Dual-Language Document Assistant – Documentation

Dual-Language Document Assistant helps you prepare source documents for translation in dual-language (source+target language) format. It provides tools that duplicate the source text in two formats:
(1) two-column table,
(2) text separated with a special separator, e.g. slash ( / ) or line break.

Detailed information about Dual-Language Document Assistant

Notes:

Dual-Language Document Assistant is included in TransTools+ version 2. Upgrade by downloading the latest version.
A tool by the same name is also included in TransTools (see Dual-Language Document Assistant [TransTools]). The TransTools+ tool covered in this article is an enhanced version of the tool included in TransTools, offering better user interface, keyboard shortcut support, ability to skip non-translatable paragraphs with the text tool, and other productivity improvements. It is recommended to use this tool instead of the TransTools version.

Quick Navigation

How Dual-Language Document Assistant can help you in your work
Where to find the tool
Dual-language preparation at a glance
Using Dual-Language Document Assistant – detailed instructions
Related tools

How Dual-Language Document Assistant can help you in your work

Dual-Language Document Assistant is designed to facilitate the creation of dual-language documents, i.e. documents that present original text side by side with its translation: contracts, reports, etc. It will save you a lot of time because creation of dual-language documents is a time-consuming process.

Dual-Language Document Assistant provides numerous settings to help you format source documents before they are translated manually or imported into your CAT tool. It can format source text in one of two ways:

As a two-column dual-language table, with the source text duplicated in the second column of the table. If you use this layout option, you can opt to place each paragraph in a separate table row, or place all selected text inside a single table row. There are numerous other options, such as having the translation in the 1st column instead of the 2nd column, etc.

Sample:
As dual-language text, with a copy of the source text (future translation) placed immediately after the source text and separated from the source text with a special separator like slash or line break. You can choose from a set of pre-defined separators: slash, backslash, line break, paragraph mark, etc. There are numerous other options, such as having the translation before the original text, etc.

Sample:

The tool can format the left or right side using a custom highlight color, making it easier to translate the text manually or to hide highlighted or non-highlighted text with the Hide/Unhide Text tool in order to translate the document in your CAT tool. Optionally, you can also mark the source text using hidden formatting immediately in order to avoid extra preparation with the the Hide/Unhide Text tool.

Where to find the tool

To run Dual-Language Document Assistant, click Dual-Language Assistant button on TransTools+ ribbon in Word:

Dual-language preparation at a glance

Creating a dual-language document with Dual Language Document Assistant is very easy:

Before translation, open the source document in Word.
Click Dual Language Assistant button to activate Dual Language Document Assistant pane on the right side of the document window.
If you have previously created a profile with the right settings for conversion, select this profile from the profile list and load the settings. If you don't have a custom profile, check the default conversion settings and update them as needed. You can also update the settings later if you are not satisfied with the conversion format by using Word’s Undo command.
Identify the text you want to convert using two-column table format (with original text in one column and the translation in another column) and the additional areas where the original text must be separated from the translation with a separator like slash ( / ), paragraph break or another character.
Select any number of paragraphs that need to be converted and then click Convert selection to dual-language table button or Convert selection to dual-language text button depending on the required dual-language format.
Proceed through the document, selecting paragraphs to convert and clicking one of the buttons. To expedite the process, assign a keyboard shortcut to the table tool and/or the text tool and press the keyboard shortcut instead.
When done, you can run Hide / Unhide Text tool to mark original text as hidden text in order to translate the document in your CAT tool (hidden text formatting is normally not imported for translation by most CAT tools in Word documents). This can be done if a highlight color was applied to the duplicated text (future translation), as per the settings. This step is not necessary if you activate Hide Original Text setting for both the table tool and the text tool before you start the conversion process.
Translate the document in your CAT tool and export the translated document, or translate it manually.
If the CAT tool was used to translate the document, use the Unhide Text command of Hide / Unhide Text tool to remove hidden formatting from the document, then deliver the document to your customer.

Using Dual-Language Document Assistant – detailed instructions

When you click the Dual-Language Assistant button on the ribbon, you will see a panel on the right side of the Word window:

Screenshot: Dual-Language Document Assistant panel

To convert selected paragraphs to a two-column, dual-language table,
click Convert selection to dual-language table button.
To convert selected paragraphs to dual-language text (using a separator between the source text and the translation), click Convert selection to dual-language text button.

You can customize the format of generated dual-language tables and dual-language text by clicking the Modify button located under Convert selection to dual-language table or Convert selection to dual-language text buttons. Read the following sections for a detailed description of the conversion settings.

Dual-language tables – settings

The settings for converting selected text to a dual-language table are summarized under the Convert selection to dual-language table button.

