CafeTran

Would it be possible to add colours to misspelled words in the segments pane during the QA spellcheck?

This would allow a faster identification of spelling mistakes without the need to go through each individual segment editor window, which is relevant because CafeTran often recognises "false positives" (spelling mistakes in words that are abbreviations or words that are non-translatables > and often I have too many of them in a project to lose time adding each one to the glossary).

This feature should be possible, since it already happens to select words in the Find+Replace feature.

To be honest, at the moment I am forced to load my CafeTran projects into Wordfast, which has a faster html QA feature that allows me a faster detection of spelling errors. Of course, I would prefer not to have to use an external application for this.

Speaking of which, I have asked this previously, but it's been left unaddressed: CafeTran's abbreviation recognition tool detects 2-3 letter words followed by a full stop. However, most abbreviations consist of 3 letter upper case words and CafeTran fails to recognise every one of them. I'm not the only user requesting this feature and it would be nice to not have to resort to contorted work-arounds, for those of us who aren't computer experts (I have just noticed my tone sounds snarky, but it's really not meant to be, at all. It's just a hopeful and longing request).

Thanks!

So what you are saying is that "abbreviations" is a "false" feature – it came out of a software development need to control segmentation rather than a proactive feature for the program user?

Most abbreviations are 3 uppercase letters. Would it be easy to develop a feature that scans the project for these? (like you have now for "abbreviations"?)

As for your workarounds:

- most abbreviations are different in target than source, so adding them to untranslatables is not always possible

- adding them to glossary is not always possible either because the glossary doesn't distinguish between upper and lower case (or, at least, it shouldn't, for other words). What I mean is that abbreviations can easily become confused with misspelled words - and so misspelled words wouldn't be detected.

I have given examples of this in the past. For instance, UN in English translates in Italian as ONU. So, in an EN>IT translation:

1. it can't be added to untranslatables, because UN (source) is different from ONU (IT)

2. it shouldn't be added to glossary, because ONU/onu could be a misspelled UNO/uno (Italian for one).

Maybe this isn't the best example, but I hope it's understandable.

In any case, deciding whether to add each abbreviation to non-translatables or to glossary would be helped tremendously with an inicial abbreviation scan, like you have now, but for 3 letter uppercase words. You will notice other users have requested this previously. What do you think?

*Also, I'm really happy that you like the spelling suggestion. I'm eager to see it in a future CafeTran version.

PS: oh wait, I think my mind short-circuited. You mean adding terms to glossary releases them from the spelling check? This is awesome.

So, would the 3-uppercase abbreviation-detection feature be possible? Then it would be so much easier to identify abbreviations and add them all to glossary in one go to prevent spelling checks on them.

Thanks!

I prefer using Task > List words with unknown spelling instead of QA > Check spelling in target segments, as I find it easier to survey the occurrences all at once and ignore the false positives.

It could be interesting to have these highlighted for easy inclusion in the dictionary (via the context menu).

Thank you so much Jean. I think this solves the problem. I'll definitely start using it instead of QA for spelling.