados Studio suggests the name of the original file as the file name. You may if you
wish change the name, to for example Sample_Word_DE. docx.
Note: If you leave the suggested file path and name unchanged, you will be overwriting
the original source file.
5. Click the Save button. Your target file should now have been generated, and you can
open and view it in MS Word.
What to do next
If you open the file in MS Word and see that there are things that still need to be corrected,
you can go back to Trados Studio and apply your corrections to the bilingual SDL XLIFF file in
the editor. You could also make the corrections in MS Word directly, but this is not advisable
because your TM will then not get updated with any changes that you make. This means
that in the future you could get TM matches that contain an incorrect (or uncorrected)
translation.
When you edit a segment in Trados Studio and re-confirm the corrected segment, the TM
will be updated accordingly, that is to say, it will only contain the corrected target segment.
After applying your corrections, you can use the menu command File > Save target to
re-generate the (corrected) target document.
When you close the document, Trados Studio switches to the Files view, where you will see
the name of the file that you have just translated. The Progress bar next to the file name
should show 100% if you confirmed all of the segments. If the Progress bar shows less than
100%, you can double-click the file to re-open it in the editor, where you can make further
changes and confirm segments as required.
Congratulations, you have just completed your first translation job in Trados Studio! In
doing so, you have learned most of the basic techniques, which you can apply to any
document that you need to translate. This should allow you to cope with most of the
situations that come up when translating in Trados Studio.
Summary
Let us now summarize the main points to remember from this chapter:
• When opening a single file for translation in Trados Studio, you are prompted to select
the source and target language pair and either to select a TM to use or (if you have no
suitable TM), to create a new one.
• Trados Studio then presents the document for translation in a side-by-side editor view,
which allows you easily to compare the source and target segments.
• After translating a segment, you confirm it by pressing Ctrl+Enter. This will store the
source / target segment pair in the TM. The more segments you store, the more the TM
will be able to help you. The TM can suggest exact matches, which you usually accept
as they are, and fuzzy matches (for similar segments), which you usually have to adapt.
• While translating you can preview your target file in its native application (such as MS
Word) by pressing Ctrl+Shift+P. Alternatively, you can use the Preview tab on the
right-hand side to create a real-time document preview within Trados Studio.
• You can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+, to insert tags, numbers, and dates, and apply
formatting. Tags are placeholders for special elements such as pictures and hyperlinks.
• When you translate a document in Trados Studio, the original document is converted to
an intermediary bilingual format called SDL XLIFF. While you work in Trados Studio,
you are changing and updating the bilingual file. When you have finished translating
the document you can create the target document in its original format, such as MS
Word, ready to send to your customer.
In the following chapters, you will have the chance to practice and revise by translating
some more documents. And we will of course teach you a number of other useful features
and tips and tricks along the way.
In this chapter you will be translating another MS Word file similar to the one from the
previous chapter, which means that you will get a number of exact and fuzzy matches from
your TM. This example is designed to show how you can benefit from your existing TM by
re-using already translated content.
Procedure
1. Select the new file from your sample files folder, the one named Sample_Word_Modified.
docx.
2. As you have selected just one file, the button Translate as single document is selected
by default. However, the point of this exercise is to show you how to process files in a
project, so please click Create new project and, from the drop-down list, select Create
local project as shown in the screenshot below:
3. This will open the first page of the project creation wizard, which looks like this:
Note: The Create new project button allows you to create a local project or what we
call a Cloud project. When you create a local project, the project files are stored and
processed on your local hard disk or on a network drive. When you create a Cloud project,
your files will be uploaded from Trados Studio to the Cloud. You will be learning how to
create a Cloud project at the end of this training course.
The wizard guides you step-by-step through the project setup. At the top of the wizard
you will find what we call a metro map, which looks like this:
Note: If you are using the Freelance Edition of Trados Studio, the 'metro station'
PerfectMatch is not shown, as this feature is not available in that version of Trados
Studio.
You can move forward and backward in the wizard by clicking the 'stations' of the metro
map.
Procedure
1. By default, Trados Studio automatically assigns names such as Project 1, with subsequent
projects called Project 2, Project 3, and so forth. As such names are not very descriptive,
we advise you to enter a name such as My First Training Project into the Project Name text
field.
2. Note that all project files will be stored in the folder shown under Location Path. The
default root path will be in your Windows documents folder, which is called something
like C:\Users\UserName\Documents\Studio 2022\Projects. For every project, Trados Studio
will automatically create a sub-folder which has the same name as your project. Of
course, you can change the project path by clicking Browse and choosing another folder.
However, for the purposes of this training course we will stick with the suggested
default path.
Note: If you prefer to browse for your own location path, you can prevent Trados Studio
from creating this project-specific sub-folder in the file path by unchecking the Autofill
box next to Location Path. This gives you more control over the file path.
3. Next, you will select your language pair. Note that for our purposes you must choose
the same language pair as in the previous chapter, or you will not be able to re-use the
TM from that chapter. More generally, the TM must always match the project language
pair. For example, if you translated the previous document from English into German,
you will not be able to re-use the same TM if you now decide to translate from, say,
English into Spanish. By default in Trados Studio, the source language is English US. As
the source language of our next sample document is English anyway, you can leave the
source language as it is.
Note: To change the default language pair, go to File > Options. Under the Editor
settings at the top, choose Languages. Set your default language pair and click OK.
This will now be the default language pair, the one that is pre-selected when you open a
new document for translation or create a new project.
4. In the Target Languages box, you will enter the target language that you used in the
previous chapter. By default, the target language is German. To select a different target
language, click the x icon on the right-hand side of the language label, highlighted in
the following screenshot:
5. Then click the small arrow icon on the right-hand side (highlighted in the following
screenshot) to open the list of available languages and select your preferred target
language.
Note: The language list is quite comprehensive, and it may take you a while to scroll
down to your preferred target language. However, you can quickly select your target
language by entering the language code, e.g. fr-fr for French, es-es for Spanish, etc.
Tip: One thing that you may find helpful is that, once you have selected a target
language, it will subsequently appear at the top of the list.
A project can contain multiple target languages, but for this exercise we will select only
one. Note that in the Freelance Edition of Trados Studio you can select up to three target
languages in a project. The Professional Edition allows you to select an unlimited
number of target languages in one project.
Selecting your TM
About this task
We will skip step 2 in the wizard by clicking on step 3 in the metro map. This is where you
can select your TM:
Procedure
1. On the left-hand side of the wizard page select All Languages Pairs > Translation
Memory and Automated Translations.
2. Now look at the right-hand side of the wizard page. You will see that the TM that you
created in the previous chapter has already been added to the project. This demonstrates
that the last TM you used will be 'remembered' next time round, so there is no need to
add the TM manually for every project you create (unless you want to use a different TM).
• translatable file(s)
• language pair(s)
• TM(s)
Click Finish, and your project will be created. You will see a number of progress bars going
from 0 to 100% while Trados Studio prepares the project. Wait a few seconds until all of the
steps are completed, as shown in the screenshot below:
Let us give a little background on what Trados Studio is doing when it is preparing the
project. Essentially, the following is taking place:
• The translatable file is converted to the bilingual SDL XLIFF format. This means that
when you create a project the files are automatically saved as *.sdlxliff. This is one
difference to opening a single file for translation, where you have to manually save the
file as *.sdlxliff at some point after it opens in the editor. When you create a project, on the
other hand, the translatable files are converted to *.sdlxliff from the very beginning,
and so the AutoSave function will immediately be active from the moment you open the
file in the Editor view.
