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Term recognition (reloaded)

Simple detail question:

How can I make CT recognize this term?

image


Please note that there are different occurrences

  • l’Amérique du Sud
  • l'Amérique du Sud
  • l`Amérique du Sud

Note the difference in the apostrophes (the 3rd case is quite seldom). It depends on programs and some other aspects, which apostrophe is being used.


If I understand correctly, I have the following options

  • Prefix matching: this means to get many false matches, depending on the glossary. This would be as a kind of bad case okay, but if I see it correctly, this does not work for multi word matches, such as "Amérique du Sud".
  • Pipe character at the start of the word. Really? For any French word starting with a vocal?
  • Enter the term with the "l'" (and the two or three apostrophe flavors). Not seriously?


Perhaps I oversaw something?


The handling of terms with apostrophes concerns users translating from Fench, Italian, Catalan and many more (that I might ignore here). I do not think this is an exotic problem.



I am resurrecting this thread because I still have the same problem: when I use the curly apostrophe, the QA check with dictionaries is unable to detect words such as l’America del Sud. The curly apostrophe is in Glossary / Additional Word dividers and the spell checker is from LibreOffice.


Any suggestion, please?

Famous last few words:


Indeed there are cases where an apostrophe ends up in a glossary.

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It would be nice if the solution outlined above would also cover these cases (term with curly apostrophe is also shown when there is a straight apostroph in the source), without being forced to use RegEx.

 this argument is rather ugly


Yes, it is but I don't really care as such arguments are the least convincing and the first to ignore completely.


Anyway, I think an option in Preferences to ignore (not match) user-defined morphemes might be added in the near future to cover all similar cases. Instead of hard-coding them, the user of a specific language will be able to define those few prefixes. 


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> In my test, both "l'Amérique du Sud" and "l’Amérique du Sud" were recognized in this QA check, so I think it should work for all exact term occurrences.

Sure, but I targeted to a practical case where many terms (without apostrophes), many hits and so on are given. And even after recognition I need to check the glossary. By hand, as the hits are not displayed. Would this still be recommandable?

> A specific language User's dictionary can be edited in Edit > Edit user's spelling dictionary, if you load a project that uses that target language. You can install the French hunspell dictiionary even if you don't translate to that language.

That's all clear. I am already not convinced of the approach that only single words out of Hunspell are being recognized after an apostrophe in CT, so now create an extra project (FR Hunspell is installed anyway) to include terms or term variants that are not in Hunspell? Seriously? Only to recognize a term behind an apostrophe? This might be okay for us who love fiddling around with files and playing with text editors, but for most users not. And up to now this all is not even documented (perhaps the process of documentation might reveal how cumbersome this is).


... while even the simplistic tool OmegaT offers this feature (see above, sorry, this argument is rather ugly).

 

Tre: This would mean to get a bunch of segments where terms are recognized or perhaps not. Let's take a segment of 50 words with 6 terms (and one with an apostroph). I will see the six terms, but not the seventh.


In my test, both "l'Amérique du Sud" and "l’Amérique du Sud" were recognized in this QA check, so I think it should work for all exact term occurrences.


A specific language User's dictionary can be edited in Edit > Edit user's spelling dictionary, if you load a project that uses that target language. You can install the French hunspell dictiionary even if you don't translate to that language.

This is the way OmegaT handles the thing.


image

 

Recognition works with both main apostrophes, only "autres" is not recognized. In further tests, "d'Amérique" and "l'amérique" in lower case have been recognized.


OmegaT vs. CafeTran 3:0 (well, not in most other aspects, of course).

> For a specific CafeTran installation, I guess it should work if we add AMERIQUE in the user's spelling dictionary. Right?


Unsure. Amerique is already in the glossary, As I am translating only from and not to French, I do not have a user spelling dictionary for FR (and would not know how to feed it). And this case would only apply to those who do not have a user-specific dictionary in French (as French is their SL, not their TL).


> As a test, I have simply added "Amérique du Sud" in a text file and used it with "Check source segments for words".


This would mean to get a bunch of segments where terms are recognized or perhaps not. Let's take a segment of 50 words with 6 terms (and one with an apostroph). I will see the six terms, but not the seventh. A workaround, but a quite complicated and error-prone workaround, especially with big glossaries.

You mean L’AMERIQUE in caps? Hm, that's a bugger. This would require contributing to the official Hunspell French dictionary. For a specific CafeTran installation, I guess it should work if we add AMERIQUE in the user's spelling dictionary. Right?


For obligatory client glossaries, I'm with you that it would be great if all required terms could be properly recognized.


However, it might be useful to note CafeTran already offers a great way to check these terms: QA > Word lists.


As a test, I have simply added "Amérique du Sud" in a text file and used it with "Check source segments for words". The QA check filtered both segments from your text file, so this seems like a viable option/safety net, and just a matter of pasting all source glossary terms to a text file.

