"Warn if an entry does not have a translation" does not function in Trados ttx

[Former user]

When a target text is the same as a source text, I sometimes skip a translation (e.g: numerical value). In such a case, I expect it as "missing transtion, but Checkmate does not detect.

[YvesS]

This seems to work for me.

• If the translation is empty I get "The target segment is empty, but the source is not empty"
• If the translation is the same as the source I get "Translation is the same as the source"

Could you provide an example TTX file where the problem occurs?

[稲葉義雄]

Thanks for quick response. Please try the sample attached. It is German to Japanese translation. I did not translate the last segment "Karosserie". I expect it as "source is not empty but target is empty", but Checkmate does not detect it.

[YvesS]

I see. the issue is related to the how the TTX file is segmented.

A segment in TTX is marked up with <Tu> tags. If you open your TTX file in a text editor you can see 3 segments like that, each has two <Tuv> elements: one for the source and one for that translation.

As you can also see, the text "Karosserie vorn" is not in a segment. That is why CheckMate does not flag it: it actually does not see it at all because it is not part of the segmented content.

To work properly the TTX file should be pre-segmented. I believe you can probably do this with the Trados tools.

The Okapi TTX Filter has also options to use existing segments and try to segment un-segmented text parts, but that segmentation may not match what you would expect as Trados segments based on different rules.

So in short, the solution is to make sure your TTX is fully pre-segmented.

[稲葉義雄]

Thank you for useful tips. So I will try to create a macro which rewrites from unsegmented to segmented forcibly. As you point, Trados QA checker flags unsegmented unit as "missing translation, but Trados QA checker is much more inconvenient than Checkmate.

[YvesS]

Maybe Trados Studio has some function that allows the TTX file to be saved with pre-segmentation. You can also probably open the file in TagEditor and open manually all segments and then save the file: that would get you empty segments in the TTX that CheckMate would see.

[YvesS]

I'm closing this issue since the problem is related to the TTX segmentation rather than CheckMate.