Globalization Team

Translator Handbook
Globalization Team

Abstract
This document is intended to provide translators with EMC
specific information needed during translation.

Globalization Team

Document History
Published date

Version

September 30, 2014

V1.0

Changes made

First release

Author(s)

Approver(s)

Lynn Liu, Nicola

Spiniello, Steven Sun

Georg Kirchner

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All Rights

Reserved.
EMC believes the information in this publication is
accurate as of its publication date. The information is
subject to change without notice.
The information in this publication is provided as is.
EMC Corporation makes no representations or
warranties of any kind with respect to the information
in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied
warranties of merchantability or fitness for a
particular purpose.
Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software
described in this publication requires an applicable
software license.
For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names,
see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com.
All other trademarks used herein are the property of
their respective owners.

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 5
1.1.

Purpose, scope, and intended audience ........................................................................... 5

2. Working with Trados Studio ....................................................................................... 6

2.1.
2.2.
2.3.
2.4.
2.5.
2.6.

Keeping your Trados Studio version up-to-date ................................................................ 6

Trados Studio segment status .......................................................................................... 6
Finding formatting errors in Trados Studio ........................................................................ 6
Validating SDLXLIFF files after translation ........................................................................ 7
TM Search/Concordance Minimum match value settings .................................................. 8
Delivering files for offline review ........................................................................................ 9

3. Tags and formatting .................................................................................................. 10

3.1.
3.2.

Handling formatting tags in LCA DITA xml ...................................................................... 10

Handling unused tags ..................................................................................................... 10

4. Handling mismatched segments ............................................................................. 12

4.1.
4.2.

Split and mismatched segments ..................................................................................... 12

Handling mismatched segments ..................................................................................... 12

5. Terms and Definitions............................................................................................... 14

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Table of Figures
Figure 1 - Formatting errors in Trados Studio .................................................................................. 7
Figure 2 - Verifying files .................................................................................................................. 7
Figure 3 - Verify files report ............................................................................................................. 8
Figure 4 - Minimum match value for TM searches........................................................................... 8
Figure 5 - Unused tags.................................................................................................................. 11
Figure 6 - Merging segments in Trados Studio .............................................................................. 13

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1. Introduction
1.1. Purpose, scope, and intended audience
This document provides technical guidance to translators who preform translation work for EMC
either in Trados Studio or in the TMS interface. For linguistic guidelines, consult the EMC
Localization Guides located in eRoom here.

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2. Working with Trados Studio

2.1. Keeping your Trados Studio version up-to-date
As of September 2014, translators will install Trados Studio 2014 SP1. Under File > Options >
Automatic Updates, check-mark Automatically check for updates when the application
starts. Accept all updates when prompted.

2.2. Trados Studio segment status

Upon delivery of translated SDLXLIFF files for review, all segments must be delivered with status
set to Translated, except for the following, which should have a Draft status:
Un-edited 100% Matches;
Un-edited Context Matches;
Un-edited Repetitions (100% auto-propagations). Note that the first instance should be
confirmed, and thus must have the Translated status.
Segments whose target translation is willingly left empty.
Mismatched segments;
Note: Perfect Matches are delivered to the translators in Translated status. These do not require
any further confirmation.
This approach is no different from what was done in SDLX, where 100% matches had to be sent to
review unconfirmed (color coding was gold). If the 100% match was edited, then it had to be
confirmed (blue).
In Trados Studio, the 100% matches are presented to the translator as Draft, with a full green box
with 100 inside. If this segment is not edited, there is no need to confirm it (just as before), and
therefore it remains Draft. Instead, if it is edited, the status is still Draft, but the box is no longer
fully colored, and ideally it is no longer considered a 100% match. This segment MUST be
confirmed.

2.3. Finding formatting errors in Trados Studio

If the user confirms a segment with tag deleted/missing, an error indicator will show in the status
column. This check is performed in all the file types included in the EMC project template. The
detailed error message can be found under the Messages tab. See Figure 1.

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Figure 1 - Formatting errors in Trados Studio

2.4. Validating SDLXLIFF files after translation

Before the translator sends the translated files to the reviewer or creates the Return package in
Trados Studio for uploading to TMS, the translator must perform the following validation steps. This
will prevent files with formatting issues and other errors from getting stuck in the automatic QA
steps in TMS. Users should use the Verify feature available under Batch Tasks to validate the
translated files. See Figure 2.

Figure 2 - Verifying files

Detailed results of the verification can be found under the Reports section. See Figure 3.

