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

To use Instant Translate, 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 Instant Translate 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 Instant Translate, 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 Instant Translate with no options selected

If none of the options are selected when using Instant Translate:

  • 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 Instant Translate, 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 Instant Translate 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 Instant Translate 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 Instant Translate segments as translated and reviewed. Instant Translate 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: Case sensitive matching

If Option #3 is selected, Lilt only generates Instant Translate translations on Exact or ICE matches where the letter casing also matches.

If Option #3 is not selected, Lilt will translate Exact or ICE matches regardless of letter casing.

As an example, let’s suppose we have a TM entry in the associated Translation Memory with the source text as “Sentence One” and the target text as “Sentence One translated”.

Now, let’s say we are translating a document that contains the segment “sentence one”. If we run Instant Translate with Option #3 selected, Instant Translate will skip over our segment (“sentence one”) because it doesn’t match the exact casing of the TM entry. However, if we run Instant Translate without Option #3 selected, Instant Translate will translate the segment to “Sentence One translated”.

Case-insensitive matching is the default option when running Instant Translate, because in most cases it will save translators time, although it does mean translators will need to pay special attention to capitalization for these translated segments. Turning Option #3 on to enable case-sensitive matching would make more sense if you know that it’s going to cause more work to have translators fix capitalization issues or if you think your translators are more likely to miss those capitalization issues.

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

Option #4: Using MT for unmatched segments

If Option #4 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 #4 for Instant Translate:

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 Instant Translate 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 #4 is not selected, segments that do not have Exact or ICE TM matches will not be translated at all through Instant Translate.

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