To customize the settings, click Modify button located under Convert to dual-language table button. This will expand the panel to show the settings:

Screenshot: Dual-language table settings

Format: Choose the format of the dual-language table. Select “Put each paragraph in a row” so that each selected paragraph is placed in a separate table row (see the sample above). Select “Put all text in one row” and all the selected text will be placed in a single table row.
Table format: In this section, you can configure basic table formatting:
- Use the Width setting to specify the width of generated tables. Width can be measured in percent or in measurement units configured under Word’s Options (normally, this is centimeters). The default value is ‘100%’.
- Use the Alignment setting to specify the table's alignment: left, centered or right. The default value is ‘Left’.
- Use Border width setting to specify the thickness of the table's border. Select one of the following values:
  - Default to apply the default border width which Word uses by default for newly inserted tables,
  - None to apply an invisible border,
  - 0.25 pt, 0.50 pt, etc. to apply a specific border width measured in points.
  The default value is ‘Default’.
- Use Indent By setting to specify how much the table should be indented from the left margin (in points) if it is left-aligned. This setting is ignored unless the Alignment is set to Left.
Column widths: Here, you can specify the widths of Column 1 and Column 2 (in percent). This setting will be useful if the translation length is significantly different from the source text length. The default values are 50% and 50%.
Translation will be in Column 1 / 2: Choose which column (Column 1 or Column 2) is reserved for translation. The tool uses this setting to apply formatting to the translation column and/or the source column in order to streamline the translation process. The following formatting is applied:
1. Highlight color formatting is applied to the Translation Column as per Highlight Future Translation setting described below. Color highlighting makes it easier to see what needs to be translated, and it simplifies preparation for translation in CAT tools with the help of Hide/Unhide Text tool (refer to Highlight Future Translation setting).
2. Hidden formatting is applied to the text in the source column if the Hide Original Text setting (see below) is activated.
3. If the text contains any automatic numbered lists, automatic numbering will be preserved inside the Translation Column, and the Source Column will use textual numbering, i.e. numeric sequences at the beginning of paragraphs. This way, the document will have the same numbering and you will not see list item numbers when you translate the text inside your CAT tool.
Use Highlight Future Translation setting to apply color highlighting to the text in the Translation column. You can choose a specific highlight color or “Do not highlight” option. The Highlight Future Translation setting is very useful because color highlighting makes it easier to see what needs to be translated. If you use a CAT tool like Trados Studio, memoQ, Phrase TMS, etc., you can use Hide/Unhide Text tool later to mark the highlighted text as visible and the rest of the text as hidden before importing the document into the CAT tool.
Respect paragraph styles: When the original text is converted into a table using Microsoft Word's built-in command called Convert Text to Table, the paragraphs may not look exactly like in the original. Most of the time, this concerns indentation of the paragraphs. If you activate this setting, Dual Language Document Assistant will re-apply the original paragraph style to each paragraph of the created tables. Keep in mind that this may cause issues in some cases, so activate this setting only if paragraph styles are not fully respected in the created dual-language tables. This setting is off by default.
Use Hide Original Text setting to apply hidden formatting to the text in the source column. If you use this setting, keep in mind that hidden text may be confused with normal (visible) text, so make sure not to convert the same paragraphs twice. It is recommended to use Highlight Future Translation setting along with this setting to make it easier to see what was already converted.
Use After hiding, display hidden text setting if you prefer to see the text formatted as hidden. When this setting is activated, the tool will modify Microsoft Word’s settings so that text marked with the Hidden formatting option is visible on the screen. This text will have thin underlines, making it a bit easier to differentiate hidden text from standard text. This setting is deactivated by default and will only be applied if Hide Original Text setting is activated.
Keyboard shortcut: use this setting if you want to convert text to a dual-language table quicker by pressing a key combination. Click the Change button to assign a keyboard shortcut:

Assigning a keyboard shortcut

To set a keyboard shortcut, place the cursor in the text field and press a key combination on the keyboard. This will display the new keyboard shortcut.

Notes:
(1) A keyboard shortcut must include Ctrl+Shift or Ctrl+Alt. If you attempt to assign Ctrl or Alt alone, the keyboard shortcut will be corrected automatically. So, assigning a key combination like Ctrl+S or Alt+S is not possible, only Ctrl+Alt+S or Ctrl+Shift+S.
(2) It is not possible to use the Windows key as one of the modifier keys.

When you assign a keyboard shortcut, you will often see a warning that the keyboard shortcut is already assigned to a Word command or user-defined macro:

In most cases, you can ignore this warning because the keyboard shortcut you assign will only be active while the Dual Language Document Assistant panel is open in the current Word document. In all other situations, the original Word’s keyboard shortcut will work as it did before the assignment.

