How to keep source tags or add them easily into the translated text?
Thread poster: ikaros21
ikaros21
ikaros21
Venezuela
Local time: 20:31
English to Spanish
+ ...
Jan 25, 2021

Hello,

I've been using OmegaT for several months, and I'm still a newbie.

My client always asks me to translate files including text between keys, like {b}{/b} for bold text or {i}{/i} for italics.

I need to keep those tags in the target text (the translated text).

But when I use OmegaT, sometimes the machine translator respects those tags, but sometimes it does not, or changes those tags for symbols or spaces.

So I've been wonderi
... See more
Hello,

I've been using OmegaT for several months, and I'm still a newbie.

My client always asks me to translate files including text between keys, like {b}{/b} for bold text or {i}{/i} for italics.

I need to keep those tags in the target text (the translated text).

But when I use OmegaT, sometimes the machine translator respects those tags, but sometimes it does not, or changes those tags for symbols or spaces.

So I've been wondering what can I do to solve this problem. I've been doing the corrections manually, but this is very time consuming!

It would be great to find a way to "instruct" OmegaT's machine translator to leave those tags in the translated text, or at least to be able to insert those tags easily for the segments that need them.

I hope you can help me with this.

Thank you very much.
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Susan Welsh
Susan Welsh  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 20:31
Russian to English
+ ...
machine translator? Jan 25, 2021

OmegaT itself does not have a "machine translator." You can use various MT apps, such as Google Translate, but they are not part of OmegaT. Please clarify what you are trying to do.
Otherwise, as the OmegaT manual explains, Ctrl+t will insert the next tag into your target text.


Aline Amorim
 
ikaros21
ikaros21
Venezuela
Local time: 20:31
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Keep the keys tags Jan 25, 2021

Hi, thanks for your answer.

I know OmegaT depends on different MT.

The fact is that I need those MT results to keep the tags of the original text.

I mean the tags between keys: {b}{/b}

That's what I'm trying to do.

If the original text says: "Alice {b}needs{/b} to find a {i}beautiful{/i} dress"

I need the translation into Spanish to be: "Alicia {b}necesita{/b} encontrar un vestido {i}hermoso{/i}"

Not simpl
... See more
Hi, thanks for your answer.

I know OmegaT depends on different MT.

The fact is that I need those MT results to keep the tags of the original text.

I mean the tags between keys: {b}{/b}

That's what I'm trying to do.

If the original text says: "Alice {b}needs{/b} to find a {i}beautiful{/i} dress"

I need the translation into Spanish to be: "Alicia {b}necesita{/b} encontrar un vestido {i}hermoso{/i}"

Not simply "Alicia necesita encontrar un vestido hermoso"

Sometimes the MT keeps those keys, but sometimes it does not, or adds irregular symbols instead.

Is there anything I can do about this? Thanks.

[Edited at 2021-01-25 21:16 GMT]
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Susan Welsh
Susan Welsh  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 20:31
Russian to English
+ ...
Which MT do you use? Jan 25, 2021

The problem is with your MT. I use Google Translate, and this does not happen.
Your tags should not look the way you've written them ({b}necesita{/b}), but rather they should be OmegaT tags, for example {t1}necesita{/t1}. These are added by OmegaT to your source document. The MT program will pick them up.

That's all I can offer. Maybe someone else will have a better idea if this doesn't help you.
You can also post a question to the main user list, which gets more traffic
... See more
The problem is with your MT. I use Google Translate, and this does not happen.
Your tags should not look the way you've written them ({b}necesita{/b}), but rather they should be OmegaT tags, for example {t1}necesita{/t1}. These are added by OmegaT to your source document. The MT program will pick them up.

That's all I can offer. Maybe someone else will have a better idea if this doesn't help you.
You can also post a question to the main user list, which gets more traffic: [email protected]



[Edited at 2021-01-25 18:49 GMT]

[Edited at 2021-01-25 18:50 GMT]

(I changed the angle brackets to curly braces because otherwise the Proz software reads them as html codes and doesn't print them.)

[Edited at 2021-01-25 18:51 GMT]
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Dragomir Kovacevic
Dragomir Kovacevic  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 01:31
Italian to Serbian
+ ...
Ctrl+Shift+T Jan 25, 2021

With the above command, one inserts all tags present in the source, into the target segment.

Or, if you started inserting, let's say, the 1st and the 2nd tag which you find important because of their potential meaning or linking onto a subsequent place in a text (specially in closed xml formats like sdlxliff), then with the above command, you insert the remaining tags.

