Introduction to Translate, Version 3

The CAT Editor (computer-aided translation) is the core of the Lilt platform and where translation happens. Lilt’s Editor provides a wealth of functions that make the entire translation process more efficient.

This article provides an overview for each of the CAT Editor components:

• The header
• Segment editor
• Leaving comments
• Source highlighting tool
• The sidebar
• The footer

The Editor has two modes:

• Translate: 
• Review:

The two modes are largely the same. This article discusses the features available in both modes. For more details about review mode, see the article on Reviewing Documents.

When in the Editor, you can tell which mode you are in by checking the icon in the upper-right.

The header

The header bar has a range of options available for managing and customizing your experience with the Editor. Each tab of the header is described in the sections below.

File tab

The File t ab provides several actions to help manage documents.

• Download: Use this option to download the translated document in one of three formats:
  • Option 1: original format
  • Option 2: TXT format
  • Option 3: XLIFF format
• Unlock document translation: If the document has been locked for translation, the project manager can use this option to unlock the document in translation mode so it can be worked on again by translators. For more information on this, see the CAT Guide for Project Managers.
• QA checks: Project managers can run two types of QA checks from the File menu: full QA checks and linguistic batch QA checks.

Edit tab

The Edit tab contains a list of commonly used actions to help speed up your work within the Editor.

• Undo (shortcut Ctrl + Z): Undo the last edits that were made in the Editor.
• Select next word (Shift + Tab): Select the next suggested word from the suggestion area below the typing text.
• Concordance (Ctrl + Alt + C): Opens the Concordance sidebar.
• Find and Replace (Ctrl + H): Search for text in all typing areas of the document. Includes the option to require the whole word to match, require the case to match, and to search through the entire Project instead of just the document.

• Highlight to change case (Shift + F3): Changes the case of the currently selected section of taget text.

View tab

The View tab allows you to set options for how segments are displayed in the Editor. The first two sections (split with a horizontal divider) filter what segments are displayed in the Editor by a variety of parameters. Each of these filter sections can only have one option selected.

• Status filter section: Filter segments by status: all segments, confirmed, unconfirmed, unreviewed, or reviewed.
• Preview mode: Toggles between segment edit mode and preview mode. Preview mode displays confirmed or accepted target segments with paragraph and HTML formatting.
• Additional filter section: Filter segments by additional content: notes, errors, or tags. This filter section compounds with the status filter section. If a filter is set for this section and you want to remove the filter, click on the filter to deselect it.

• Split view: With split view disabled (the default setting), target text is displayed beneath the source text. If split view is enabled, target text is displayed to the right of the source text. Split view helps increase proofreading speed.

• Previous segment (Ctrl + Up Arrow): Allows you to navigate up through the document, segment by segment.
• Next segment (Ctrl + Down Arrow): Allows you to navigate down through the document, segment by segment.
• Show invisible characters: When enabled, displays characters that are normally invisible (such as spaces, tabs, right-to-left marks, and left-to-right marks) in both the source and target text.

Insert tab

The Insert tab has a range of tools for interacting with text in the Editor.

• Suggested phrase (Enter): Insert the suggested word into the target text field.
• Full suggestion (Shift + Enter): Insert the full suggested sentence into the target text field.
• Non-breaking spaces (Ctrl + Shift + Space) : Insert a non-breaking space into the target text field. These can be useful in certain situations, as the non-breaking spaces do not get erased in document formats that ignore extra spaces, such as HTML.
• Line break (Alt + Enter): Adds a line break on the currently selected line in the target text field. Line breaks can also be copied from source text to target text by using the Copy source to target option in the segment editing tools.
• Copy source to target (Ctrl + I): Inserts the source text into the target text field. This is useful if a segment does not have to be translated for whatever reason.
• Add new term (Alt + A): Opens a popup where you can add a new translation entry to the associated Lilt Memory.
• Add comment (Ctrl + Alt + M): Add a comment to the currently selected segment. These are the same comments you can add using the View Note button next to a segment.
• Insert right-to-left mark (Ctrl + K): Inserts an invisible right-to-left mark character into the target text field. These are used to determine how the adjacent characters are grouped in respect to text direction.
• Insert left-to-right mark (Ctrl + L): Inserts an invisible left-to-right mark character into the target text field. These are used to determine how the adjacent characters are grouped in respect to text direction.