• If any exact matches are found in the selected TM, they will automatically be inserted
into the translatable file(s). This process is called pre-translation. This is another
advantage of creating a project, as no automatic pre-translation is done when you open
a single file for translation.
• Finally, Trados Studio performs an analysis of the document, during which the
application determines the number of segments, words and characters. The file analysis
also calculates the number of repetitions and how many exact and fuzzy matches have
been found in the TM. The file analysis thereby allows you to ascertain the re-use rate of
your TM (how much help the TM will provide) before you start translating. This
information is important for quoting and invoicing.
You can still do a file analysis or pre-translation when you open a single file for translation,
but these actions are not performed automatically. To perform an analysis or
pre-translation after opening a single file, click Batch Tasks and select the required task
from the list, as highlighted in the following screenshot:
This approach requires a few more clicks than when you create a project, which is one of
the reasons why it can still be a good idea to create a project even if you need to translate
only one file.
Note: The Apply PerfectMatch task (which is not part of this training course anyway)
shown in the screenshot above is not available in the Freelance Edition of Trados Studio.
Note that the file that you opened for translation as a single document earlier is also listed
in the Projects view, even though you did not create a project when translating this file. This
is because Trados Studio automatically creates a project 'in the background' when you
translate as a single file.
When creating the project, Trados Studio pre-translates and analyses the files. Let us now
look at the analysis statistics (the word count, repetition rates, and so on) generated by these
processes.
The Translated bar reflects the source content for which exact matches have been found in
the TM. Do not be misled by the fact that the bars show the word count. Remember that
TMs always pre-translate the entire segment, not individual words inside the segment.
However, the default unit of counting used in Trados Studio is words, as most quotations
and invoices in the translation industry are based on the word count. The Not Translated bar
shows the number of words that still need to be translated. This bar reflects the number of
no match and fuzzy match segments that require editing by a human translator (that is, by
you). By default, Trados Studio pre-translates only segments that are exact (100%) matches,
which is why fuzzy matches are included in the Not Translated count.
This tab shows a table with more granular data. Look at the last column, which shows the
total word count.
From there, work right to left through the other columns, which show:
• The fuzzy matches, which are subdivided into low fuzzy matches (such as 50-74%) and
high fuzzy matches (such as 99-95%). This breakdown allows you to anticipate how much
content you will have to post-edit. Remember that fuzzy matches usually have to be
adapted by the user.
• The exact matches, that is, the segments that have been pre-translated and can usually
be accepted as they are.
• The context matches (CMs for short): CMs are exact matches, but a little stronger than
'standard' 100% matches. A CM is found when the current segment is identical to a
previously translated segment in the TM, and the segment that comes before it in the
editor is also the same as the preceding segment in the document from which the match
in the TM was generated. This is intended to provide insurance that any changes in
prior context will not necessitate a different translation to the one in the TM.
• Repetitions are segments for which no match has been found in the TM, but that occur
more than once in the document. This means that you have to translate the segment
from scratch the first time that it occurs, but that the subsequent repeat occurrences are
translated automatically as 100% matches.
• PerfectMatch: This is a match type that is even more reliable than a CM. However, it is
beyond the scope of this training course.
In target languages with male and female variants of the word for 'president', the segment
'I am the president of the United States.' has to be translated differently based on the
information provided in the segment before it. In this case, the previous segment provides
the context. This is also an example of when it is justifiable (or necessary) to store two
different translations for the same source segment in the TM.
Remember that when you change a translation suggested by Trados Studio as an exact
match and confirm the revised translation, Trados Studio will by default update the TM to
keep only the most recent translation.
To store both the newly revised and the prior translation of the segment, select Add as New
Translation (or press Ctrl+Shift+U) before you confirm the changed translation:
In the above example, you want to keep both the male and the female variants of I am the
president of the United States in the TM, that is:
Double-click the file to open it in the Editor view. You are now back in the Trados Studio
editor. From here on, you can translate the file just as you learned in the previous chapter.
The only difference (based on the fact that you created a project this time round) is that some
segments have been pre-translated. These are the 100% and CM matches, which have
been found in the TM, inserted into the bilingual document, and automatically confirmed:
Note: Remember that, by default, fuzzy matches are not taken into account during
pre-translation.
Procedure
1. Select the Review tab of the ribbon.
2. Then click the Display Filter button (the icon that looks like a funnel).
3. This will show a list of filtering options. Select Not translated. You will now see in the
editor only segments that still require translation.
Note: Using the Display Filter with this setting is not essential. In this exercise, we are
presenting it as an example of how to use of the Display Filter to interact with your material
in different ways. The Display Filter has a huge range of uses. If you wish to experiment
with some of them, you can reset the display to show all of the segments at any point by
clicking All Segments.
Translate and confirm this segment, which will take you to segment 13. This segment gives
us the opportunity to introduce another feature, fragment matching. Look at the window
above the editor. As you have seen, this window usually shows any exact or fuzzy matches
from the TM. In this particular case, no segment match has been found, but the TM has
nonetheless identified the term New marketing campaign, as shown in the following
screenshot:
This happens because the term came up previously in the short segment containing only
this three-word string. Now that this three-word string has been found as part of a longer
segment in the document that you are translating, it is being suggested as what we call a
segment fragment.
Note: Fragment matching is part of a set of features called upLIFT, by which Trados Studio
attempts intelligently to match strings within previously translated segments in the TM, even
if the segment being translated does not have a whole segment match in the TM.
Segment fragments are suggested when a previously translated short segment in the TM
comes up as part of a longer segment, as in our case here:
To insert the segment fragment into your target segment, first simply type the first letter of
the fragment, which in the case of the German translation shown in the following screenshot
is the letter n:
Note: Depending on your target language, you may have to adapt the suggested segment
fragment, such as when an inflected form is required.
You will now be in segment 14, another short segment. Translate and confirm it. When you
get to segment 15, two segment fragments are suggested, as shown in the following
screenshot:
Translate and confirm segment 15, inserting the two suggested segment fragments as
explained in the example above.
Imagine that you do not remember how you translated this term previously. Trados Studio
allows you to look up all of the segments in the TM that contain a particular term or string of
text. To do this, select the term in the source segment, then click the Concordance Search
button (or press F3):
Note that the Translation Results window has switched to the Concordance Search tab,
which lists the two sentences from the previous document that contain the search term, as
shown in the following screenshot:
Note: For our purposes, you can safely ignore the tags that are shown inside the segments.
These tags define character formatting, which is stored as part of segments in the TM.
While in your document you will see the WYSIWYG formatting (such as bold and underline),
the TM stores the formatting information inside tags.
Once you have identified the translation of the term character formattingvia the concordance
search, you will wish to insert the translation into your document. To do this, either re-type
what you see in the Concordance Search window or select the relevant target string and use
copy & paste (Ctrl+C to copy, Ctrl+V to paste) to insert it into your document.
This kind of search comes in handy when you want to find all of the segments in the TM
that contain a particular term. The concordance search is a common way to search inside
the TM and can also be performed using the keyboard shortcut F3.
Note: The concordance search also works for the target language. Select a text string from
any of the target segments and press F3.
Now translate and confirm segment 22. Segment 23 contains the term button, which you
can also look up using the concordance search.
I like cats.
The following segment is almost identical, but you are not getting any match from the TM:
I like dogs.
