Trados Studio

Level 2 Training Course

Maintaining Translation Memories

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Table of Contents
Translation Memory Maintenance ........................................................................................................................... 3
Opening the TM .................................................................................................................................................. 3
Changing the display font size ............................................................................................................................ 4
Accessing the application options through Tell Me ............................................................................................. 4
Browsing the TM ................................................................................................................................................. 5
Editing and deleting TUs ..................................................................................................................................... 7
Searching for TUs that contain a particular string ............................................................................................... 8
Replacing terms .................................................................................................................................................. 9
Exercise ............................................................................................................................................................ 11
Summary ............................................................................................................................................................... 12

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Translation Memory Maintenance
From time to time, it may be necessary to do some maintenance on your TMs. TM maintenance tasks
usually involve the following:

 viewing the TM content

 searching for translation units that contain a particular term or string

 editing translation units

 deleting translating units

 finding and replacing terms or other strings of text

For this chapter you will find a set of sample TM files in the following sub-folder:
.. \Sample Files\03 - TM Maintenance
This folder contains TMs with the language pairs English to German, Spanish, French, and Italian.
In this workbook, we will demonstrate using the English-to-German TM. However, you can do the
exercises using the TM that has whichever of these language pairs you are most comfortable with.

Opening the TM

To open your preferred sample TM, take the following steps:

1. Switch to the Translation Memories view in the navigation pane. This is the view that we use
to maintain our TMs.

2. In the ribbon, click Open. Browse to your sample TM and open it by double-clicking the file.

3. This will display the TM content in a side-by-side view, as shown in the following screenshot:

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Changing the display font size

You may want to increase the font size to make viewing the TM content more comfortable. To do this,
take the following steps:

1. From the File menu, select Options.

2. In the Options window, select Translation Memories View, shown in the following
screenshot.

3. Under Font size, use the dropdown lists to increase the source and the target font size to,
say, 14.

Note that the font size for source and target segments changes accordingly in the TM side-by-side
view.

Accessing the application options through Tell Me

The Options window contains a lot of useful settings. Given the large number of configuration options
in Studio, you may sometimes find it difficult to find a particular setting. To make life easier, Studio
offers the Tell Me function, which allows you to quickly find and bring up a specific option or feature.
To find the options page that allows you to change the TM font size, for example, you can do the
following:

1. Click the Tell me button shown in the following screenshot or use the keyboard shortcut
Alt+Q.

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 2. Next to the light bulb icon, type the string font size. This will list functions relevant to adapting
font sizes. Use the Down key to go to Translation Memories View, highlighted in the
following screenshot, and then press Enter.

3. This will directly open the Options page with the font size settings for the TM view.

Browsing the TM
The side-by-side view lists the translation units (TUs) in the TM. Use the Down key to jump from one
TU to the next. Note that the System Fields window in the lower-right corner (shown in the following
screenshot) indicates when the current TU was created and by whom, and when it was last modified
and by whom. This information is captured automatically while a document is being translated in
Studio.

By default, Studio displays 50 TUs per page. In our sample TM, when you scroll down, you will see
that the last TU is the one with the number 50.

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You can change the number of TUs displayed per page by selecting another value for TUs per Page
in the ribbon, as shown in the following screenshot:

The maximum number of TUs that can be displayed on one page is 1000. In this example, you will
see that you are on page 1 of 106.
To move to the following page, click Next Page in the ribbon. This will move you to page 2, that is, to
the next set of 50 TUs.

Now try moving between some of the pages. Click Next Page once or twice more. Click Previous
Page to move back to the previous set of TUs. Click First Page to go back to the initial page, which
corresponds to the first 50 TUs. Click Last Page to go to the last set of TUs.
Note that the TUs are sorted chronologically, which means that the oldest TUs are shown on the first
page and the most recent on the last. To view the TUs that were added most recently, use the Last
Page button.
To move to, say, page 50 of the TM, you do not have to click Next or Previous Page 50 times.
Instead, just type the page number into the field shown in the following screenshot, and then press
Enter.

💡 To find out how many TUs your TM contains, click Settings in the ribbon. This will
show some general information on the TM, including the TU count, as shown in the
following screenshot:

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Editing and deleting TUs

In this section, we will show you how to edit TUs in situations such as when you spot a mistake or an
outdated term while you are browsing the TM.
Make sure that you are on the first page. In the first TU, imagine that you need to change the source
text to: Display the license status here.
You can freely edit source and target segments. When you start editing a segment, the corresponding
TU changes its background color to yellow. This means that the changes are pending (at this stage
the changes can still be reversed, until they are confirmed in the steps set out below).
For good measure, edit either the source or target segment of the second TU. This will also change
the background color of the TU.
Imagine that you want to delete TU 5, which contains just a single word:

To do this, right-click the TU and select Mark TU for Deletion. This will change the background color
of the TU to red, which means that the deletion is pending.

To make the edit and delete actions permanent, click Commit Changes in the ribbon.

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You will then be prompted to confirm whether you want to commit these three pending changes, as
this action cannot be undone. Click Yes to confirm.

💡 Once committed, edits and deletions made to a TM cannot be undone. There is no

equivalent of a Ctrl+Z action in TM maintenance.

Note that, once your edits are applied, TU 5 is missing, and the background colors have disappeared.
Also note that the TUs have not been re-numbered to account for the deletion (TU 4 is now followed
by TU 6).

