2. Product Updates - Recent Threads

Enhancing your Dashboard in SDL Managed Translation

Rémy Jacobi — Wed, 04 Apr 2018 09:04:28 GMT

Hi Everyone,

We had a lot of great ideas and feedback emerging from our previous post: Translation Memories Search. We are about to start a new initiative to review and optimise the Dashboard in SDL Managed Translation. We would therefore like to invite our existing customer base to share their feedback and suggestions on the current Dashboard as that will provide valuable insight when working on designs for the next version of this feature.

In general, a dashboard provides you with a global view of recent activities, as well as a visual data representation of your account. In your SDL Managed Translation dashboard, the first 3 blocks represent a simplified list of the recent projects that have been submitted (Projects to approve - Projects in progress - Projects to download). The next 5 blocks provide a visual summary of your translation projects. Through them, you can analyse how your projects are being translated and which languages you’re investing in the most. These are visualised as graphs and charts. In this post, we would like to better understand your dashboard experience.

The points below are intended to give you an idea of the feedback we’re looking for but don’t feel you have to be constrained to these particular areas:

How do you interact with the current Dashboard? How often?
What information contained in the Dashboard is considered most useful?
Can that information be presented in a more accessible way?
Do we include anything in the Dashboard that isn’t of interest to you?
What information is missing from the Dashboard?
What features are missing from the Dashboard?
Any other enhancements you can suggest that would improve the current Dashboard in SDL Managed Translation?

With your input we will be able to come up with a better dashboard experience. Thanks again for taking part in the design process :)

Translation Memory Search in SDL Managed Translation

Rémy Jacobi — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 09:36:49 GMT

Dear Community,

I'm Remy Jacobi and I'm part of the user experience design team, responsible for the user experience around everything translation management. In this function, I regularly engage with our customers and users to better understand their day to day tasks and problems. This ongoing research allows me to design relevant and delightful user interfaces and experiences.

We’re constantly looking for ways to improve the user’s experience in Managed Translation and deliver new features that are being requested by our customers.

One feature we are regularly asked about is the ability to perform a search against a Translation Memory in Managed Translation. Translation Memories help promote quality and consistency, whilst reducing costs and turnaround times for translation projects.

The Translation Memory Search feature will allow users to browse the contents of their translation memory(s) in order to:

Look for segments that are already present in a Translation Memory
Adapt the source content according to segments already present in a Translation Memory
Identify budgetary project costs
Determine the language(s) in which segments have been previously localised

Provided below is a mock-up to help visualise how this feature will be presented in Managed Translation. In the left side of the mock-up, the user is checking to see if the segment: “Insert the cartridge in the left socket of the printer’s box” is already present in one of their Translation Memories. On the right side, a list of results is populated from highest match to lowest.

Exact match implies the segment was found in the translation memory without any penalties having been applied. Matches can be penalised based on a number of factors (text changes, order of words, punctuation, formatting, etc.) Penalties can also be applied at the Translation Memory level, where it contains legacy content for example. Both types of penalties are taken into account in the search results returned by the Translation Memory Search feature.

Would the Translation Memory search be a useful feature for you?

Do you find it easy to understand/read the below mock-up?

We’d appreciate any feedback or comments as to how the Translation Memory Search feature would benefit your organisation along with any suggestions on the proposed mock-ups included in this Community post. :)

RE: Translation Memory Search in SDL Managed Translation

Martiño Prada Díaz — Fri, 23 Mar 2018 20:24:30 GMT

Hi Ian, it would be really useful to know the last actual person/user that modified the segment more than just the generic workflow name, for multiple reasons. I´ll submit the metadata request via Ideas. Regarding the search-for-target, it is basically the exact same logic as searching by source, sometimes we have discussions with regional offices about content in their own language and we just want to know what the source was or if it's even a translation and it's in our TM vs content created locally, etc. It's helpful in a few scenarios, specially when dealing with regional stakeholders that will talk about content in their language vs thinking about the source.

RE: Translation Memory Search in SDL Managed Translation

Ian Parnell — Fri, 23 Mar 2018 16:50:21 GMT

Hi Martiño,

Thanks for sharing your feedback on the TM Search feature - it's great to hear this is making life easier for you!

When a TM segment is updated 'systematically' as part of a workflow step ("Update TM"), we set the user details (Created By, Last Updated By) to the system name - "serviceorion" in your case. For segments that are created or modified outside of this workflow, via a standalone maintenance tool, we store the details of the individual user. I will check what it would take to record details of the individual user for the automated flow - this won't be trivial, I don't suspect, but I'll at least make sure we consider this as a future enhancement.

The other metadata you refer to (Filename, Project ID/Name) should be a little more straightforward to implement. I would appreciate it if you could submit this as a new enhancement request via the Ideas section on the Community so we can plan to implement this in a future product update.

Per the earlier question from Remy, can you please describe how a search-for-target-string feature would be used, and by whom? Is that a different use case to how the TM Search feature is being used for source strings?

Cheers,
Ian

RE: Translation Memory Search in SDL Managed Translation

Rémy Jacobi — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 09:44:15 GMT

Hi Martiño, I'm happy to hear that you're finding good use of the TM search.