This is because the current segment is not sufficiently similar to the previous one to produce
a match, even though to your eyes the two segments might look very similar. By default,
Trados Studio suggests TM matches of 70% or above. If your segment falls below this
threshold, you will not be given a suggested translation. This can be a frustration when you
are dealing with very short segments, where just one word can make a huge difference,
as is the case in this example.
In the above example, the difference is just one word, cats instead of dogs. However, this
single word accounts for more than 30% of the segment, and so translating the first of these
two segments will not produce a match for the second.
Note: Of course, Trados Studio is making a computerized calculation of the similarity, which
may not always coincide with the degree of similarity assumed by the human eye. In this
case, however, the two are likely to be broadly the same.
In situations like this, the concordance search feature can come in handy, as it does not
search for the full sentence, but rather the words that you select within the segment. Try
applying a concordance search to the current segment: select the string I like and then click
the Concordance Search button in the ribbon. This will give you the following concordance
result:
However, it is also possible to lower the minimum match value for the TM search, so that
even if segments differ by more than 30%, you will still get a match. This can be useful when
you are dealing with a document that contains a lot of short segments, and you do not
want to actively launch a concordance search each time no match is found just because a
single word has changed. To change the minimum fuzzy match value, take the following
steps:
1. Click the Project Settings button in the ribbon.
2. On the left-hand side of the Project Settings window, drill down to Languages > All
Languages > Translation Memory and Automated Translation > Search.
3. In the Minimum Match value text box, you can replace the default value 70 with any
value from 30 to 100. Enter 50 as your new minimum match value and click OK to confirm.
Note: This value only applies to the current project. If you wanted this setting to be active
in another project, you would have to make the same change again. However, you can create
a template from your current project, which you can then use to apply any settings that
you have configured like this to future projects. Any subsequent projects that are based on
this template will 'inherit' the settings from the current project. In the next chapter you will be
learning how to create a template from a selected project.
As soon as you change this setting, the TM gives you a low fuzzy match, as shown in the
following screenshot:
The advantage of decreasing the value is that you will get more matches. The
disadvantage, in particular when you are dealing with longer segments, is that it can take
more time to manage all of the differences in, say, a 50% match. Sometimes translating
from scratch can take less time than post-editing a very low match suggestion. Working
with very low fuzzy match values can lead to results such as the following, where you have
to deal with a number of differences:
Save the file as the target document, and then press Ctrl+F4 to close the bilingual file in
Trados Studio. This will take you back to the Files view, where the file name and its translation
progress appear.
Summary
Let us now summarize the main learning points of this chapter:
• Instead of opening a single file for translation you can create a project to deal with your
files for translation. In this approach, a wizard takes you step-by-step through the
project creation process. You first enter the project name and then select your source /
target language pair(s). Note that you can also select multiple target languages for a
project.
• When you create a project, Trados Studio automatically pre-translates all segments for
which an exact match has been found in the TM. Trados Studio generates statistics that
show you how many repetitions and exact and fuzzy matches you can expect to
encounter when you translate the documents in the project.
• If a short segment comes up in a longer document, the TM will automatically attempt to
suggest it as a segment fragment, which you can easily insert into your target segment.
• The concordance search allows you to search in all segments in the TM that contain a
particular term. You can trigger the concordance search by selecting the desired text in
the editor and pressing F3.
• The default minimum match value for TM lookups is 70%. You can change this value as
required. A lower minimum match value can be useful when dealing with very short
segments.
In the following chapter you will learn more about creating projects and handling multiple
files in a project.
Procedure
1. Switch to the Projects view, where all of your projects are listed.
2. Right-click the name of the project that you just have finished working on. From the
context menu, select Create Project Template.
3. A project template is basically a configuration file that holds all of the settings in a
project. By default, templates are saved in the path C:Users > UserName > Documents
> Studio 2022 > Project Templates. You can, however, select any folder you wish to
store your templates. Once you have selected the folder, enter a name for your template
file (e.g. Training Template English-German). As always, we recommend that you choose a
descriptive name.
4. Click the Save button and then click OK.
Note: A project template contains various project configuration settings, most importantly
the languages and TMs that you have set up, but also any other options that you may have
configured, such as the minimum match value.
You have now seen how to translate a document by either opening it as a single file or by
creating a project. Both approaches produce the same outcome. If you are translating single
files, it is up to you to decide which you prefer.
However, when you are handling more than one document for translation, it is far preferable
to put all of the files together in one project. This is what we are going to do in the following
exercise.
Note: As you have selected more than one file, the Create new project button is selected
by default this time.
2. After selecting your template, you will be prompted to confirm that you want to use the
settings from the template. To do this, click Yes.
3. Now enter a descriptive name for your new project (such as Training project with multiple
files).
For our purposes, there is no need to go to any of the following pages of the wizard.
Look at the bullets in the metro map. The green bullet with the check mark that you see
in the Translation Resources step indicates that the TM settings have been picked up
from the template:
4. You can now click Finish here in the first page of the wizard to create the project. Wait
for the batch tasks to complete, and then click Close.
Note: You could of course go through the remaining steps in the wizard to check whether
all of the required settings have been correctly picked up from the template. For our
purposes, however, we will trust that Trados Studio has done so, and create the project from
the first page, which allows for easy, one-step project creation.
You will now find yourself in the Projects view of Trados Studio, where your newly created
project is listed.
Make sure that in the navigation pane the item Analyze files is selected, as shown in the
following screenshot. The name of the analysis report includes the date and time that the
analysis was performed. In the right-hand pane, scroll down until you see the analysis results
table shown in the screenshot. The first block of statistics that you see is for all of the
translatable files combined. Further down in the report you will find the statistics for each
file individually. For our purposes, we will look only at the combined analysis for all of the
project files.
What you see here is similar to the Analysis Statistics tab of the Projects view, but the
Analyze Files report is much more detailed. We will not explain all of the report categories
and values in this section, just the most important ones.
In this case, we see that all of the project files combined contain 21 segments, which
correspond to 191 words or 1007 characters.
New segments
The row New/AT lists all of the segments for which no match has been found in the TM. In
other words, these segments need to be translated from scratch. AT stands for automated
translation. New segments are potential candidates for machine translation using services
such as Google Translate, DeepL, or the machine translation system of Language Weaver.
Note: Trados Studio can incorporate the use of machine translation systems. The detail of
how this capability works is beyond the scope of this course, but the following is a brief
background overview. Essentially, when interfaced with a machine translation service, Trados
Studio will suggest automated translation solutions for all new segments (that is, those
that have no match in the TM). These AT matches can then be post-edited by a translator.
Once confirmed, the post-edited segments are saved in the TM, and can subsequently be
retrieved as exact or fuzzy matches.
A useful element of the analysis report for gauging the extent of the translation task is the
percentage indicator, which shows that, in this example, about 76% of the project content
needs to be translated from scratch.
Note: In practice, translators and their clients often do not count segments with a match
below 75% as fuzzy matches, but combine them with the 'new' segments for quoting and
billing purposes.
Above the fuzzy matches you will see the share of exact (100%) and context matches. These
segments have been pre-translated by re-cycling matches from the TM.
Repeated segments
There are two lines showing the repetition rates. Remember that repetitions are segments
that have not been translated yet and at this stage have no match in the TM, but nonetheless
occur several times in the document(s). There are two kinds of repetition:
• Repetitions found within the same document. You will have to translate from scratch
and confirm the first instance, but thereafter, your translation will be suggested
automatically as an exact match from the TM in each repeated instance.
