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Trados copy paste "tracking"?!
Thread poster: Poppy Gemmell
Poppy Gemmell
Poppy Gemmell
United Kingdom
Sep 20, 2021

Hi everyone,

Recently I did some work for a customer who noticed I had occasionally copied and pasted sentences into Trados. Is there an option within Trados that can be enabled to track this? I am wondering how they were able to detect it. I do not want to be accused of using machine translation. They were not unhappy with the quality of my work so it isn't to do with that. They sent me this information in the form of an error checking report and not as a complaint.

Th... See more
Hi everyone,

Recently I did some work for a customer who noticed I had occasionally copied and pasted sentences into Trados. Is there an option within Trados that can be enabled to track this? I am wondering how they were able to detect it. I do not want to be accused of using machine translation. They were not unhappy with the quality of my work so it isn't to do with that. They sent me this information in the form of an error checking report and not as a complaint.

Thanks ▲ Collapse
 
Stepan Konev
Stepan Konev  Identity Verified
Russian Federation
Local time: 16:06
English to Russian
Probably you used GT? Sep 20, 2021

If yes, GT occasionally inserts invisible characters that can be easily seen in a docx file for example. The char is called a 'zero-width space'. You can reproduce it by typing 200b in MS Word and then pressing Alt+X. Once you press Alt+X, the code 200b will convert into an empty double rectangle.
aero width spaceYou can export your file for 'External bilingual review' and check out if there are any instances of that character. Usually they are randomly scattered through the text, and you have to do a trick to remove them all at once: don't copy it but just select any instance of the char and press Ctrl+H. The char will be automatically copied, and you just need to click Replace all.
To avoid this you can either check all your files in a docx bilingual review mode once you are done with translation, or use another MT engine like DeepL for example.
Also you can use a free app (https://quest-app.appspot.com/download) that doesn't even need any copy/paste action. Here are some instructions on how to use it: https://www.proz.com/forum/trados_support/353051-trados_student_edition_and_machine_translation.html


[Edited at 2021-09-20 12:27 GMT]
 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 15:06
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Poppy Sep 20, 2021

Poppy Gemmell wrote:
Recently I did some work for a customer who noticed I had occasionally copied and pasted sentences into Trados. ... I am wondering how they were able to detect it.


1. As Stepan said, if your Trados uses machine translation, then the machine translation system sometimes inserts characters that are tell-tale signs of e.g. Google Translate. You can remove all such characters from a Word file using a macro such as this:

Sub gt_removechars()
With ActiveDocument.Content.Find
.ClearFormatting
.Replacement.ClearFormatting
.Execute FindText:=ChrW(8203), ReplaceWith:="", _
Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End With
End Sub

2. When you paste content into Word, make sure that you copy it "without formatting". This is because something may look without formatting, but there may be hidden formatting. You can change Word's settings to do that automatically but you can also change it at the time of pasting. See here for instructions. You may also be able to add plain pasting to a specific shortcut, but I don't know how to do that in the latest version of Word.

[Edited at 2021-09-20 11:34 GMT]
 
Poppy Gemmell
Poppy Gemmell
United Kingdom
TOPIC STARTER
Excel Sep 20, 2021

It was a job where I was required to look at the notes of a previous translator. I copied and pasted these notes into the corresponding segment so as not to forget to refer to them while translating. I then deleted them once I'd translated and confirmed the segment, but somehow it still appeared on their check. I wonder if they had hidden formatting too. I took them from an Excel table.
 
Stepan Konev
Stepan Konev  Identity Verified
Russian Federation
Local time: 16:06
English to Russian
Check it Sep 20, 2021

Poppy Gemmell wrote:
I wonder if they had hidden formatting too. I took them from an Excel table.
You can easily check it. Copy all your Excel entries (notes from the previous translator) and paste them into a blank MS Word document.

Poppy Gemmell
 


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Trados copy paste "tracking"?!







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