Searching for TUs that contain a particular string

Often you will want to display only TUs that contain a particular string. This is useful when you want,
for example, to make sure that a specific term has been translated correctly and consistently. Imagine
that you want to display all TUs that contain the word termbase in the source segments. Simply type
termbase in the Source Text field, and then either click Perform Search or press Enter.

The TUs now displayed all contain the string termbase. The search string is not highlighted within the
search results, but you can use the find functionality to highlight the term within each segment by
taking the following steps. This can be useful when the term is not easy to spot in a longer sentence:

1. Make sure that your pointer is somewhere inside the source column. Press Ctrl+F to bring up
the Find and Replace window.

2. Make sure that Source is selected. Type termbase in the Find what field.

3. Click Find Next, which will highlight the string as shown below:

Each time you click Find Next, you will jump to the next TU with the string highlighted again.

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 4. Click Close to close the Find and Replace window.

Note that when you filter the TUs for a particular string, Studio will by default list the first 50 matching
units. If there are more matching TUs, you can access them by clicking the Next Page button.

Replacing terms
Imagine that someone has decided that the term termbase should no longer be used, and that the
term terminology database will be used instead in all future source material. You therefore need to
make sure that the TM is consistent with this imminent change in terminology use.
You could of course edit each TU individually as you learned earlier. However, given that the English -
> German TM contains about 500 matching TUs, editing every single unit will take a long time.
Fortunately, Studio offers a find and replace feature which works just like that in applications such as
MS Word. To use this feature here, take the following steps:

1. Make sure that you are on the first page of the TM and that the first TU is selected.

2. Press Ctrl+H, which will open the Find and Replace window with the Replace tab selected.

3. Under Find What type termbase and under Replace with terminology database.

4. Make sure that Source is selected.

5. Select the checkbox Match case. The term might also be present with an initial upper-case
letter, and we would need to run a separate replace operation for those instances.

6. Click Find Next to find the first instance, and then click Replace to replace the term and
jump to the next segment.

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 7. You could, of course, repeat the action of clicking Replace for each unit. This is slightly more
efficient than editing each segment manually but will still take a lot of time and effort. Instead,
click Replace All, which will replace all of the units on the current page.

8. Note that when you click Replace All, most units will have a yellow background, which
means that the changes are only pending for now. The units that contain the upper-case
variant will not be affected and do not have a yellow background. Click Close to close the
Find and Replace window.

9. Click Commit Changes, and then click Yes to make the changes permanent.

10. This will automatically move you on to the next set of matching units. Follow the steps set out
above again on the current page and repeat the procedure on the remaining pages until all
instances have been replaced.

💡 Given that our TM contains about 500 matching units, you will have to repeat this
procedure about 10 times. As an alternative approach, you could increase the number of
units shown on one page. However, having a limited number of units on one page gives
you better control over the replace procedure, as it is easier to verify the units before you
commit the changes.

💡 You can also use steps set out above to handle the replacement of plural forms,
because a string such as ‘termbases’ will be correctly replaced with ‘terminology
databases’. However, in cases where the plural formation is more complex (e.g. goose /
geese), we recommend that you select Match whole word and run a separate replace
operation for the plural forms.

For further practice, replace all units that contain the upper-case form, Termbase.
To do this, we recommend that you type Termbase into the Source Text field, select the checkbox
Case sensitive and then click Perform Search, as shown in the following screenshot:

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This gives you a rough idea of how many matching units there are.
Now press Ctrl+H and type Termbase under Find what, and Terminology database under Replace
with, as shown in the following screenshot:

💡 When you have finished, delete the string Termbase from the Source Text field and
click Perform Search again to redisplay all of the units in the TM. If you replace all
instances of a string and then run a search for that string, there will be no matching units
to display, and the side-by-side view will be empty in such situations. This does not mean
that the TM itself is empty, just that there are no more matching units to display.

Exercise

If you are using the English -> German TM, run a replace operation on the target segments to replace
the term Benutzer with Anwender.
If you are using a sample TM with another target language, try to find a similar example, e.g., for
Spanish replace usuario with another term such as operador.
Note that to look up all segments that contain a particular target string you must type the string in the
Target Text field. In the Find and Replace window, make sure that Target is selected.

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Replacing Benutzer with Anwender should be relatively easy, as both words have the same gender.
Keep in mind that running a replace operation on multiple segments always bears the risk of
introducing mistakes. The risks can be minimized by running separate replace operations for things
like singular/plural and compound forms, as in the case of, say, Benutzerhandbuch and
Benutzersoftware.

Summary
There are many more things that you can do in terms of TM maintenance. For this course, however,
we will limit ourselves to the features that you have learned above, which should cover the most
common practical use cases. Our advanced course takes TM maintenance one step further by
introducing you to features such as filtering and batch edit and delete operations.
To summarize the main points of this chapter:
 In the Translation Memories view you can browse the TM content. The translation units are
listed in a side-by-side view.

 By default, 50 TUs are listed on one page. The page size can be configured to display
between 10 and 1,000 TUs.

 The ribbon contains the Next Page and Previous Page buttons, which allow you to move
from one page to the next.

 The TUs are sorted chronologically with the most recent units on the last page.

 You can edit and delete translation units. All changes are pending until you click Commit
Changes.

 It is possible to filter TUs for segments that contain a particular source and/or target string.
This is useful to check whether specific strings have been translated correctly.

 You can replace terms and other text strings if, for example, the terminology conventions
have changed and the TM needs to be updated accordingly.

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