It is suitable to insert all tags, or the remaining part of them, after the whole target segment, beca
... See more
With the above command, one inserts all tags present in the source, into the target segment.

Or, if you started inserting, let's say, the 1st and the 2nd tag which you find important because of their potential meaning or linking onto a subsequent place in a text (specially in closed xml formats like sdlxliff), then with the above command, you insert the remaining tags.

It is suitable to insert all tags, or the remaining part of them, after the whole target segment, because you translate freely the text without nuisances produced by tags. At least, the target text is free of them and you put them after the ending punctuation mark.

Also, you might try to configure projects without tags, in case you find these tags irrelevant.

As always, in case you work with some visible texts for post-control OUT OF the OmegaT, then you can always open two windows (source and target file) in some word processor and introduce missing formatting in the target
ikaros21 wrote:
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Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 01:31
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Ikaros Jan 25, 2021

ikaros21 wrote:
It would be great to find a way to "instruct" OmegaT's machine translator to leave those tags in the translated text, or at least to be able to insert those tags easily for the segments that need them.


As others have said, the fault lies with the machine translation system. OmegaT sends the tags to the MT system, and then displays whatever comes back from the MT system. If tags are missing, you have to add them yourself.

One thing you can do to help you add the tags manually faster and easier, is to define custom tags in OmegaT. This won't solve the machine translation problem but it'll help you insert tags quicker. In OmegaT, go to Options > Preferences > Tag Processing, and then add this into the "Regular expressions for custom tags" field:

\ { [ a - z ] + ? \ } | \ { / [ a - z ] + ? \ }

(remove spaces; spaces added here in the forum to prevent it from displaying incorrectly.)

Then you can insert tags by e.g. pressing Ctrl+spacebar a few times.


 
ikaros21
ikaros21
Venezuela
Local time: 20:31
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
It worked! Jan 25, 2021

Samuel Murray wrote:

ikaros21 wrote:
It would be great to find a way to "instruct" OmegaT's machine translator to leave those tags in the translated text, or at least to be able to insert those tags easily for the segments that need them.


As others have said, the fault lies with the machine translation system. OmegaT sends the tags to the MT system, and then displays whatever comes back from the MT system. If tags are missing, you have to add them yourself.

One thing you can do to help you add the tags manually faster and easier, is to define custom tags in OmegaT. This won't solve the machine translation problem but it'll help you insert tags quicker. In OmegaT, go to Options > Preferences > Tag Processing, and then add this into the "Regular expressions for custom tags" field:

\ { [ a - z ] + ? \ } | \ { / [ a - z ] + ? \ }

(remove spaces; spaces added here in the forum to prevent it from displaying incorrectly.)

Then you can insert tags by e.g. pressing Ctrl+spacebar a few times.


Thank you very much. It seems this is what I was looking for.
Now I just have to select the text I need to be within the tags, then press Ctr+spacebar and Enter to include both beginning and end tags in that text. OmegaT automatically detects the tags I need, because they are the tags appearing in the source text.

You are a genius! Did you study this somewhere, or just learned it by practice??

I also tried with the @Dragomir Kovacevic suggestion, but it just includes the tags replacing the selected text, and I would need to write the erased text once more between the added tags, so it's not so practical.

Thank you all !!


 
Dragomir Kovacevic
Dragomir Kovacevic  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 01:31
Italian to Serbian
+ ...
Eh, no :-) Jan 26, 2021

As I wrote, if you translate all without tags and after the final end of the segment, hit Ctrl+Shift+T, you add all tags.
And as I said, you can insert some important tags during translation, and add all remaining ones by hitting Ctrl+Shift+T.

What you say about "erased text" is related to copy-source-into-target function. You can disable it completely, or you can opt for it only for 100% identical repetitions from your TM. It would be a bad thing to ignore what your TM offers
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As I wrote, if you translate all without tags and after the final end of the segment, hit Ctrl+Shift+T, you add all tags.
And as I said, you can insert some important tags during translation, and add all remaining ones by hitting Ctrl+Shift+T.

What you say about "erased text" is related to copy-source-into-target function. You can disable it completely, or you can opt for it only for 100% identical repetitions from your TM. It would be a bad thing to ignore what your TM offers you.

ikaros21 wrote:

I also tried with the @Dragomir Kovacevic suggestion, but it just includes the tags replacing the selected text, and I would need to write the erased text once more between the added tags, so it's not so practical.

Thank you all !!
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How to keep source tags or add them easily into the translated text?






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