Different Translations For Same Word - Safe-Marking in Trados
Thread poster: sophie_jane
sophie_jane
sophie_jane
Local time: 10:22
German to English
Sep 10, 2008

I translate internally for one software company and there are certain words which when translated from German into English have serveral different meanings depending on the situation they are used in.

Does anyone know of a way to highlight these words so that they are not translated automatically in a fuzzy match or pre-translation, but any segment containing this word is always marked for your approval of the translation?


 
Viktoria Gimbe
Viktoria Gimbe  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 05:22
English to French
+ ...
MultiTerm Sep 10, 2008

One thing you can do is create a TDB (terminology database) in MultiTerm and add the term in question, along with all of its different translations in the same term entry. You don't need to use MultiTerm during translation if you want to keep things simple. However, when you are done with translation, run the term checking QA tool (before you do that, you need to link your TDB to Workbench). It will report all segments that contain the source term in question, and by clicking on each QA result (... See more
One thing you can do is create a TDB (terminology database) in MultiTerm and add the term in question, along with all of its different translations in the same term entry. You don't need to use MultiTerm during translation if you want to keep things simple. However, when you are done with translation, run the term checking QA tool (before you do that, you need to link your TDB to Workbench). It will report all segments that contain the source term in question, and by clicking on each QA result (there is one for each segment detected), the segment is highlighted on screen. Then, you can just open the segment and edit as needed.

The way this works is that, if you enter several translations in MultiTerm for the same source term, the QA feature will highlight each segment containing that source term, because even though you did use one of the translations entered for that term, you did not use the others, and that is considered to be an error (it is not really an error, but software is smart like that).

This solution only works with TagEditor, however.

If you don't use TagEditor for this job, then the other solution available to you is to use ApSic XBench. You can create a key terms file (simple tab-delimited text file containing pairs of terms). The structure of this file is very simple: type the source term, then press Tab, then type the target term and press Enter to go to the next line, where you can enter the next term. In your case, you would need to enter a line for each translation of that term. It should look like this:

Source term A [Tab] Translation A
Source term A [Tab] Translation B
Source term A [Tab] Translation C

Then, create a project in ApSic XBench to which you will add this key terms file and the translated bilingual documents. Save the project, then specify that the bilingual files are "active translations". Then, you can run QA. I recommend you to only check the key terms option and uncheck all the others. XBench will report, just like Trados would have, each segment in which you used that source term, because the translation you used inevitably disagrees with other translations of the same term in the key terms file. The nice thing about XBench is that you can then right-click each result (segment) in the report, click on Edit Source, and the bilingual document will open, with the correct segment highlighted. You can then edit the term as needed.

If you use XBench, I recommend you to read the manual. It will take you half an hour (it's a short, straight-to-the-point manual, unlike the 1000 pages of Trados documentation). There are a few simple things you need to be aware of to use it efficiently, one of which is that, if you want to check whether you did everything correctly, you will need to refresh the XBench project and run QA again to get an updated report which takes into account the edits you already made to see if you have missed anything.

All the best!

[Edited at 2008-09-10 16:11]
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sophie_jane
sophie_jane
Local time: 10:22
German to English
TOPIC STARTER
FAO Victoria Gimbe Sep 11, 2008

Thanks for your reply!
I always have multi term running in the background when I translate documents, so I know how to link that up with Trados. However, I don't know what this QA tool is, neither can I find it. Is it stored in Trados or MultiTerm? What heading is it under?
I have also downloaded ApSic XBench for my non-tag editor files, so will have a read through the manual!


 
Viktoria Gimbe
Viktoria Gimbe  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 05:22
English to French
+ ...
QA can only be done in TagEditor Sep 11, 2008

The QA tool is only available in TagEditor. I think it is best if you check the relevant manual for this rather than have me explin it to you. It's easy to set up, but my explanations are likely to be misleading because there are a few things to watch out for. I haven't used the QA tool for a while - I've switched to XBench for all QA operations.

Having said that, you can use XBench for your TagEditor files as well. It
... See more
The QA tool is only available in TagEditor. I think it is best if you check the relevant manual for this rather than have me explin it to you. It's easy to set up, but my explanations are likely to be misleading because there are a few things to watch out for. I haven't used the QA tool for a while - I've switched to XBench for all QA operations.

Having said that, you can use XBench for your TagEditor files as well. It will handle TTX files, bilingual Word files, Trados text TMs, TMX TMs, MultiTerm TDBs and a bunch of other proprietary file formats that belong to other CAT tools (Wordfast, IBM Translation Manager, etc.).

I also wanted to add that I may be wrong about what I said in my previous post. That is, when you enter your terms in MultiTerm, you may have to enter the source term in separate entries, each with its own translation, instead of entering your term in one entry that contains several translations. I am not sure now... Like I said, I haven't used QA in TagEditor in a while, so I can't guarantee that my memory is right.

All the best!
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Katalin Horváth McClure
Katalin Horváth McClure  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 05:22
Member (2002)
English to Hungarian
+ ...
You may be able to use the Translation Memory Options Sep 13, 2008

sophie_jane wrote:

I translate internally for one software company and there are certain words which when translated from German into English have serveral different meanings depending on the situation they are used in.

Does anyone know of a way to highlight these words so that they are not translated automatically in a fuzzy match or pre-translation, but any segment containing this word is always marked for your approval of the translation?


I am not sure I understand you correctly.
When you run a pretranslation or translate manually, Trados works with segments, not individual words, right?
Am I correct in assuming that you are talking about "words" that are by themselves segments, such as UI strings, and they can have a different translation depending on where they are used? (For example, "Open" could be a verb, you can open the file by pushing this button. However, "Open" could be an indicator, showing the status of the file. I know in many languages these two cases would be translated differently.)

So, if that is what you are talking about, then what you can do is in Workbench, go to Options, then Translation memory options, then Penalty, and make sure you set a penalty for "Multiple translations penalty %:"

This way, if there are more than one translations in the TM for the segment, it will never come up as a 100% match, only as a fuzzy.

Then, use the color settings in Options, Translated text colors and set a different color for Fuzzy and 100% matches. That way, you will see all the fuzzy segments in a different color, and you can go over them manually and check/correct them. The segments that had multiple translations in the TM will always be fuzzy (and colored) this way.

Would this work for you?
Katalin


 
sophie_jane
sophie_jane
Local time: 10:22
German to English
TOPIC STARTER
FAO Katalin Sep 19, 2008

Hi, thanks for your reply.
I am not talking about individual words in segments, no. What I meant was that within segments, I have words which crop up which have different translations depending on which software product they refer to.
My problem is that the words appear in sentences in the segments and I want to be able to get Trados to stop on a fuzzy search if one of these words appears in the sentence rather than automatically translating it.
I always only translate from Ger
... See more
Hi, thanks for your reply.
I am not talking about individual words in segments, no. What I meant was that within segments, I have words which crop up which have different translations depending on which software product they refer to.
My problem is that the words appear in sentences in the segments and I want to be able to get Trados to stop on a fuzzy search if one of these words appears in the sentence rather than automatically translating it.
I always only translate from German to English, so your multiple translations advice doesn't apply to me, does it?
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Different Translations For Same Word - Safe-Marking in Trados







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