Tracked Changes Assistant provides several useful tools for working with tracked changes: 1) produces a detailed word count report to help you estimate the translation effort and understand the extent of changes in the new revision of a Word document, 2) converts “false” tracked changes to real tracked changes.
Detailed information about Tracked Changes Assistant
- How Tracked Changes Assistant can help you in your work
- Where to find the tool
- Using Tracked Changes Assistant
- Related tools
How Tracked Changes Assistant can help you in your work
- Analyze the translation effort required to transfer tracked changes into a previous revision of a translated document: Tracked Changes Assistant displays the number of distinct changes (additions, deletions and moves) and word/character counts for these changes so you can get a rough idea how much time it will take for you to translate these changes. In addition, the report contains information about the types of changes made: how many of these changes are full paragraphs or full sentences (which can be translated in their entirety without reviewing the surrounding sentences in most cases) and how many of the changes are words or characters in the middle of existing sentences (which means that you may need to rewrite the translation of the entire sentences).
- Export the word count analysis report into Excel or CSV format: the word count report can be exported into Excel or CSV (tab- or semicolon-delimited) format in order to prepare accurate quotes for your customers. For example, you can use formulas inside Excel to apply special weight factors to calculate the approximate translation time.
- Convert “false” tracked changes (formatting which looks like tracked changes) to real tracked changes: in some documents, tracked changes are represented by standard formatting without using the Tracked Changes mode, i.e. inserted text is underlined and deleted text is crossed out. Converting this formatting to real tracked changes allows you to translate tracked changes in a CAT tool or manually, continue the revision process, accept or reject tracked changes, etc.
Where to find the tool
To run Tracked Changes Assistant, click the Tracked Changes Assistant button on the TransTools+ tab:
This will open Tracked Changes Assistant pane to the right of the current document.
Using Tracked Changes Assistant
1. Tracked changes analysis
Creating a tracked changes word count report
To generate a tracked changes word count report for the current document, open the Tracked Changes Assistant panel by clicking the Tracked Changes Assistant button on the TransTools+ tab, make sure “Analyze and Count Tracked Changes in the Current Document” section is expanded, and then click the Create tracked changes word count report button. When the operation is completed, you will see a report displayed below the button:
The report provides detailed information about tracked additions (insertions), deletions and moves (when text is dragged from one place to another) in the current Word document. The information is grouped by type of change (addition, deletion or move), and you can expand or collapse individual groups if necessary. For each type of change, the report is broken down by the type of text within those changes: whole paragraphs, whole sentences, multi-word phrases, single words, characters inside words, punctuation and spaces/breaks. This information is very useful for estimation purposes because translating large changes, such as new paragraphs or sentences, is always easier than translating small changes inside existing sentences where you may need to re-translate the surrounding context as well. For each of those elements, the report provides the number of such elements, number of words, number of characters (without spaces) and number of characters with spaces, as well as the percentage of such elements among all elements. The total line provides the total word and character counts for additions, deletions and moves. Finally, for each type of change, the total number of distinct changes is provided to help you estimate the translation effort more accurately: again, translating a single 2-paragraph block inserted into the text is easier than translating the same paragraphs which are inserted into 2 different parts of the document, since it will take you extra time to insert them correctly.
Word count report details
If additional tracked changes are introduced in the document, you can always refresh the word count report by clicking the Update tracked changes word count report button.
Exporting the word count report
To export the word count report, click the Export button at the bottom of the Tracked Changes Assistant panel. This will open the Export Options window:
Using the Export Options window, you can specify the format of the export file:
- To export the report in CSV format which can be opened in Microsoft Excel, other spreadsheet editing programs or even a simple text editor, select the CSV option. CSV files can be generated using two different separators: tab character or semicolon. By default, Tracked Changes Assistant will use tabs as a separator, but you can select semicolon if needed.
- To export the report in Microsoft Excel format, select the Excel option. The export file can be saved in XLSX (default) or XLS format depending on the file extension you specify and the version of Microsoft Excel you are using.
Once you export the word count report and open it in your spreadsheet editing application like Excel or Google Sheets, you can create a weighted word count using formulas in order to estimate the translation effort more accurately. Here are some ideas for weight factors:
- The number of distinct additions, deletions and moves can be multiplied by some fixed rate or word count since it will take you time to review each change before creating or updating the translation.
- Use a custom weight factor for multi-word phrases, single words, characters inside words, punctuation and spaces/breaks inside additions in order to calculate the weighted number of words/characters. Note that the word count for characters inside words, punctuation and spaces/breaks is 0, so your weight factor should be based on the number of characters with spaces, not words.
- For deletions, the word count has little importance, and the number of distinct deletions is much more important for determining the amount of work. However, the count of words in deletions is somewhat important for small changes like multi-word phrases, single words, characters inside words, punctuation and spaces/breaks because this means that you will need to update the translation of the existing sentences.
