SDL Trados Studio 2019 SR1 is a very substantial update with some exciting developments, of which there are four key areas of improvements. The first of these key areas is the translation alignment capabilities – an area where we know a lot of existing customers will be delighted with the changes.
Alignment tool – easier to use with increased flexibility
Whether you are new to CAT tools or not, translation alignment is an efficient way to create translation assets straight away by making use of your existing content to create translation memories.
In this service release, thanks to the feedback you have given us, we have made the process of aligning content much more versatile and easier to use. We have done this by adding new alignment selection and connection capabilities as well as advanced split, go to and search functionalities. Let’s take a look at the key enhancements and changes.
To start with, in previous versions of SDL Trados Studio, a separate ‘Alignment Edit Mode’ was needed to perform more detailed editing for multiple segment connections. This has been removed and selecting and disconnecting moved into the Editor itself, so less clicks are required.
The handling of multiple segment pairs is now made much easier by using these new extended connection options, such as confirming or rejecting alignment connections in specific multi-segment selections and the ability to navigate to or find specific alignments.
For instance, you can now select and merge up to 5 segments (as opposed to a maximum of 3 in previous versions) to one segment. This will help you work much better with alignments where the source and target content deviate from each other and you need to be able to make more flexible connections.
Another exciting update to the alignment tool in Studio 2019 is the new segment connection possibilities. Besides the previous 1:1, 2:2, 1:3, 3:1 connections, you can now also create 1:4, 4:1, 1:5 and 5:1 connections. Additionally, you can confirm or reject your alignments, and even disconnect all segments in a specific selection.
And that’s not all. A brand new ‘Go To’ functionality helps you quickly navigate to alignment segments based on their alignment status, quality or connection type. This is specifically interesting for jumping to specific connections which may need to be reviewed, such as 1:2 or 2:1 connections – and makes for a much more targeted and efficient review of potentially incorrect alignments.
We’ve also implemented a ’Find segment pairs in alignment editor’ meaning you can easily search and find text using simple text, regular expressions and wildcards. You can now also split disconnected segments or insert new blank segments for a cleaner alignment result where needed.
In addition to the automatic segment insertions added when splitting a segment, you can manually insert segments. This can benefit scenarios where the target document has translations that the source document did not have, or vice versa. As a result, great flexibility is achieved when editing diverging source-target content.
Finally, there is a new option to omit alignment metadata fields during TM import. The resulting TMs will not have these custom fields: Source File, Target File and Quality. This can be useful when you fully review the alignment and no longer want alignment-specific information in the TM.
Read our blog to find out how to get started with translation alignment in Studio 2019.
Optimized translation memory engine capabilities for higher accuracy and better leverage
In SDL Trados Studio 2017 we introduced the innovative technology upLIFT Fragment Recall for increased translation memory leverage. Now with Service Release 1 for Studio 2019, the evolution of the translation memory (TM) continues.
We have improved the accuracy of both context and fuzzy matches to provide you with more matches than ever before. Not only have we improved the way context matches are calculated to achieve higher accuracy matches but we now have enhanced stemming for western languages, providing better fuzzy matching.
In addition, we have made improvements in recognizing half/full-width characters for Japanese language, typical in DTP situations, which we believe is a real step forward for this market.
You will also be able to reuse translation memories which you have created in Studio 2017 and Studio 2015, but in order to benefit from the latest TM enhancements, we recommend that you upgrade all of your older TMs. You can do this by using one of the available Translation Memory Upgrade mechanisms, depending on which version of Studio you are using.
All of your legacy TMs are clearly marked by a triangle warning sign, giving you a visual indicator so you are aware which TMs you need to upgrade.
To see how you can upgrade your translation memories, read our step-by-step guide.
Simplified and flexible terminology management
Over a year ago, we launched our beta program for Language Cloud Terminology, a simple way to create and manage terminology in the cloud. Having benefited from vast amounts of feedback you have given us, we are now offering Language Cloud Terminology fully integrated with SDL Trados Studio 2019 SR1 as a subscription-based service.
SDL Language Cloud Terminology allows you to do the following:
- Create and manage termbases – add terms and share your terminology assets from the cloud (available in the business package ONLY)
- Customize termbases by defining data categories and their structure
- Customize the termbase definition instead of just using the predefined templates (available in the business package ONLY)
- Use terminology verification with the SDL Language Cloud termbases
- Terminology verification for SDL Language Cloud works the same way as it does with SDL MultiTerm termbases
- Benefit from higher quality results in searching, both when using linguistic as well as traditional character-based fuzzy searching.
You can find details of all the features in various packages here.
Improved review flows in both Track Changes and TQA
The final set of improvements have been made in the Track Changes and Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) areas, helping to increase stability and effectiveness for all reviewers.
You can now use the new Show Mark-up combo options to control whether you want to have review mark-up displayed while you are correcting or checking a translation:
• Show Mark-up shows all highlights (changes) you made as well as their corresponding formatting
• No Mark-up hides all highlights, so all your tracked changes appear as normal text in the Editor
• Original shows the original document without the changes that were added. This functionality helps you switch between a more compact or more detailed display of your changes, so you can control the depth at which you assess your reviewed file.
Add comments within Track Changes has also been simplified. You can now add comments without having to select the text of a tracked change first. This functionality will save you a lot of time by also making commenting much more straightforward. AutoCorrect will also be enabled when Track Changes is active. However, you will be able to control whether AutoCorrect is automatically enabled or disabled when Track Changes is active.
Finally, Translation Quality Assessment (TQA) is a feature we introduced back to Studio 2015 to measure the quality of a translation using your chosen criteria, in this service release there is now a new option to Assign severity of type ‘Repetition’ to auto-propagated TQA items. This helps improve the accuracy of the TQA quality score. Also, we have improved the robustness of the TQA functionality.
As you can see, Service Release 1 for SDL Trados Studio 2019 includes a lot of features and functionality which we think are going to really benefit you and your translations.
To find out more about Service Release 1 for Studio 2019, click here.