@idlm

> it could be useful to make CafeTran recognize "l’Amérique" (with the curly apostrophe) as one word as well.
Even then and even with a straight apostrophe, it won't detect "L’AMERIQUE", as AMERIQUE/Amerique is not in the Hunspell (although in your glossary).

> Does this depend on a user-defined setting or happen at the application level?

CafeTran has tons of settings, but actually – if I understand correctly – his kind of recognition fails on application level. Please correct me if I am wrong.


When doing sometimes proofreads with an obligatory client glossary, you could also be concerned.

Hm, as a mere workaround for not so important jobs, maybe, but on the long run:
  • „Manual search“ with an obligatory client glossary that contains several hundred or thousands of terms is a no go (eg. the case for Daimler or Volkswagen, but I assume many more companies). Sometimes I get a new, reworked version of a glossary every 2 months.
  • Apostrophes are not limited to one letter (see here, "acheter" again) and not to one symbol (but U+0027, U+2019 and U+02BC, see also here). So how many entries are there to be made for one single word?And – see above – for a a new, reworked version of a glossary every 2 months?
  • „Curly apostrophes in the source segments can be easily replaced“. Indeed they can, but they should not in external file formats (Studio, memoQ), as it can and most probably will prevent the re-import.
  • The apostrophe thing can also be solved by applying more fuzzy algorithms“ - but not with the actual release (maybe I did not understand this correctly)?

I do not understand that CT is able to detect many, many terms in different contexts correctly, with and within quotation marks, parenthesis, tags and so on, it even finds as in jack-ass with the corresponding setting. But why not behind apostrophes (that are not something special of a Subsaharan local dialect)? Why would this lead to many false matches?


And then there is still the glitch in the Frequent words feature here.

I only occasionally translate from French into Greek, as I generally work on the EN/EL>FR language pairs.


I could not make extensive tests, but in my quick run:


I confirm the behavior with multiple and single word glossary/fragment entries when there is a curly apostrophe:

HTML

 

If the straight apostrophe ' is used, single word glossary/fragment entries are recognized and highlighted.


Depending on fuzzy matching settings, this could indeed be catched by the TM for longer phrases.


With Preferences > Workflow > "Automatic selection of whole words" option enabled, I have noticed that a word is selected along with the text characters before the straight apostrophe: For example, "l'Amérique" is selected (and recognized) as one word. This does not happen with the curly apostrophe or the other more exotic one used in tre's example.


Because the curly apostrophe is very frequent in French, but also in several other languages I think, apart from the very valid suggestions above (especially the one about replacing the source apostrophes), at least for one word matches, it could be useful to make CafeTran recognize "l’Amérique" (with the curly apostrophe) as one word as well. Does this depend on a user-defined setting or happen at the application level?


Jean

A  few tips to match phrases with apostrophes:


1. Perform the manual search. You should find what you are looking for.

2. Keep apostrophes in your multiword glossary phrases (e.g. l'Amérique du Sud - Südamerika).

3, Load your glossary via the Memory interface (Memory > Open memory). It provides full fuzzy matching for longer phrases.


Curly apostrophes in the source segments can be easily replaced by the straight ones by Edit > Find > Replace all if they really hinder automatic matching for you. The apostrophe thing can also be solved by applying more fuzzy algorithms. However, users will start complaining about scrolling too much to locate their match in tens of similar results. The current algorithm is tuned to find the proper balance between the number of the results and limited fuzziness.   


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This is my test file.

 

txt
(241 Bytes)
Summing it up after investing some time:
Setting:
  • as recommended, Look up words stems and FR Hunspell installed
  • in the Glossary: Amérique;Amerique - Amerika, Amérique du Sud - Südamerika, Amerique Latine - Lateinamerika; autres - andere
Straight apostrophes:
  • CT recognizes any one word terms behind an apostrophe as long as they are in Hunspell
  • CT does not recognize one word terms behind an apostrophe that are not in Hunspell (here: Amerique – without accent – as variant in the glossary)
  • CT does not recognize any two or more word terms behind an apostrophe

image


Curly apostrophes:
  • CT does not recognize neither one word nor two or more word terms behind an apostrophe

image

Notes:
  • by accident, the first apostroph in "C'est" of the 2nd screenshot is not a curly one)
  • my TM town account was still open, this might explain the further marks in the source text.
  • Amerique is not correct in French, but IMHO it is good practice to include it in the glossary to catch source text mistakes and – more often – the term in capital letters, where accents are not always used


If I understand correctly, this is the actual and optimal state of the glossary function in CafeTran. What means that CT gets unusable to check files against client's glossaries, at least with FR or any other language with many apostrophes in use (and multi word terms are quite common in French texts).

Some more information:
When having straight apostrophes (depending on file type, often in text files, but rather seldom in Word docs), it works at least for one word terms. Same setting as above, with "Look up word stems", it works (without indeed not).
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