• Cross-file repetitions occur when the same segment is found in several files in the
project. This again means that you have to translate from scratch the first occurrence in
the first file that you translate. When you translate the subsequent file(s), your
translation will be suggested automatically as an exact match from the TM.
From the results of the analysis, you can see that the two translatable files in the project
have some overlapping content, as the rate of cross-file repetitions is about 16%.
Alternatively, you can also save the report, for example as an MS Excel file. To do this, click
the Save As button, then select MS Excel as the desired output format and provide a file
name for the report. Finally, click Save to generate the report in MS Excel format. The report
will look like this in Excel:
Note that printing or saving the reports can be useful if your customer requires you to
attach the report to your invoice for information purposes.
Remember that the analysis report shows the cross-file repetition rate to be about 16%,
indicating that the two files have some overlapping content. In such situations it may be
preferable to open both files at the same time to translate them together rather than one
by one. This will allow you, for example, to adapt the repeated segments in both documents
at the same time, for greater efficiency.
Procedure
1. Select the two files by keeping the Ctrl key pressed down while you click both file names.
2. Click Open for Translation in the ribbon.
Both files are now shown in the Editor view. It feels like you are dealing with just one
file when you scroll through the document, but there are two indications that you have
opened two files:
• The navigation pane shows the name of the two files. By clicking a file name in the
navigation pane, you can jump to the corresponding part of the virtually merged
document in the Editor view.
• You will also see orange-coloured marker tags that show the file names and indicate
where the first file ends and the next file starts.
It is important to note that the two files are only being merged temporarily. Once you close
the virtually merged file, it will automatically be split back into the two original files.
Note: As you will note here from the fact that you have merged a PowerPoint file and a
PDF document, you can seamlessly merge files of any combination of formats.
A wrench icon indicates that Trados Studio has tried to adapt the fuzzy match automatically.
As shown in the following screenshot, in the Translation Results window you will see the
underline formatting (which marks up differences between the current segment and a
previously translated segment in the TM) in both the source and target segment.
In this example, the word TRADOS has been added to the source, and Trados Studio has
correctly inserted it into the target segment. We call this a repaired fuzzy match. This
automatic repair of fuzzy matches means less post-editing work for the translator. Notice,
however, that the segment features other change requiring adaptation, which has not been
picked up by fuzzy repair: Trados Studio has not automatically replaced first with next in
the target segment.
This example makes the point that you still need to verify repaired fuzzy matches and make
your own modifications when necessary.
Note: Trados Studio uses artificial intelligence when adapting fuzzy matches automatically.
The bigger your TM, the more data is available for the AI to work with. As our TM is still very
small, it can only do simple repairs such as the one shown above. With a TM that contains,
say, several thousand segments, Trados Studio might also have been able to replace the
word first with next in the target segment.
Now adapt the fuzzy match as required, and then confirm it.
Note: Pressing Ctrl+Enter (to confirm the segment) does not necessarily take you to the
next segment, but to the next unconfirmed segment.
… your translation will be automatically inserted into segment 10 of the second document,
shown in the following screenshot:
Note: Note that auto-propagated segments are marked as a 100% match, as they are
identical to segments that were translated previously. The only difference is that the 100%
icon has a different shade of green to differentiate it from 100% matches that were inserted
from the TM. Auto-propagated segments are by default not confirmed. They are marked
with the following icon, which signifies that the segment currently contains a draft
translation:
This is to alert translators that this segment might have to be translated differently. As
discussed previously, source segments can sometimes require different translations
depending on the context.
Translate and confirm segment 4, then segment 5. Note that segment 5 will be
auto-propagated to segment 5 in the second document.
The QuickInsert group in the ribbon allows you to insert a set of commonly used special
characters. To insert one of the available special characters, click the corresponding button:
Tip: Alternatively, paste the entire source segment including the special characters into the
target cell by pressing Ctrl+Ins and then translate around the special characters.
If so, you will need to enable source editing before you can correct the mistake. To enable
source editing, take the following steps:
Procedure
1. In the ribbon, click the Project Settings button.
2. In the Project Settings window make sure that the Project icon in the top left corner is
selected.
3. Check the box Enable source editing and click OK to confirm these settings.
4. Now try right-clicking the incorrect source segment again. This time the Edit Source
command is available.
5. While the source segment is editable, it will have a yellow outline as in the screenshot
below. You can now edit the text in the segment to correct the spelling mistake.
Note: The edit source function allows you to edit the source text itself, but not to apply
formatting or insert or move tags.
6. Remember to switch to the target cell and finish your translation before you confirm
the segment pair, thereby adding the version with the corrected source to the TM.
7. The following source segment also contains a mistake. Edit the source segment using
the Edit Source command from the context menu, then translate and confirm the
segment.
Note: 50 cm is a placeable element, which you can easily insert into your target segment
by pressing Ctrl+,.
By changing the settings as described above in this section, you have enabled source editing
functionality only for the current project. When you change a setting through the Project
Settings button, the change applies only to this particular project.
Also note that, by correcting a source segment, you are not changing the original document
in Word, PowerPoint, PDF or other format. The corrections are being made only inside the
bilingual SDL XLIFF document, from which the TM is updated.
Splitting a segment
About this task
Segment 8 actually contains two sentences, which are separated by a semi-colon:
When you open a document for translation in Trados Studio, the segmentation is determined
based on the punctuation. The following punctuation marks are considered segment
delimiters: full stops, exclamation marks, question marks, and colons (if the word following
the colon starts with an uppercase letter). Semi-colon characters, however, are not
considered segment delimiters. This explains why two sentences can be found within this
segment.
Note: It is possible to customize the segmentation rules in order, for example, to turn the
semi-colon into a segment delimiter. This procedure is beyond the scope of this training
course.
For the sake of argument, let us assume that you would like to translate these two sentences
as separate segments. This means that they will then be stored as separate segments in
the TM. To do this, take the following steps:
Procedure
1. Place your mouse pointer immediately after the semi-colon, being careful to position it
precisely where you want to split the segment. Unwanted splits are difficult to undo, so
please double-check that the mouse pointer is behind the semi-colon, which is your
split point.
2. Click the right mouse button and select the Split Segments command from the context
menu.
3. Note that, in the segment number column on the left, segment 8 has become segments
8a and 8b.
Note: When you split up segments, the subsequent segments in the document are not
re-numbered. The same is true when you merge segments, which we will be doing in the
next section.
These are two separate segments because segment 9 ends with a full stop. For the sake of
argument let us assume that you wish to translate the two segments as one segment. This
will mean that just one (enlarged) segment is stored in the TM.
Note: Merging segments can be necessary if your target language requires the information
to be presented in a different order, and sometimes for stylistic reasons. Merging segments
is therefore more common than splitting segments.
Procedure
1. Move the mouse pointer over the column on the left that contains the segment numbers
(highlighted in the following screenshot) and click segment number 9. This selects the
segment.
2. Keep the Ctrl key on your keyboard pressed down and, still in the segment number
column on the left, click segment number 10. Segment numbers 9 and 10 should now
be selected. Make sure that your mouse pointer is still hovering over the column that
contains the segment numbers. You may be tempted to move to the source text, but
please do not do so, as merging will then not work.
5. Note that segment 9 has been enlarged to include the content of the original segment
10. Also note that segments have not been re-numbered, so the following segment still
has the number 11, and the segment number 10 has disappeared.