Tags tab

The Tag tab provides tools for manipulating tags within the Editor. For more detailed information about tags, see the article on Tags and Formatting.

• Show source tags: Toggles whether tags in the source text are displayed.
• Project target tags (Ctrl + Alt + N): Projects target tags onto the segment.
• Select next tag (Ctrl + ]): Navigate forward through tags.
• Select previous tag (Ctrl + [): Navigate backward through tags.
• Select matching tags (Alt + Shift): Toggle between which tag is selected in a matching pair of tags.
• Move tag one word left (M): Move the selected tag one word to the left area.
• Move tag one word right (/): Move the selected tag one word to the right.
• Move tag one character left (,): Move the selected tag one character to the left.
• Move tag one character right (.): Move the selected tag one character to the right.

Settings tab

The Settings tab contains a variety of ways for you to customize the behavior of the Editor to suit your needs. These settings are set on a per-account basis, with changes persisting across Documents and Projects.

• Forward/Backward Auto-Propagation: When enabled and a segment is confirmed, Lilt uses the segment's target text to fill and replace the target text of other segments with matching source content forward/backward in the document. Auto-Propagation always occurs for unconfirmed segments.
• Keep sidebar open: This option toggles whether the sidebar is kept open or not. By default, this is enabled.
• Auto-scroll editor: With auto-scroll on, when a segment is confirmed, the Editor automatically places you into editing the next segment and the Editor scrolls to keep the selected segment on the page.
• Use legacy editor: Clicking this option swaps your Editor back to the previous version of the Editor (version 2) for the current user session. Leaving and returning to the Editor will revert to the most current Editor version.

Segment editor

When you open the Editor, you will find your source text divided into numbered segments. An active source segment has several components:

1. Segment number
2. Source text (ST)
3. Target text (TT) typing area: You can type in your translation manually or insert a suggestion from the suggestion area. Alternatives for the next word to insert may appear in this area as ghost-words. At the far right of the typing area, there is a number display for how many characters are inside the typing area.
4. MT Suggestion area: Displays suggested translations. TM matches above 75% are shown first. If a match does not exist, the interactive MT output appears. This section updates as you type. You can click on any of the suggested words to add that word to the typing area. You can learn more about suggestions in the Translation Memory Matching article.

The checkmark in the bottom-right corner of a segment lets you confirm (for Translate mode) or accept (for Review mode) the segment to mark it as complete. Once confirmed/accepted, the segment will display a green checkmark (for confirmed) or a double green checkmark (for accepted) next to the segment number and the checkmark in the bottom-right will turn into a cross that be clicked to unconfirm/unaccept the segment. See the Segment State Indicators article for additional information.

Comments

The Comments button is displayed on the right side of each segment. If you are the only translator for a given document, you can utilize the option to add notes, make to-do lists, and create reminders. If there are multiple translators, the comments space can be used for collaborative discussion as well. Learn more about comments in the Comments article.

Source highlighting tool

The source highlighting tool functions as a way to quickly access the terminology tools. Using the mouse, highlight the source text you're interested, then right-click on the text to open the tool options:

• Copy to target: Copies the highlighted source words into the target text field.
• Lookup in Segment context: Opens the Segment Context sidebar, puts the selected source text into the search field, and searches for the text.
• Lookup in Concordance: Opens the Concordance sidebar, puts the selected source text into the search field, and searches for the text.

The sidebar

There are three sidebar buttons on the right side of the Editor that are used to open and close the sidebar:

• Segment Context: Segment context provides translation information about the segment selected.

• Concordance: The Concordance tab gives in-context examples of how a word of phrase is used in the target language. These examples are pulled from a variety of sources, including a static set of public concordance data available to everyone, all memories created by uploading TMX files or translating in Lilt, and TMX files you can specifically choose to only upload for concordance (which will have no effect on the machine translation model).

• Find and Replace: The find and replace tool allows you to search for text in all typing areas of the document. It includes options to require the whole word to match, require the case to match, and to search through the entire Project instead of just the document. The find and replace tool is also accessible via the Edit tab.

The footer

The footer bar allows you to:

• See the name of the file you are working on and the language pair.
• Navigate segments by typing in the number of a segment into the text box.
• View how many segments have been confirmed.
• View how many words have been translated out of the total number of words in the document.
• See an estimate on how much time it will take to finish translating the document.