Studio 2011 Series : Track Changes

I'm using a word file for this example but this same process could be used for Framemaker, InDesign, OpenOffice, XML files etc.

Studio is very flexible here but I need a baseline, so let's start with what I think might be a typical workflow as an example.  I'll start with the translate part where the translator uses Studio in normal translation view to complete their work.  Once complete the finished translation is sent back to the Project Manager, or directly onto a reviewer, who in my example is there to complete a sanity check on the quality of the translation.

The reviewer, in my example, is using Studio too and uses her own translation memories in addition to the one provided by the client.  So the first thing she wants to do on receiving the project package for review is add her own translation memory for lookup only and then use Translate to Fuzzy to find the segments that she thinks will be different... she is confident that anything matching her own translation memory will of course be perfect for the job.

But before she does this we need to take a look at the new toolbar that has appeared when the file was opened for review in the Editor:

This is the track changes toolbar that is actually available in any view in the Editor, so it can be used during translation, review or sign-off (or any other stage you wish), but is by default turned off in translate mode and turned on for review.

The Accept and Reject parts have further drop downs that give you similar control to the Microsoft Word interface so you can easily navigate your way through the changes:

And of course the two little icons to the right of this allow you to simply navigate one at a time backwards and forwards through the changes.  All of this with default keyboard shortcuts that can also be customised to suit the way you would prefer to work.

Now that we've got this introduction out of the way we can move onto the Translate to Fuzzy.  The process stops at the 4th segment and I can see that in my TM I have a 100% match that looks much better so I use alt+2 to insert the whole match in preference.  In Studio 2009 this would have resulted in my segment being replaced but with no record of the changes that had been applied.  In Studio 2011 you can see that the previous translation is now struck out in red and the new one added in blue:

I could have also made the changes manually like this so achieving the same aim but with the specific changes quite clear, rather than a total replacement:

The other point to note is the small magnifying glass on the left with the cross by it.  the magnifying glass has replaced the confirmed translation symbol so that I know this segment has been reviewed and the cross is showing me that the translation has been rejected.

Once I have finished I save the review (making sure I don't accept the changes yet) and send it back to the translator to take a second look.

Now, this is actually a simple document but it could be pretty large with a lot of changes.  Navigation of the changes is simple using the track changes toolbar, but to bring this to my attention even more we have also added a filter in the new display toolbar that I can use to show only those segments with changes like this:

Now I could use the navigation toolbar to work through the changes one at a time, or with this particular document as it's only short just read them and accept them all in one go.  However, I'm not at all sure I know enough about trainspotting to review these changes myself, but I am aware of a friend of a friend who does.  This friend of a friend doesn't know anything about CAT tools (although he has heard of SDL Trados Studio of course) but has Microsoft word on his PC.  So I add a subsegment comment at the start:

I now use the new and improved SDLXLIFF Converter for Microsoft Office that we install with Studio 2011 to create a document for review.  As usual I could create my document with side by side layout or take a horizontal approach... so I ask my friend of a friend and he would prefer horizontal.  I also extract the comments and add a prefix to the resultant file as it may be useful later:

When I open the file in Microsoft Word I see this... the colours are configurable and are based on match values in the translation:

The points to note here are as follows:

1. The comments I added in Studio have been extracted and inserted into Microsoft Word using the proper commenting facility so I can use the Comments feature in Word to navigate around and delete or add as necessary
2. The tracked changes have been placed into this document as proper changes so that Microsoft Word can recognise them and I can also use the Changes feature in Word to navigate and accept or reject the changes in much the same way as we saw earlier in Studio

So, I accept the changes made and do two things more.  First I make a new comment in Word and then I add a bit to the end of one of the segments just to see if the change is carried through too:

I save the document, this time with a prefix of 002_ and I change the prefix setting I used earlier in the converter to reflect this.  For just one document this may not be so important, but if you were using this process for a whole project, across multiple languages, then this feature gives you the ability to automatch the review files with the SDLPROJ file in one go which is a significant timesaver:

The other setting I check is to make sure that I update the segments with all of the new content because I'm not just importing changes that I want to use Studio to review again:

I also don't want to update the status of the segments in this case, so they can remain as they are.  I click on import in the SDLXLIFF Converter and then open up the file in my Studio Project again.  Now I can see that the new comment has been added as a result of being imported from Word, all the changes previously made in Studio have been accepted and the segments are now correct, and of course the additional text written in segment #4 by my friend of a friend the trainspotter is in there too:

So, I reject this change in Studio and I'm done.  I can now sign-off all the segments (not necessary to get the translated document but this is my workflow remember) by opening the document for sign-off and as I know that for this simple document everything is ok now I can immediately close it and all the segments are marked accordingly with this symbol.

Before I finish though I wanted to come back to the versioning I used for the Word documents.  In the server and workflow products that SDL develop we have full version control over the translations, even down to segment level, but for the Studio Desktop as a standalone tool we don't.  So, if you use this application on its own and wanted to have a consistent approach to versioning your documents with an audit trail that anyone can use then you could use the SDLXLIFF Converter to export the files you are working on, irrespective of whether they are Framemaker, InDesign, OpenOffice, XML files etc. and by numbering them in some way (I used 001, 002, 003 etc) you would be able to do the following at any time:

• Restore the translation to a previous state by importing with the SDLXLIFF Converter (individual files or an entire multilingual project)
• Compare versions using Words excellent reviewing capabilities

All in all, I think the track changes feature in Studio is an excellent one and the added benefit of the enhanced integration to MSWord through the SDLXLIFF Converter to allow the translator/reviewer and subject matter expert reviewer brings tangible benefits to the overall process.