To clear the keyboard shortcut, click the Clear button.

Dual-language text – settings

Under the Convert selection to dual-language text button, you will see 3 different customizable presets. By clicking one of these buttons, you can switch conversion settings quickly while you are working on a document or a document package. For example, you can define different separators for each preset, e.g. use a Paragraph Break as the separator in Preset 1 and use a Slash as the separator in Preset 2.

A summary of the conversion settings is displayed under the preset buttons.

To customize the format of generated dual-language text, select Preset 1, Preset 2 or Preset 3 buttons and click Modify button. This will expand the panel to display the customization settings:

Screenshot: Dual-language text conversion settings

Format: Choose the format of the dual-language text.
- When you select “Place copy after each paragraph”, the tool will insert the selected separator followed by a copy of the paragraph text at the end of each paragraph (see the sample above). This is the default choice.
- When you select “Place copy after all selected paragraphs”, a copy of all the selected paragraphs will be placed after the selected paragraphs, with the specified separator between the original text and the copy.
Separator: This is a character or a sequence of characters used to separate the source and target text parts. You can choose ‘Slash’, ‘Backslash’, ‘Line break’, ‘Paragraph break’, ‘Slash + Line break’ or ‘Slash + Paragraph break’. The default separator is ‘Slash’.
Do not duplicate initial numbers: If the source document uses headings with manually typed numbering, e.g. “1. General”, you do not want to duplicate the initial numbering on the right side in most cases. In the case of the previous example, you would want the text to look like “1. General / General” instead of “1. General / 1. General”. To avoid duplicating the initial numbering, activate this setting. The setting is activated by default unless the Separator is ‘Paragraph break’ or ‘Slash + Paragraph break’.
Do not duplicate number-only and simple paragraphs: Some paragraphs should not be translated at all, so there is no need to duplicate them. For instance, in a table containing financial data, you will likely keep the financial figures untranslated. Using this setting, you can select a predefined set of rules for non-translatable paragraphs or specify one or more regular expressions that match such paragraphs. To activate the setting, check the box and click Configure this setting button. You will see the following dialog window:

Select one of the options from the drop-down list. The following options are provided:
- Paragraphs containing only punctuation, spaces, special symbols and digits – This is the default option which matches paragraphs containing only punctuation characters, spaces, special symbols and digits.
- Paragraphs which do not contain any letters – This option will match paragraphs that do not contain any letters.
- Paragraphs composed of a single number with or without a currency symbol – This option will match paragraphs which contain a single number with or without a currency symbol at the beginning or at the end, preceded and/or followed by optional spaces. This rule should cover the most common ways of formatting numbers, including currency formats, but is not guaranteed to cover all possible scenarios.
- Paragraphs composed of a single number without a currency symbol – This option will match paragraphs which contain a single number without a currency symbol. This rule only covers numbers in non-financial scenarios and is not guaranteed to cover all possible numeric formats.
- Paragraphs meeting custom conditions – This option allows you to define custom rules for detecting non-translatable paragraphs. When you select this option, you will be able to choose from a number of predefined rules similar to the options covered above, and add one or more custom regular expressions in order to match the paragraphs you do not want to duplicate.
  
  To activate/deactivate a specific rule, check or uncheck its checkbox. Clicking the Add button will bring up a new window in which you will be able to specify the regular expression, its case sensitivity, and description for your reference:
  
  Use the Edit button to modify a custom regular expression. It is not possible to modify pre-set expressions, but you can use the Edit button in order to see the regular expression for you to create a new expression on its basis.
  