The two source segments are actually part of the same sentence, which has been spread
over two segments. You will usually wish to avoid translating sentences like this as two
separate segments, because that would make your TM untidy by storing parts of sentences
rather than properly formed, full segments. Another potential reason for merging the
segments in some target languages is that you may not be able to maintain the same word
or clause order as in the source language, which will make the segments difficult to
translate satisfactorily.
The best solution, then, is to merge these segments. First try the same approach as you
learned in the previous section: select both segment numbers, click the right mouse button,
and choose Merge Segments from the context menu. You will find, however, that the
Merge Segments command is greyed out.
So why is this? The two segments that we successfully merged in the previous example
were split along a punctuation mark (such as a full stop or colon). In this new instance,
however, the segments have been broken apart by a hard return. We can tell this by looking
at the structure information column on the right-hand side. You will see that both segments
1 and 2 are marked with a T (for title), as shown in the following screenshot, telling us that
they are each in separate title elements. As the two segments occur in different structural
elements, it is not possible to merge them without a change in the default settings, which
we discuss below.
To see the hard returns for yourself in MS Word, as shown in the following screenshot,
generate the MS Word preview by pressing Ctrl+Shift+P:
Sentences are sometimes broken up by hard returns due to sloppy source document editing
or when a PDF document is converted to MS Word format.
Note: When you process a PDF document in Trados Studio, it is automatically converted to
MS Word in the background. This is why you are given a preview in MS Word, not in a PDF
viewer.
As it is often impractical to translate and store a broken-up sentence in the TM, we will
change a project setting that allows us to merge segments even when there is a hard return
between them. To do this, take the following steps:
1. Click the Project Settings button.
2. Make sure that the Project icon in the Project Settings window is selected, then activate
the check box Enable merging segments across paragraphs.
Note: The option to merge across paragraphs can only be selected if you have first enabled
source editing by activating the Allow source editing option immediately above it.
Now try merging the two segments again. To do this, re-select the segment numbers 1
and 2 in the segment number column on the left and then choose the Merge Segments
command, which has now become available. The newly merged segment is shown in the
following screenshot:
Note that, once you merge the segments, you get a 100% match. This is because, in its
merged form, the segment exactly matches one of the previously translated segments.
The same is true for segments 3 and 4, which occur in different paragraphs. Now that you
have changed the project settings, you will be able to merge these segments right away.
After merging these two segments, you are rewarded with a context match (indicated by
the CM notation shown in the following screenshot), as this segment is preceded by the same
segment as was the case in the PowerPoint file. That is to say, the two segments occur in
the same order as in the first file that we translated (for further information, see Background
information on context matches).
Note: These two examples illustrate how segmentation discrepancies can degrade TM
leverage. For example, if the TM has stored the full sentence, and your segment for
translation contains only part of the sentence, you are likely to get just a low fuzzy match or
no match at all.
Remember that, to use the preview function, you can either press Ctrl+Shift+P to generate
the preview in MS Word proper or create the embedded, interactive preview by using the
Preview tab on the right-hand side of the Trados Studio application window, shown in the
following screenshot.
If you move your mouse pointer over the 100% icon, you will see that this translation was
'auto-propagated' from segment 5 of the previous document.
When you translated and confirmed the (identical) segment above, the translation was
automatically inserted into the current segment.
In most situations, you will simply confirm the auto-propagated translation at this point. Let
us assume, however, that you are no longer happy with the translation that you entered
when translating the previous document and want to change it. Re-formulate the segment
and then confirm it, as shown for example in the following screenshot:
Note: As soon as you started editing the auto-propagated translation, the 100% icon lost
its background colour. This indicates that the suggested translation has been changed. This
does not apply only to auto-propagated matches, but to all kinds of TM match, including
100%, CM and fuzzy matches.
Let us establish what happens in the TM and with the other instances of the segment that
you have just changed in this situation.
As far as the TM goes, it is straightforward: when you change your translation and re-confirm
it, the TM is updated to contain only the most recent translation. To verify this, move back
to segment 5 and check the content of the Translation Results window. Here you should
only see your most recent (that is, the edited) translation, as shown in the following
screenshot:
The SDL XLIFF document, however, now contains different translations for the same source
segment. In segment 5 of the second document you will of course see the recently changed
translation, while segment 5 of the first document still contains the previous translation, as
shown in the following screenshot:
The auto-propagation feature adapts only unconfirmed segments below the current segment
in the bilingual file. In some situations, this auto-propagation behaviour may be what you
want, if for example you prefer to vary the translation only for the current segment. Imagine,
however, a document where the same segment is repeated, say, 20 times, and you want to
use the same translation each time. This means that whenever you change an instance of a
repeated segment, you will potentially have to manually edit all 19 instances above the
current segment or already confirmed elsewhere in the document.
To deal with this eventuality, you can change the auto-propagation setting so that all
segments (above and below the current segment) are automatically adapted regardless of
whether or not they have been confirmed. To do this, take the following steps:
Note: The settings that you configure in the Editor section of the Options window will
apply to all projects, not just the current one.
Re-confirm segment 5 of the second document and note that now the repeated instance in
segment 5 of the first segment has been adapted accordingly, as shown in the following
screenshot:
Configuring the auto-propagation like this is highly useful when you are dealing with a
large document that contains a lot of repetitions. A possible drawback occurs when a
repeated segment has to be translated differently due to a change in context.
This, however, is the exception rather than the rule. In most situations, all of the repeated
instances will require the same translation. We will also assume for our purposes here that
you will be reviewing your translation and that you will spot any repeated segments that
require a different translation during proofreading and change them accordingly.
Note: You can also lock and thus 'protect' a segment against being changed, including
through auto-propagation, by pressing Ctrl+L. When you lock a segment, a padlock icon
appears between source and target segment, and the segment pair is greyed out, as shown
in the following screenshot. Once locked, the target segment will be unaffected by
auto-propagation. This is useful when, for example, you require the same translation for
nine out of ten segments, but the last occurrence needs a different translation. To unlock a
locked segment, press Ctrl+L again.
Procedure
1. On the ribbon, go to the Review tab.
2. Click the Display filter dropdown list, which by default shows the value All Segments.
3. This will open a long list of filtering options. To show only the repeated segments, in the
Repetitions section of the list, select All, as highlighted in the following screenshot:
4. The editor now displays only segments that are repeated across all open documents.
This can be useful for checking consistency.
5. To show all of the segments again, select All Segments from the Display Filter
dropdown list.
6. Return to the Home tab of the ribbon.
7. Translate and confirm the remaining segments in the second document.
You should now be in the first segment of the PowerPoint document. For certain kinds of
files, like PowerPoint, where the presentation of the material is paramount, it can be
important to look at the PowerPoint document itself. To preview the (partly translated)
document in MS PowerPoint, press Ctrl+Shift+P.
To generate a real-time preview within Trados Studiothat is synchronized with the Trados
Studio editor, take the following steps:
Procedure
1. Make sure that your mouse pointer is placed inside one of the segments from the first
document (the PowerPoint), for example by going back to the very first segment of the
merged document.
2. Move the mouse pointer over the Preview tab on the right-hand side.
Note: If the Preview tab is not there, remember that you can reset the window layout
from the View tab of the ribbon.
3. In the middle of the Preview window, click the link Click here to generate the initial
preview.
4. The PowerPoint preview will look as shown in the following screenshot. It is a good
approximation of the actual PowerPoint layout. The preview is synchronized segment-by-
segment with your translation in the Trados Studio editor, so that, if you click a segment
in the preview, the corresponding segment in the Editor is selected, and vice versa.