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Figure 3 - Verify files report

2.5. TM Search/Concordance Minimum match value settings

Because of different match rate algorithms applied by TMS and Trados Studio, the fuzzy match
rates in TMS might be different from those in Trados Studio. For example, an 82% match segment
in TMS would be calculated as 69% match in Trados Studio. This means that translators might not
be able to find a TMS pre-translated TU from TM Search/Concordance in Trados Studio if the
Minimum match value (under Search) is set to 75% as usual. It is therefore suggested to set
Minimum match value to 60% (as opposed to 75%).

Figure 4 - Minimum match value for TM searches

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2.6. Delivering files for offline review

From a technical perspective, both Studio Packages and separate SDLXLIFF files are acceptable.
Whenever possible though, Studio Packages are recommended since together with the SDLXLIFF
files they also contain reference files, the project TM, source files, project settings, etc.

Globalization Team

3. Tags and formatting

3.1. Handling formatting tags in LCA DITA xml
The SDL LiveContent Architect (LCA) publishing engine renders tags in target languages based on
language-specific style sheets in the localized output (PDF and WebHelp). Accordingly, a given tag
may be rendered as bold text in one target language, and as a pair of quotation mark in another
target language. To avoid formatting errors in the rendered output, translators must rely on the
existing tags and place them in the location equivalent to the location in the source language. Also,
translators must not type in formatting manually (e.g., enclose UI references in quotation marks or
angle brackets) in addition or in lieu of existing tags.
Since these conventions differ by file type, translators will need to pay attention to which type of file
they are translated. Translators will recognize LCA DITA xml files by their file name in Trados
Studio: file names start with GUID followed by a lengthy code and end in xml.sdlxliff.
The language-specific formatting conventions for commonly used elements are currently provided
in the EMC Localization guides.

3.2. Handling unused tags

The following formatting instructions apply to file formats that do not use style sheets to control the
rendering of formatting tasks. Typically, these are Microsoft Office file formats such as *.docx.
If the localization guide for your language specifies formatting that differs from the English source,
for example quotation marks around UI references instead of bold face, perform the following
steps:
Copy the formatting tags to the end of the sentence after any translated text. Insert a white
space within each tag pair.
Format the translated text by inserting manually the quotation marks.
The results will be as follows:
o Source

Localized

In principle, the same goes for self-closing tags:

o Source

Localized

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Figure 5 - Unused tags

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4. Handling mismatched segments

4.1.

Split and mismatched segments

When working in Trados Studio and TMS, source files are segmented, which is the key to
successful translation asset leveraging. Segmentation rules usually allow a sentence or a title to be
captured as one segment. However, in some cases, the author may have broken a sentence into
several segments (split segments). In some languages, the translation order of these split
segments has to be adjusted, causing translated segments not to match the source segments.
These are referred to as mismatched segments. Mismatched segments will corrupt Translation
Memories and therefore lead to incorrect translations when leveraging these TMs in the future.
Consider the following source sentence: Word1 Word2 Word3.
After segmentation, the sentence may look like in the following table. In an ideal situation, source
and target segments correctly match each other.
Source Segments

Target Segments

Word1 Word2

Translation of Word1 Word2

Word3.

Translation of Word3.

In some cases, due to linguistic requirements, it is necessary to adjust translation order or

distribute our translation into different segments. This causes source-target mismatched segments
like in the following table.
Source Segments

Target Segments

Word1 Word2

Translation of Word2

Word3.

Translation of Word3 Word1.

To protect Translation Memories and avoid future leveraging problems, importing these
mismatched segments into TMs must be avoided by setting their segment status to Draft even if
these segments contain new or edited translations.

4.2.

Handling mismatched segments

When translating in Trados Studio, the translator can merge split segments to provide a complete
and exact matching translation. To do so:
1. In the Editor window, hold down the Ctrl key and click on the segment number column to
select the rows to merge;
2. Right-click on the segment number column of the last selected row and select Merge
Segments from the shortcut menu.
If there are any translations for the merged segments, those translations are also merged. See
Figure 6.

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If this functionality is used in Trados Studio but the project was a TMS project, the translator must
communicate this to the reviewer in the Review Handoff email, and clearly indicate the file name
and the segments involved. If the project is a non-TMS project, notification is not necessary.
Note
It is only possible to merge neighboring segments that belong to the same original paragraph.

Figure 6 - Merging segments in Trados Studio

If the segments do not belong to the same paragraph, or if the translation is done directly in the
TMS interface, the above-mentioned solution is not valid. In both of these cases, the translator is
required not to confirm the mismatched segments thus keeping them in Draft status. Those
segments will not be imported into the TM.
In this case, no notification must be provided to the reviewer.

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5. Terms and Definitions

GQM

Globalization Quality Manager

LCA

LiveContent Architect

LQE

Language Quality Expert

PM

Project Manager

SLR

Senior Language Resource

TM

Translation Memory

TMS

Translation Management System