  Use the Remove button to remove a custom regular expression. It is not possible to remove predefined expressions, but you can deactivate them using the checkbox.
New paragraph spacing: If you set ‘Paragraph break’ or ‘Slash + Paragraph break’ as the separator, you may need to apply different paragraph spacing in the new paragraphs created after the originals (when doing formatting work manually, paragraph spacing is configurable in the Paragraph Format dialogue of Microsoft Word under “Before” and “After” parameters). Use ‘same’ (default option) if you want to use the same paragraph spacing, or specify other values (in points).
Translation will be on Left side / Right side: Choose whether the translation will be before or after the separator. The tool uses this setting to apply formatting to the future translation (the duplicated text) and/or the source text in order to streamline the translation process. The following formatting is applied:
1. Highlight color formatting is applied to the future translation (duplicated text) as per the Highlight Future Translation setting described below. Color highlighting makes it easier to see what needs to be translated, and it simplifies preparation for translation in CAT tools with the help of Hide/Unhide Text tool (refer to Highlight Future Translation setting).
2. Hidden formatting is applied to the source text if the Hide Original Text setting (see below) is activated.
3. [If the Format setting is set to “Place copy after all selected paragraphs”] If the text contains any automatic numbered lists, automatic numbering will be preserved on the translation side, and the source side will use textual numbering, i.e. numeric sequences at the beginning of paragraphs. This way, the document will have the same numbering and you will not see list item numbers when you translate the text inside your CAT tool.
Use Highlight Future Translation setting to apply color highlighting to the text that must be replaced with translation, i.e. the text on the Right Side or Left Side depending on the previous setting. You can choose a specific highlight color or “Do not highlight” option. The Highlight Future Translation setting is very useful because color highlighting makes it easier to see what needs to be translated. If you use a CAT tool like Trados Studio, memoQ, Phrase TMS, etc., you can use Hide/Unhide Text tool later to mark the highlighted text as visible and the rest of the text as hidden before importing the document into the CAT tool.
Use Hide Original Text setting to apply hidden formatting to the text in the source column. If you use this setting, keep in mind that hidden text may be confused with normal (visible) text, so make sure not to convert the same paragraphs twice. It is recommended to use Highlight Future Translation setting along with this setting to make it easier to see what was already converted.
Use After hiding, display hidden text setting if you prefer to see the text formatted as hidden. When this setting is activated, the tool will modify Microsoft Word’s settings so that text marked with the Hidden formatting option is visible on the screen. This text will have thin underlines, making it a bit easier to differentiate hidden text from standard text. This setting is deactivated by default and will only be applied if Hide Original Text setting is activated.
Keyboard shortcut: use this setting if you want to convert text to dual-language text quicker by pressing a key combination. Click the Change button to assign a keyboard shortcut:

Assigning a keyboard shortcut

To set a keyboard shortcut, place the cursor in the text field and press a key combination on the keyboard. This will display the new keyboard shortcut.

Notes:
(1) A keyboard shortcut must include Ctrl+Shift or Ctrl+Alt. If you attempt to assign Ctrl or Alt alone, the keyboard shortcut will be corrected automatically. So, assigning a key combination like Ctrl+S or Alt+S is not possible, only Ctrl+Alt+S or Ctrl+Shift+S.
(2) It is not possible to use the Windows key as one of the modifier keys.

When you assign a keyboard shortcut, you will often see a warning that the keyboard shortcut is already assigned to a Word command or user-defined macro:

In most cases, you can ignore this warning because the keyboard shortcut you assign will only be active while the Dual Language Document Assistant panel is open in the current Word document. In all other situations, the original Word’s keyboard shortcut will work as it did before the assignment.

To clear the keyboard shortcut, click the Clear button.

Using configuration profiles

Depending on the type of your document, you may need to apply different configuration settings when using the Convert To Dual-Language Table tool or the Convert To Dual-Language Text tool. For example, to process documents for Customer A, you need to place the original on the right side, formatting the left side using a highlight color for translation in a CAT tool, use zero-width border, and use a line break as the separator when using using the Text tool.

The profile area is located at the top of Dual-Language Document Assistant panel.

To save current configuration settings to a new profile, select or deselect various settings under Convert To Dual-language Table and Convert To Dual-language Text buttons, and choose (Create new profile...) option from the list at the top of the panel. In the dialog window that appears, assign a name to the new profile and click OK.

To save current configuration settings to an existing profile, select or deselect various settings, select the profile from the list at the top of the panel, and click the Save button.

To load settings from a specific profile, select it from the list at the top of the panel and click the Load button.

The Default profile is loaded automatically when Dual-Language Document Assistant panel is opened.

To remove a specific profile, select it from the list and click the Remove button. The Default profile cannot be removed.

You can override the initial (default) tool settings by saving the current settings to the Default profile. If you wish to restore the initial (default) settings, you will need to delete the file called Default.xml located in the following folder: C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\TransTools+\Dual Language Assistant Profiles (“username” here is the Windows user name of the current user). You can also reach this folder by pasting the following text in the address bar of Windows Explorer (Windows file manager): %appdata%\TransTools+\Dual Language Assistant Profiles .

Click the Close ( × ) button at the top of the panel to close the Dual-Language Document Assistant panel. Note that this simply hides the panel in the current document, and clicking the Dual Language Assistant button on the ribbon re-displays the panel in its previous state.
Click the Help icon ( ? ) to go to this online reference page.

Tools for dual-language translation

TransTools

Dual-Language Document Assistant – prepare documents for translation into dual-language format

Tools for partial (selective) translation

TransTools+

Hide / Unhide Text – mark text as non-translatable in order to hide it from your CAT tool or convert it into tags

TransTools

Hide / Unhide Text – mark text as non-translatable in order to hide it from your CAT tool