Note: The preview is best used with two screens. You can then move the Preview
window to the second screen and increase the size of the Preview window.
5. Let us assume that you now want to double-check that you have confirmed all of the
segments. To do this, switch to the Review tab of the ribbon and, in the display filter, click
All segments to display the list and choose Unconfirmed from the list, as shown in
the following screenshot:
If no segments are shown, you can be sure that you have translated and confirmed all
of the segments, and use the display filter to show all segments again.
If you now look at the status bar below your document, you will notice something rather
odd. You have confirmed and translated all of the segments, so we would expect the
confirmation count to be 100%. However, in the following screenshot, the confirmation rate
is actually over 106%, while the untranslated count has a negative value of more than -4%
The reason for this is that you have merged and split a few of the segments. When you
merge or split segments, you create a deviation from the original segment count, which can
then impact the progress count.
To reset the count, we will refresh it by closing and reopening the documents. First press
Ctrl+S to save the merged document, and then close it by pressing Ctrl+F4 or by using the
menu command File > Close. You will now find yourself in the Files view. Select both files
again and click Open for Translation. The status bar will now show the correct percentage
values, as highlighted in the following screenshot:
Now close the document and look at the files in the Files view. The progress bar next to
each file correctly indicates 100%. Note also that when you closed your virtually merged
document, it was split back into the two original documents, as shown in the following
screenshot.
Browse and select the file Sample_Excel. xlsx from your sample files folder. After a few seconds
the new file will appear in the list of files and is now part of your project, as highlighted in
the following screenshot:
Note: When you add a file to an existing project like this, it is automatically processed in
the background by being converted to SDL XLIFF, analysed, and so on in the same way as
the files that you originally selected when you created the project. When you switch to the
Reports view, you will find a new Analyze Files report on top of the other reports. This report
applies only to the file that you have just added.
Double-click the newly added file to translate it in the Editor view. Go ahead and complete
the translation. You will by now be familiar with all of the Trados Studio functionality required
to do so.
Also try to preview the file using the Preview tab on the right-hand side. This will create a
real-time preview of your translation, as you did earlier in the training course with the Word
and PowerPoint documents.
Finish translating the Excel document, and then save and close it. This brings you back to
the Files view, where all three fully translated files will be listed.
To do this, from the Files view, select all three files, and then take the following steps:
Procedure
1. Click the Batch Tasks button in the ribbon.
2. From the list of tasks, select the first one, Finalize.
3. The Finalize window now appears. The Finalize task sequence does two things: it both
updates the TM and generates your target documents in the required format. Updating
the TM is not strictly necessary in this case, as you translated and confirmed all
segments yourself during translation. The Finalize task nonetheless makes doubly sure
that your TM contains all of the translations from the project file(s).
4. Click the Finish button to run the task. When it is finished, click Close.
The target files have now been stored in a location determined automatically by Trados
Studio. To find the location of the target files, right-click one of the files in the list and select
the context menu command Explore containing folder, highlighted in the following
screenshot:
This will open Windows Explorer to show the location of the target files, which are stored
alongside the translated SDL XLIFF files in a sub-folder named for the target language inside
the main project folder. As you will infer, the bilingual files are not deleted when you run
the Finalize task.
You can if necessary copy the target files to another location or attach them to an email in
order to deliver them to your client.
Note that setting a project as complete does not do anything of consequence to the project,
other than visually flagging it as complete. If you have a long list of projects, it does,
however, allow you to see which projects you have completed and which are still in progress.
To remove a project from the list, right-click it and select the context menu command
Remove From List. Click Yes, to remove the project from the list.
This is a way to keep your list tidy, so that you do not have to keep in the list projects that
you completed some time ago. It is important to note that, by removing a project from the
list, you are not deleting any project files. The projects will remain in the folder where you
originally created them. By default, the root project folder is C:\Users\<UserName>
\Documents\Studio 2022\Projects , although you may well have specified a different folder
when you created the project.
Assuming that you have used the default folder, when you open this folder in Windows
Explorer, you will see a sub-folder for every project that you created. The following screenshot
shows the folder from the exercise that we have been through in this chapter:
You can re-open a project in Trados Studio at any point and thereby re-add it to the project
list by going into the corresponding project sub-folder and double-clicking the project file.
This is the file with the extension *.sdlproj, as shown at the bottom of the following
screenshot:
Summary
Now that we have completed the project creation and translation cycle, let us summarize
the main learning points of this chapter:
• You can save the settings of a particular project in a template. The template allows you
to create subsequent projects more quickly, as all of the settings (including the language
pairs and TMs) are taken from the template. In this way you can create the project
directly from the first page of the project creation wizard only.
• When a project contains multiple files, you can open all of the files for translation at
once. This is especially useful when there are cross-file repetitions (where the same
segments occur in different documents) and potentially allows you to translate more
consistently.
• Trados Studiohas an auto-propagation feature that ensures that, once you change a
repeated segment, the other occurrences get updated accordingly.
• The auto-propagation feature can be configured to adapt already confirmed segments
up and down the document or leave them unchanged.
• You can still add files to a project that you have already created.
• Trados Studiooffers a display filter feature, which allows you to show only segments
that are, for example, unconfirmed or repeated.
• If you find a spelling or grammar mistake in a source segment, you can enable source
editing through the project settings. This allows you to correct mistakes in the source
segment, thereby preventing them from ending up in your TM.
• Trados Studioalso offers a real-time preview for PowerPoint and Excel files.
• Trados Studiouses punctuation marks such as full stops and question marks to
determine where a segment ends and where the next one begins. However, you can
change the segmentation on the fly by splitting or merging segments if required for, say,
stylistic reasons.
• After translating all of the project files, you can use the Finalize batch task to generate
the target versions in their respective formats, such as MS Word, PowerPoint, and Excel,
simultaneously.
In all of the previous exercises, we used the TM as our only resource while translating. In
this chapter we would like to focus on another resource, terminology databases (termbases).
We will first explain what a termbase is, and how it can be set up and used during translation.
In plain terms, termbases are akin to electronic dictionaries or glossaries that are used to
store individual words or strings of words, such as organization- or company-specific
terminology. While TMs store entire sentences (or more precisely, segments), termbases
store words or strings of words, typically those that occur inside segments. This explanation
is somewhat simplified, but it helps illustrate the main difference between a termbase and
a TM, as set out in the following examples.
From the above example, you can also see that while a TM is bilingual (limited to two
languages in one direction, such as English > German), a termbase can contain terms in
multiple languages.
Standard dictionaries and glossaries obviously have their uses. However, in a standard
dictionary you will not find things like company-specific terms that may occur in your
translation, such as the above-mentioned Control Panel, which is specific to Microsoft.
Glossaries, too, can contain all sorts of useful information, but require compilation, checking
and searching, often manually.
Why use a termbase given that the TM stores the complete sentences (in which the terms
are included) anyway?
come up as concordance results are very long, as in the example shown in the following
screenshot:
Also, whereas the TM contains only the source and target segments, a termbase can feature
additional contextual information such as a definition, note, grammatical gender, and so
on, just like a 'real' dictionary.
Creating a termbase
12 Creating a termbase
As we do not have a termbase, we will need to create one. To do this, take the following
steps:
Procedure
1. Click Create > New File-based termbase. This will open another wizard that helps you
set up your termbase.
2. The first screen contains only some general information on the process of creating the
termbase. Click Next to continue.
