Can't view client's comments in xliff files in OmegaT
Thread poster: Magda P.
Magda P.
Magda P.  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 21:14
Italian to Greek
+ ...
Aug 21, 2019

Hi everyone,
I hope you can help me out.
I am working on a Trados sdlxliff file in OmegaT and in some segments there should be a comment from the client I should give feedback on. In the "comments" tab there's nothing except for a long alphanumeric code.
I am using OmegaT 4.5.2 version 2nd update.
Is OmegaT compatible with comments created in Trados?
Is there an option that needs to be selected?
Thank you.


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 21:14
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Magda Aug 21, 2019

Magda Phili wrote:
I am working on an SDLXLIFF file in OmegaT and in some segments there should be a comment from the client I should give feedback on. In the "comments" tab there's nothing except for a long alphanumeric code.


OmegaT can't show you SDLXLIFF comments because comments in an SDLXLIFF file are saved elsewhere in the file, with a comment ID stored at segment level. What's more, the Comments tab in OmegaT doesn't show you the type of comment that you're looking for. The ID number shown in the Comments tab in OmegaT is the segment ID, not the comment ID.

If you want to see the comment, and you don't want to open the file in Trados, then you have to open a copy of the SDLXLIFF file in a text editor (e.g. Akelpad, using drag and drop), then search for the segment ID shown in OmegaT, and then look for the comment ID nearby, and then search for the comment ID. This will find the comment (which is normally stored near the start of the file). Not very user-friendly.

Alternatively, a demo version of CafeTran will show you the comments (but won't show you what kind of a comment it is, or if the comment relates to the whole segment or only to part of the segment, unless you click on the segment itself). I don't know how safe it is to edit SDLXLIFF files in CafeTran, but you can open a copy of your file in CafeTran to see the comments at least. I tried a few other free/demo XLIFF editors but they show only the segment ID, not the comment ID or the comment itself.


 
Magda P.
Magda P.  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 21:14
Italian to Greek
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you! Aug 21, 2019

Thank you Samuel.
Resolved, I opened the file in MemoQ.


 
tcordonniery
tcordonniery
France
Local time: 21:14
XLIFF's comments in OmegaT Aug 22, 2019

The Okapi filter is not capable of retreiving XLIFF comments, but DGT's filter, yes:
http://185.13.37.79:8003/index.php/p/stax-filters/downloads/

Regards
Thomas


 
Magda P.
Magda P.  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 21:14
Italian to Greek
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
@tcordonniery Aug 23, 2019

Thank you, I will check that out.

 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 21:14
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Thomas Aug 23, 2019

tcordonniery wrote:
The Okapi filter is not capable of retreiving XLIFF comments, but DGT's filter, yes:
http://185.13.37.79:8003/index.php/p/stax-filters/downloads/


I tried it on a test file here but it does not really work.

In Trados, you have three types of comments and three types of scope:

Types (i.e. "severity"):
- "For your information" type comments
- "Warning" type comments
- "Error" type comments

Scopes:
- Applies to selected text ("range")
- Applies to selected segment (i.e. whole segment)
- Applies to selected file (i.e. applies to the whole file)

My test file contains a mixture of all six.

comments in trados

CafeTran shows the text and segment comments, but not the file comment. You can only see if it is a text or a segment comment if you're in that segment: a segment comment will have comment tags at the very start and very end of the segment. CafeTran does not show the type of comment.

comments in cafetran

OmegaT (normal, not DGT) with the Stax filter puts every comment onto every segment, and crazy things happen if sentence segmentation is enabled. [This may have something to do with the file, though, since in both PoEdit and Virtaal, the entire paragraph in the test file is presented as a single segment, even though in Trados each sentence is a separate segment. PoEdit considers the file untranslated, but Virtaal shows the translations (combined into a single paragraph) *and* shows where some of the "range" type comments apply, but does not show the comments themselves. I know PoEdit and Virtaal are terrible XLIFF editors, but opening files in them is sometimes revealing.]


DZiW (X)
 
Hans Lenting
Hans Lenting
Netherlands
Member (2006)
German to Dutch
Editing Studio files in CafeTran Aug 24, 2019

Samuel Murray wrote:

I don't know how safe it is to edit SDLXLIFF files in CafeTran


I can tell you that it’s absolutely safe.

