fbpx
GeaSpeak

TRADOS STUDIO: ESSENTIAL TIPS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT (PART ONE)

By GeaSpeak Team | 2023-08-25
TRADOS STUDIO: ESSENTIAL TIPS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT

Trados Studio, a computer-assisted translation (CAT) software, plays a pivotal role in the world of translation. Its significance lies in its ability to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of the translation process, by allowing translators to manage their projects more effectively, ensuring consistency in terminology, style, and formatting across various documents.

Trados Studio is one of the most widely used tools in the translation industry, offering a multitude of options and functions. In this article, you can read about some essential tips that range from using its features to enhance the quality assurance (QA) process, to ensuring uniformity and consistency across translations and organizing project views to ease the translator’s task and help them save time and be more productive.

Tip 1: Open all files together, including those from different folders in Trados Studio

Translators often work on projects that have repetitions across files – i.e., segments that are identical in more than one file of the project, or even partial repetitions, also known as fuzzy matches, either internally or across files. To make the most out of these repetitions, the best option is to open the different project files all at once in a spreadsheet-like view. In this way, when a segment is translated, it will automatically propagate into those same segments present in other files. This will also be true for those segments that are similar, in which case the partial match will propagate. In order to do this it is necessary to have the feature ‘Auto-propagation’ enabled (see Tip 2).

To open multiple files together in Trados, you simply need to select all the project files from the ‘Files‘ view and, once selected, press Enter. Additionally, make sure to click on the ‘Include subfolders‘ checkbox to ensure all project files are opened, including those that might be in subfolders.

In the Editor view, orange tags indicate the beginning and the end of each file, as it is shown below:

Tip 2: Enable Auto-propagation

The Auto-propagation feature is essential to maintain uniformity and consistency, both within a file and across files. This feature not only helps translators keep their work tidy, but also comprehensible. Moreover, some clients won’t allow inconsistent translations and will explicitly insist on resolving such issues during the QA stage – or at any step prior to delivery. So, it’s better safe than sorry!

In order to enable the Auto-propagation feature, in the upper-left corner, go to File > Options > Editor > Auto-propagation and select these options:

Enabling the Auto-propagation feature in Trados Studio
  • Enable Auto-propagation.
  • Set the minimum match value to 100. This will propagate only exact matches, i.e. when two segments are identical.
  • Auto-propagate exact matches to confirmed segments. This helps to ensure that all segments, confirmed or not, are propagated and remain the same, thus avoiding inconsistencies.
  • (Optional) Confirm segment after auto-propagating an exact match. It is up to you whether you want a segment to be confirmed or not after auto-propagation.
  • Starting Position > Auto-propagate from: First segment in the document. Selecting this option is important, because if you choose “Next segment in document”, you run the risk of changing only the following segments that are identical, and the previous ones will remain unchanged. On the other hand, if “First segment in the document” is selected, self-propagation will be performed both backward and forward and therefore all identical source segments will remain the same in the translation.

Tip 3: Check Spelling and Verify

Two very useful and easy-to-use tools are Trados Check Spelling and Verify. Check Spelling is used to spot possible typos or spelling errors that may have been left behind. Meanwhile, Verify is used for examining the translated file in terms of missing numbers, punctuation, placement of tags, terminology usage from the termbase, etc.

To use these features, you just need to go to the Review tab and click on Check Spelling or Verify, or resort to the shortcuts F7 or F8 respectively.

Review tab in Trados Studio

The spelling feature even displays a Spell Checker window. In it, you can add the new term to the dictionary, ignore it, ignore all identical cases, or replace it with the suggested correct word:

As for the Verify feature, the Messages tab displays all potential errors, such as possible tag issues – like the one shown below – which can be ignored by right-clicking on them and selecting Ignore. You can also use the Ignore All option to dismiss all identical messages, and you can select Show Details to see the problem in detail.

Potential errors in Verify

Tip 4: Use the ‘Preview’ feature in Trados Studio

Finally, in its latest versions, Trados Studio allows you to generate a preview of the localized final file. To do this, click on the Preview side button and then select Click here to generate initial preview:

With this feature you can get a preview of a file in HTML format within the software, which will be displayed in a panel on the right margin (as shown below). Moreover, in the dropdown panel, you can choose to see the preview in an external file. Furthermore, you can choose to preview only the target file, the source or both files in a side-by-side view. By selecting the HTML option, the Preview panel can be kept open to serve as a reference while translating.

Preview feature in Trados

Trados Studio, equipped with a wide array of features that will continue to evolve with each new version, is an invaluable tool for translators. From essential core functions to fresh additions, in this article (and its second part) we aim at providing a mix of the timeless basics and novel tools to make translation tasks smoother, easier and more efficient.