3. We will create our termbase based on a predefined template. This is the simplest way to
create a termbase, especially when you are new to termbases. Select the Use a
predefined termbase template radio button and choose Bilingual termbase from the
dropdown list. Then click Next.
4. On the Termbase Name screen enter the name of your termbase (such as Training
Termbase), then click Next (the 'friendly name' is the name by which the termbase will
appear when you use it in Trados Studio).
5. The following screen Language Fields shows that your termbase is pre-configured to
use English and German. If your project happens to be from English into German, you
can simply leave the language setting unchanged and proceed. If you are translating into
a language other than German, pick your target language from the Languages
dropdown list, and then click Add to add it to the list of selected languages on the
right-hand side. You can if you wish remove German from the list of selected languages,
but there is no harm in leaving it there, even if you are translating, say, from English
into French. You will not be made to enter any German terms. Note from this that while
a TM is always bilingual, a termbase can contain multiple languages. Click Next to
continue.
6. A termbase may also contain additional information such as notes, definitions, and
grammar. This kind of information goes in what we call descriptive fields. On the
following Descriptive Fields screen, you see the list of descriptive fields suggested by
the template. You can of course add your own fields but, for our purposes, we will make
the termbase creation process as simple as possible. Leave the suggested fields
unchanged and click Next.
7. On the following Entry Structure screen, click Next again and then Finish to create
your termbase. The termbase now appears in the project creation wizard, as highlighted
in the following screenshot:
Note: When creating a termbase, you can set up the languages, descriptive fields, and
entry structure by yourself. However, setting up a termbase completely from scratch is
beyond the scope of this training workbook, as at this stage our priority is to make the
termbase setup process as simple as possible for you. The way you have set up the termbase
shown above is likely to be enough for most users to meet the needs of their daily translation
work.
The term spaceship also comes up in some of the following segments. It might therefore
be useful to add this word to our termbase, which we created when setting up the
project in the preceding steps.
Note that terms are not automatically added to the termbase when you confirm a
segment, as confirming only updates the TM. To add the term pair to your termbase,
take the following steps:
a. First, translate the segment, but do not confirm it yet.
b. Select the source term, spaceship.
c. Select the target equivalent, Raumschiff. The segment with the terms selected is
shown in the following screenshot:
d. With the source/target term pair still selected, click the Quick Add New Term button
in the ribbon.
Note: This function is also accessible by right-clicking and choosing it from the
context menu or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F2 with the term pair selected.
e. Note that the source and target term pair now appears in the Terminology
Recognition window in the upper-right corner. This window displays the source
term, target term, and name of the termbase, as highlighted in the following
screenshot:
Note: Up to now the Term Recognition window has not been of much help, as this is the
first time that we are using a termbase while translating. From this point forward, however,
it will become more useful as you enrich the termbase on-the-fly.
Retrieving terminology
The following segment, which also contains the term spaceship in a different segment
context, demonstrates the value of adding a term to the termbase.
The term is highlighted with a red line in the source segment to indicate that it has been
found in the termbase:
Moreover, the source and target term pair are shown in the Termbase Recognition window:
• The current segment is automatically scanned for any known terminology. If a term is
found, it is clearly indicated in Trados Studio.
• There is no need to type or copy and paste the term. You can quickly insert it into your
target segment, as we explain below.
Start translating the current segment. To insert the required target term, simply type the
letter with which it starts in the target language. This will show the full target term in a popup
list. Press Enter to insert the target term.
Finish translating the segment, using the Quick Add New Term button set out in the
previous section to add the term lightspeed to your termbase, and then confirm the segment.
Note: We refer to the technique of typing the first letter of a match so that we can insert it
in this way as AutoSuggest.
Summary
Let us now summarize the main learning points of this chapter:
• A termbase is akin to a customized electronic dictionary or glossary in which you can
store words or strings of text that appear inside segments, including for example
company- or organization-specific terms that are unlikely to appear in a standard
dictionary.
• When setting up a project, you can select an existing termbase or create a new one.
• A termbase can contain multiple languages and descriptive fields such as definitions
and notes.
• A termbase is set up through a wizard, which also offers pre-defined termbase templates
to speed up the process of creating the termbase.
• You can easily add source / target term pairs to the termbase while you translate.
• Terms that you add to the termbase are automatically recognized when found in another
segment. You can easily insert the terms into your translation through AutoSuggest.
This chapter provides a brief overview of how to use Trados Studio's built in cloud capabilities
together with some of its most common features.
This principle can now also be applied to Trados Studio, in which - up to now - all of your
translation resources (such as TMs and termbases) and files have been stored on your PC.
When you purchase Trados Studio, cloud capabilities are included as a standard part of all
currently supported versions of the product. This allows you to store your TMs, termbases,
projects, and other materials in the Cloud. In this chapter, we will provide an overview of
some of the common features of Trados Studio's built in cloud capabilities.
Note that there is also a Team Edition of Trados Studio in the cloud. Among other things,
Trados Team allows, for example, project managers, translators and reviewers to work
together seamlessly and access common language resources in real-time from different
locations.
Trados Studio cloud features can be accessed both from Trados Studio and from a Web
browser, which makes it device-independent. You can therefore also use Trados Studio's built
in cloud capabilities from a tablet.
Logging in
About this task
To use cloud capabilities from within Trados Studio, you need to log in to your account with
your user name and password. Your user name usually corresponds to your email address.
You should have been sent your initial password by email. To sign in, take the following
steps:
Procedure
1. Click the Sign In button in the upper-right corner of the Trados Studio application
window.
2. Enter your user ID (usually your email address) and password into the popup window.
3. Click LOG IN. Note that the popup window now shows your user name and the Trados
package that your account has access to, as shown in the following screenshot:
4. Click on the Trados package or on My Account to open Trados in your web browser. In
your browser, you may have to enter your user ID and your password again.
Setting up an empty TM
About this task
First create the TM in the web browser by taking the following steps:
Procedure
1. In the Trados web interface select Resources and then Translation Memories. Then
click the New Translation Memory button on the right.
2. Enter a name for your TM, then select Root from the Location dropdown list.
3. Select the source and target language combination that corresponds to the language
pair of your TM file.
4. Click the Create button to create the new (and empty) TM.
Note: The Location is the Cloud equivalent of a folder on your hard disk. You can create
several locations to store TMs, projects, and so on for specific clients. In this course, we will
not go into the creation of new locations and instead place all our resources inside the default
Root location.
There are some additional settings that can be configured for the Cloud TM, including
copyright information and a description, which we will skip here in order to keep the process
as simple as possible for the purpose of demonstration.
To import the content of your earlier desktop TM file, take the following steps:
Procedure
1. Check the box next to the name of the Cloud TM, and then click Import.
2. Click browse and select the desktop TM file. By default, desktop TM files are stored in
the folder C:\Users\<UserName>\Documents\Studio 2022\Translation Memories, although
you may have changed the folder when you created the TM.
3. Click Finish to start the import. As the TM file is rather small, the import should only
take a few seconds. Check the number of units on the right-hand side:
To view the content of the TM directly, make sure that the check box next to the TM name is
active, and then click the TM Maintenance button.
This shows the content of the TM in a side-by-side view, and is a way to reassure yourself
that your TM file has been successfully uploaded to the Cloud. Close the TM view by clicking
the x button in the upper-right corner, highlighted in the following screenshot:
Procedure
1. Select Translation Engines, then click the New Translation Engine button.
2. Enter a name for your engine. In the Location dropdown list, select Root. In the
Language Processing Rules dropdown list, select Default language processing rule.
