Translation Process With a Translation Memory System

Import

For the translation with the TMS the source document is imported into the program. During the import text and layout information is separated, i.e. only the text is read into the TMS and the formats (title, table, reference formats etc.) are stored in a different file.

Pre-translation

If reference material is available (i.e. translations that have been made with the TMS), it is added to the project as well. The reference material is generated by storing the translated units (mostly sentences) in source and target language in the database. The TMS then compares the new texts with the reference units. If there is a correspondence of 100%, these translated units are being adopted into the new text. This process is also called automatic pre-translation.

Completion of the translation

The bilingual document (e.g. German/English) is then handed over to the human translator. The TMS supports the translator during his or her manual translation process with suggestions for translation. Fuzzy matches are displayed in a separate window. These are already translated units which have a certain correspondance with the new units. The translator can edit these suggestions and adopt them via a shotcut into the translation. Furthermore, entries in the dictionary can be displayed. These dictionaries can be created for different companies and projects. This ensures that the corresponding company or project terminology is used.

Export

The completely translated text is brought together again with the layout information during export. The layout of the target document therefore mostly corresponds to the one of the source document. Due to different text expansion factors (English e.g. is shorter than German) most of the time some corrections must be made in the post-editing process. The extent of the post-editing process largely depends on the quality of the formatting of the source document. Text optimization of your documents is therefore highly recommended.