BTW: Besides SDLXLIFF files, CafeTran also opens Studio packages, including any embedded termbases and memories.


[Edited at 2019-08-24 07:03 GMT]


 
Milan Condak
Milan Condak  Identity Verified
Local time: 21:14
English to Czech
Client's comments in xliff files Aug 24, 2019

Samuel Murray wrote:

I tried it on a test file here but it does not really work.



I made a short presentation of testing a Samuel's file.

http://www.condak.cz/nove/2019-08/24/en/00.html

Client's comments in xliff files

Cheers,

Milan


 
tcordonniery
tcordonniery
France
Local time: 21:14
Feedback Aug 26, 2019

Hi Samuel

Thanks for your feedback and the example, which can be useful for me to test basic cases.

Samuel Murray wrote:

In Trados, you have three types of comments and three types of scope: (...)

CafeTran shows the text and segment comments, but not the file comment. You can only see if it is a text or a segment comment if you're in that segment: a segment comment will have comment tags at the very start and very end of the segment. CafeTran does not show the type of comment.


Yes, I know that Trados has notion of scope and severity, but you must not forget that OmegaT does not have these notions. As you tested with CafeTran, you already know that when we open in a CAT tool the file created for another one, it is not always possible to render notions which exist in the original tool but are meaningless for the second one.
That said, if you have an idea about how severity and scope could look like in OmegaT, even if the tool does only display them, without using them, I remain open. But since you mention the fork, don't forget that if your proposal requires changes in the core, then I can do them in the fork but not in the plugin, so you will increase the (unintentional) difference between the two.

OmegaT (normal, not DGT) with the Stax filter puts every comment onto every segment,


To be exact, in your case this would not be onto every segment, but onto every segment from the same paragraph. In your sample this makes no difference because you have only one paragraph, but if you add more paragraphs, you will see that comments are almost attached to the correct paragraph, if not the correct segment.
You may now think that this is not correct and you are right. The problem is that, as I said, OmegaT does not have the notion of scope for a comment: the only scope it knows is paragraph, so the comment is registered for the full paragraph. I can study the possibility to change this in the fork (if I can keep somewhere the scope it may be possible to apply it during segmentation) but propagating the scope at segmentation level will probably be possible only by modifying the core of OmegaT, so it will be possible in the fork but not in standard OmegaT unless they accept to replicate my changes, after they are done.

crazy things happen if sentence segmentation is enabled.


Can you show us, with a screenshot for example, what you find strange? It is true that I had to make choices about how to merge comments associated to the same segment, this choice can be discussed and modified if needed, but better think with a complete sample, telling us what you would expect.

Regards
Thomas

PS. Correction [Edited at 2019-08-26 13:45 GMT]
Finally you were true, there was a bug. Now it is possible to give to comments a segment scope, provided that the following conditions are met (note: was the case in your example, but only to avoid to other people any mistake):

  1. You must use the file from the target language, not the SDLXLIFF you can find in source language in Trados project;
  2. The file must be pre-segmented. In Trados, that means that almost the task "Pre-translate" must have been run, else you will still have one segment per paragraph;
  3. Once 1 and 2 are met, you must disable sentence-level segmentation

Thanks to these 3 points, you ensure that OmegaT will see exactly the same segments as Trados, which can be important if your client later wants to re-use the SDLXLIFF for example to put it in its translation memory. I maintain that I can probably do nothing about "selected text" range, but almost such comments will aspect as segment-scope, which should be enough. About severity, I will study it later.
You can download the corrected versions in same location as previous ones: http://185.13.37.79:8003/index.php/p/stax-filters/downloads/
Thanks again for your testing, this enabled to find an important bug.

[Edited at 2019-08-26 15:08 GMT]


 
Milan Condak
Milan Condak  Identity Verified
Local time: 21:14
English to Czech
Test with new version Aug 27, 2019

tcordonniery wrote:

You can download the corrected versions in same location as previous ones:


http://www.condak.cz/nove/2019-08/27/en/00.html

Looks much better.

Milan


 


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Can't view client's comments in xliff files in OmegaT






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