3. Select the source and target language pair that corresponds to your Cloud TM.
5. This will list your Cloud TM(s). Check the box next to the name of your TM, and then
click Add. Your Cloud TM should now be listed inside your engine.
6. A translation engine can contain several TMs as well as machine translation engines
and termbases. However, for the purpose of this demonstration, we will refrain from
Note: Language processing rules define parameters such as the segmentation rules, date,
time, and number formats. These rules can be customized. In the above exercise, however,
we are using just the default rules, which are enough for most use cases.
To create a Cloud project from Trados Studio, take the following steps:
Procedure
1. Switch back to Trados Studio and make sure that you are in the Welcome view.
2. Click browse and select the document Sample_Cloud. docx from your sample files folder.
3. Click the arrow icon next to Create new project, and then select Create Cloud project
from the list.
4. This opens the project wizard for Cloud projects. As you can see in the metro map, this
wizard has considerably fewer steps than the wizard for creating local projects.
5. In the first step, enter a name for your project, pick a due date, select the Root location,
and make sure that the correct source and target language pair is configured.
6. Under File Type Configuration, choose Default File Type Configuration. File type
configurations allow you to customize how specific file types are processed, for example
whether or not to translate speaker notes in PowerPoint files. For the purpose of this
course, we are using the default settings provided by the system.
7. Click Next, and then select the translation engine that you created previously in your
web browser.
8. Click Next again, and then Finish to create your project in the Cloud
The Notifications window on the right-hand side slides in to inform you that the upload of
the project file(s) is in progress, as shown in the following screenshot:
Note: You will also receive a notification email once your project has been prepared in the
Cloud.
Once the upload is complete, the content of the Notifications window will change to say
that project preparation is in progress. All of the file processing (such as pre-translation and
analysis) is done in the Cloud rather than on your PC. When the preparation of the project
is complete, it will appear in the list of projects in the Projects view, as shown in the following
screenshot:
3. This will open the pre-processed file in the Editor view of Trados Studio. You can now
translate the file as an exercise. When you have translated and confirmed all of the
segments, save and close the file. You may also use the menu command File > Save
Target Asto generate the target version in MS Word format.
Note: While you translate the above document, you are working with the Cloud TM,
which means that all of the segments that you confirm will be stored in the Cloud TM.
4. In the Files view in Trados Studio, click the Complete Task button.
This will upload your translation to the Cloud, where it will be stored safely.
This course has focussed only on some of the basic Trados functionality. There are many
more functions, such as Cloud termbases and the Online Editor, which are beyond the scope
of this training course.
Summary
Let us now summarize the main learning points of this chapter:
• Trados is a Cloud-based system that works seamlessly together with Trados Studio. It
allows you to save TMs, termbases and project files in a Cloud storage location.
• These Cloud-based linguistic resources can be shared in real-time by different users in
different locations.
• When you purchase Trados Studio, cloud capabilities are included as a standard part of
all currently supported versions of the product.
• You can migrate your desktop TM files by creating Cloud TMs in the web browser and
importing the desktop TM files directly through the web interface.
• TMs can be placed inside translation engines. Translation engines can combine multiple
TMs, termbases, and machine translation engines.
• Cloud projects can be created directly from the web browser or in Trados Studio. The
file processing (pre-translation, analysis, and so forth) happens in the Cloud, not on your
local PC.
• The project files can be translated directly in the web browser (through Online Editor) or
in Trados Studio. When you translate in Trados Studio, the project files are downloaded
to your PC. After translation, the files are uploaded back to the Cloud.
In Trados Studio you can use Cloud-based machine translation providers alongside TMs.
Your Trados account gives you access to a sophisticated neural machine translation (NMT)
system. When using an NMT provider alongside a TM, Trados Studio will provide a machine
translation suggestion when no TM match (exact or fuzzy match) has been be found.
You can then edit the NMT suggestion as required, and confirm it, which will update your
TM. In future translation projects, the segment will then be available as a TM match.
That way, NMT can significantly accelerate the translation of no matches and help you
populate your TM more quickly.
Procedure
1. Click Use, then select Cloud-based resources.
2. You should already be logged in to your Trados account. If not, you will be prompted to
log in at this point. A generic NMT engine for your project language pair should already
be pre-selected. Just click Save to add the NMT provider to your project.
Note: Your Trados account features NMT engines for virtually any language pair. When
creating a project the engines applicable to your project will be listed automatically.
3. Click Finish to create the project, then click Close, and open the sample file in the Editor
view. For the current sample document no TM matches are available. Your main source
of translations will therefore be the NMT engine.
NMT suggestions are marked with the NMT icon (for neural machine translation) and the
status for the segment pair is Draft. When you move the mouse pointer over the NMT icon,
a tooltip will show more information such as the exact name of the machine translation
provider. Note that technically speaking the score for machine translation suggestions is 0%:
NMT suggestions usually offer high quality. Therefore, they often require only little,
sometimes even no editing.
The first segment in our sample document is very short, and we assume that the translation
is correct. If you do not find that editing is required, just confirm it, which will send the
translation to the TM.
You will then get a suggestion for the next, much longer segment:
The solutions provided by old machine translation systems often sounded too clumsy. So
readers could immediately identify them as machine translation results. Editing them to
make them sound more 'human' often took the same amount of time as translating from
scratch. NMT suggestions, by contrast, often sound like human translations. To be sure, you
might have to adapt things such as terminology, but in a lot of cases you can leave the
suggested sentence structure intact, which makes it much faster than a human from-scratch
translation.
As an exercise, go through the remaining segments in the document, then finalize the
project. While editing the NMT suggestions, keep the following in mind:
• To benefit fully from the time-savings potential of NMT, you should intervene only if
required.
• Resist the urge to re-formulate the entire sentence just because you think it sounds
better if you formulate it in a different way. This would be tantamount to re-translating
the document, which will not save any time at all.
• Moreover, every time you edit a segment, you risk introducing typing mistakes. When
editing NMT suggestions make sure to edit only things that are incorrect, that do not
comply with your terminology, etc.
We will end the training course by recapping the most important Trados Studio keyboard
shortcuts covered during the training and listed for you here in consolidated form.
It is a widely held view that you can be up to 30% more productive if you use keyboard
shortcuts and avoid mouse operations wherever possible.
About RWS
RWS Holdings plc is a unique, world-leading provider of technology-enabled language, content and intellectual property services. Through content
transformation and multilingual data analysis, our unique combination of technology and cultural expertise helps our clients to grow by ensuring they
are understood anywhere, in any language.
Our purpose is unlocking global understanding. By combining cultural understanding, client understanding and technical understanding, our services
and technology assist our clients to acquire and retain customers, deliver engaging user experiences, maintain compliance and gain actionable insights
into their data and content.
Our clients include 90 of the world’s top 100 brands, the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and 19 of the top 20 patent filers. Our client base spans
Europe, Asia Pacific, and North and South America. We work in the automotive, chemical, financial, legal, medical, pharmaceutical, technology and
telecommunications sectors, which we serve from 80+ global locations across five continents.
Founded in 1958, RWS is headquartered in the UK and publicly listed on AIM, the London Stock Exchange regulated market (RWS.L).
For further information please visit www.rws.com.
© 2022 All rights reserved. Information contained herein is deemed confidential and the proprietary information of RWS Group*.
*RWS Group shall mean RWS Holdings PLC for and on behalf of its affiliates and subsidiaries.