Having more metadata would help you understand the source of the TM. How about the current metadata? Which of the values are you constantly looking at when searching for TM?
I've already asked about the name "serviceorion" that's being populated in those two labels you mentioned, I'll get back to you when I have any update.
It makes complete sense to search from both, source and target strings. I'm interested in knowing how you would use it. Would you in particular, search in the target string for a specific language that you understand too?

Thanks for your feedback, and whenever you have other input, please don't hesitate to share it :)

RE: Translation Memory Search in SDL Managed Translation

Martiño Prada Díaz — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 00:20:37 GMT

Hi Rémy and Ian Parnell , two more pieces of feedback about the tool which is really making my life better by the way! It would be really useful to have more metadata about each of the strings, for example what project is it coming from, file name, and as of now it looks like the information about Created By and Last Updated By is always “serviceorion” instead of the actual user. Also, something that didn't think about before but I see as an important piece is to be able to look by target strings and not just by source. Let me know if this is the right place for this feedback or want me to create a new post!

RE: Translation Memory Search in SDL Managed Translation

Rémy Jacobi — Fri, 15 Dec 2017 13:39:02 GMT

Hi Martiño,

Thanks for taking the time to look at the mock-up and for posting your comments! I'm happy you found the TM search useful for you.
To answer your questions:

We won't be supporting segments edits in the initial release of this feature but it's something we will consider as a future enhancement. The editing capability would be controlled through additional permissions.
Created/Modified By fields are not part of the current design, primarily down to the way that information is captured in the TM format we are working with.
When performing a search, we look through all TMs present in the selected Project Option, applying a ‘default’ TM penalty where appropriate. If there is a requirement to search through all TMs, a project option could be created/adapted to facilitate this.

I hope this was helpful.
Thanks again for your feedback! We will keep you updated about any changes.

RE: Translation Memory Search in SDL Managed Translation

Martiño Prada Díaz — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 11:52:36 GMT

Hi Remy, a couple of things: will there be an option to edit segments directly in the TM? For me it's important for several reasons, but mostly to help SDL to be able to update TMs easily in case global changes are needed and also to give the chance to some users on the client side to make changes as needed. Obviously this should be a select group of users, but I see a lot of value in it. Also, will there be a column that specifies the user that last changed or touched the string? One more, can you search throughout the whole TM group including all TMs? It'd be important to be able to do so and then user can sort results based on where the string comes from (sort by TM name). Finally, this is a tool that is much needed and I hope it gets implemented soon, I'm excited about it and can't wait to start using it!

RE: Translation Memory Search in SDL Managed Translation

Paweł Matraszek — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 10:31:12 GMT

Thank you for clarification! :)

RE: Translation Memory Search in SDL Managed Translation

Rémy Jacobi — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 10:28:42 GMT

Hi Paweł,

Thanks for your reply :)
Initially, this TM search is aimed at project creators in Managed Translation (marketeers, project manager etc.), to better manage and prepare their projects.
The options you pointed out are more common for translators/reviewers. However, they can also be useful for project creators. But for now, we are only offering TM search capabilities.

RE: Translation Memory Search in SDL Managed Translation

Paweł Matraszek — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 09:59:12 GMT

Hi Rémy!

Will this feature will be just for translators/reviewers or would it also have functionalities for Support/Engineers?
By that I mean ability to:
- Explore TMs,
- Filter them in more advanced way than in Maintenance (where for example search by filename does not work),
- Export filtered segments,
- Delete segments?

It would be great to finally have a functional tool for maintaining TMs.

Thank you in advance!

Kind regards,
Paweł
LDTS

RE: Project template functionality in SDL Managed Translation

Bernd Mensen — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 07:01:52 GMT

Hi.

I think both options cover what our clients want, but I would go for option 2.

I think it gives better flexibility.

It could happen that a particular client creates similar jobs, every day, into e.g. 8 languages, but only once a month a job in 15 languages and once in the 2 weeks a job in 22 languages. In case of option 1, the client will most of the time be presented with the template for the job with 8 languages, which is not always the template he/she wants.

Kr
Bernd

Project template functionality in SDL Managed Translation

Ian Parnell — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 16:39:12 GMT

Dear Community,

I am often asked by customers if it is possible to define project templates in ManTra to save time when creating new projects that follow a similar profile to one created previously. I would like to request feedback on a couple of approaches as to how we might implement this functionality.

Option 1

When creating a new project, a user would have the option of pre-selecting all of the fields based on a recent project. For example, we might present a list of the previous 6 projects created by that user. If one of those projects matches the details of the new project a user wants to create, they could choose to pre-populate the Create a Project page based on that previous project.

Option 2

At the point a user creates a project, we would give them the option of storing the project fields as a 'template' and specifying a name. We might allow up to 6 templates per user, for example. When creating a new project, a user could then select one of their project templates from a picklist, in order to have the Create a Project page populated based on the values stored in that template.

I'd appreciate feedback from the Community on both of these options, or perhaps someone has an alternative approach we might consider?

Cheers,

Ian

Can you please provide us with the Managed Translation release schedule?

Çetin Amirak — Tue, 16 May 2017 12:46:02 GMT

It is important that we inform our teams and stakeholder on the next release. Can you please provide us with your roadmap / schedule.

Thanks, Çetin