Pretranslate Options Deep-Dive

This article outlines how project managers can make use of LILT's Pretranslate options to speed up the translation workflow.

To use Pretranslate, navigate to the desired document within a Project, click the Document Options button, and then click Pretranslate. Multiple documents can be Pretranslated at once using Bulk Document Actions.

In the Pretranslate popup, select any options you want and then click the Pretranslate button to begin translation of the document using Contextual AI. The four options are discussed in the sections below.

Based on the options you select when using Pretranslate, you may see the document progress bars grow. The gray bar indicates translation progress. The green bar indicates review progress. Only confirmed segments are counted toward the progress bars. The progress bars increase the same as if the segments were confirmed manually without using Instant Translation.

The following sections in this article detail the functionality of various option combinations:

Running Pretranslate with no options selected

If none of the options are selected when using Pretranslate:

All segments with Exact (100%) or ICE (101%) matches are translated, regardless of letter casing.
Segments with matches of less than 100% are not translated.
Translation attribution is given to the person who made the original translation in the associated Translation Memory.
Segments are not locked for editing in Translate mode, keeping them in-scope.
Segments are not marked as confirmed in Translation mode.
Segments are not marked as accepted in Review mode.

Option #1: Attribute translation authorship

If Option #1 is selected, all translated segments with exact matches will be attributed to the current user running Pretranslate, regardless of attribution within the associated Translation Memory. The translated segments are confirmed in Translate mode, but can still be edited as needed.

If Option #1 is not selected, attribution will be given to the person who made the original translation in the associated Translation Memory and the segment will not be marked as confirmed in Translate mode.

Selecting Option #1 can be useful for tracking contributions across an entire Project. As described in the How to Read Project Reports article, within Project Reports, segments generated by Pretranslate are counted as contributions under the designated author’s contribution section. If the project manager is attributed, the contributions will fall under their section. Otherwise, the contributions will be shown under the original translator, who may or may not be working on the Project. If they are working on the Project, the Pretranslate data will be combined with the data from manual contributions.

Option #2: Accept and lock exact matches

If Option #2 is selected, segments with Exact (100%) or ICE (101%) matches are:

confirmed in Translate mode
locked from editing in Translate mode, moving the segments out-of-scope
accepted in Review mode; reviewers are still able to make edits to these segments in Review mode without needing to unaccept the segment

Enabling Option #2 is useful for project managers who are confident in the accuracy of a Project’s associated Translation Memory and want to minimize the amount of time translators spend on a document.

If Option #2 is not selected, Exact or ICE match segments:

are confirmed in Translate mode, but can be edited without needing to unconfirm the segment
remain unlocked in Translate mode, leaving them in-scope
and are not marked as accepted in Review mode

Not enabling Option #2 can be useful when starting a new Project where you are borrowing a TM from a previous Project, because the specific translations for the new Project might be slightly different and could need to be adjusted by the translators.

Option #1 and Option #2

Selecting both Option #1 and Option #2 together will mark Pretranslate segments as translated and reviewed. Pretranslate segments will be confirmed and locked in Translate mode, but reviewers can still edit accepted segments in Review mode.

This option is useful for Project Managers who are very confident in the accuracy of a Project’s associated Translation Memory and want to minimize the amount of time reviewers spend on a document.

Option #3: Using MT for unmatched segments

If Option #3 is selected, segments that do not have Exact or ICE TM matches will be generated using the Contextual AI Engine. Segments translated this way will not be marked as confirmed in Translate mode, and thus will not increase the document progress bar. This is shown in the example below that used Option #3 for Pretranslate:

This option is useful for project managers who know they want to make extensive use of MT and want to save time by pre-populating the Contextual AI suggestions using Pretranslate to save their translators time from having to manually populate the suggestions for each segment.

This option is only available for language pairs with MT support.

If Option #3 is not selected, segments that do not have Exact or ICE TM matches will not be translated at all through Pretranslate.

If you use this option in combination with Option #1, be aware that the Pretranslate segments will become locked in the Translate mode, meaning that translators will not be able to fix any issues that arise through Pretranslate. These Pretranslate issues can only be fixed by reviewers.