2. Converting “false” tracked changes to real tracked changes
(Note: This feature is available in TransTools+ v.2.7 and newer versions).
From time to time, you will encounter Word documents which contain “false” tracked changes — text which uses underline and strikethrough formatting to identify inserted and deleted text, rather than real Word tracked changes. This is often the case with legal and Life Sciences documents. False tracked changes complicate working with the document, such as translating the changes in a CAT tool, revising the document, accepting or rejecting the changes, etc. The Convert False Tracked Changes to Real Tracked Changes tool included in Tracked Changes Assistant makes it extremely easy to convert these “false” tracked changes to real Word tracked changes.
Sample paragraph containing false tracked changes and the same text converted to real Word tracked changes
To convert false tracked changes (underline and strikethrough formatting which looks like tracked changes), open the Tracked Changes Assistant panel by clicking the Tracked Changes Assistant button on the TransTools+ tab, make sure “Convert False Tracked Changes to Real Tracked Changes” section is expanded, adjust the settings as required and then click the Convert formatting to tracked changes button.
You can freely customize the formatting which must be converted into insertions and deletions:
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For insertions or text moved to a new location (“moved-to” text is a distinct revision type in Word which is used when text is dragged or cut and pasted to a new location), you can specify two types of formatting – Underline or Double Underline.
Note: even though insertions and text moved to a new location are two different types of revisions that look different in Word, both will be converted into insertions. -
For deletions or text moved from an old location (“moved-from” text is a distinct revision type in Word which is used when text is dragged or cut and pasted from its old location to a different one), you can specify two types of formatting – Strikethrough or Double Strikethrough.
Note: even though deletions and text moved from its old location are two different types of revisions that look different in Word, both will be converted into deletions. -
You can add any number of alternative sets of formatting by clicking the Add formatting button under the Insertions or Deletions sections. Click the trash can button on the right side to delete a set of formatting.
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For both insertions and deletions, you can select Any Color in the Color list if this type of “false tracked changes” uses any font color, or select a specific color if insertions/deletions use only distinct colors. Besides the colors available in the list, you can pick a color from the current document by selecting some text in the document and selecting Selection Color item from the Color list, and you can also pick a color in a different way by selecting Select Custom Color... item and then selecting the appropriate color from the standard color palette or picking it from any point on the screen with the dropper tool.
Notes:
- The Automatic item and Black item available in the Color lists are two different colors – by default, Word uses Automatic color which looks black but may look different against some backgrounds; at the same time, Black color always appears black. This means that, in most cases, you will need to select Automatic rather than Black. If you are unsure, put the editing cursor inside inserted/deleted text which looks black and then select Selection Color item from the Color list – this will select the right color.
- Tracked Changes Assistant can only work with “font color” or “text color”, not “highlight color”, as font (text) color is the most common way to format insertions and deletions.
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If you need to select specific colors for insertions or deletions and the document uses a lot of colors or you are not sure which color to select, click the Click for color options button and select the Use document colors menu item. This will update all the Color lists only with the colors that are available in the current document, excluding other colors, so that you can select the right colors more easily. If the document is updated and the colors change, select the Use document colors menu item again to update the Color lists.
Convert “False” Tracked Changes to Real Tracked Changes tool also offers profiles as a way to reuse your common settings in order to speed up your work:
- Select a profile from the Profiles list at the top of the tool's section in the Tracked Changes Assistant panel and click the Load button to the right of the list in order to load your settings profile.
- Select a profile from the Profiles list and click the Save button in order to save the current settings profile.
- To create a new profile, expand the Profiles list and select (Create New Profile...) item. This will prompt you to enter the name of the new profile and then save the current settings to the newly created profile automatically.
- You can customize the Default profile. To do this, select the Default profile and click the Save button. The settings stored in the Default profile are loaded automatically when the Tracked Changes Assistant panel is opened in a document for the first time.
- Use the Remove button to remove the selected profile. The Default profile cannot be removed.
- Profiles do not store whether the color lists should use the document colors or the default colors. They only store the sets of formatting to be used for insertions and deletions. So, if you would like the Color lists to contain only the colors used in the current document, you will need to click the Click for color options... button and select the Use document colors menu item after a profile is loaded.
- All profiles are stored under C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\TransTools+\Formatting To Tracked Changes Profiles folder. Use this folder to exchange or back up profiles (the same can be done with TransTools Migration Utility which is included in TransTools+ and TransTools). Also, in case you saved custom settings to the Default profile and want to restore these to the default ones, you can delete the Default profile from this folder (since the Default profile cannot be removed from the profile list).
Miscellaneous tools
TransTools
- Accept all revisions and turn 'Track Changes' off – accept all revisions in the document and deactivate Track Changes mode