Panes

This is where you type and edit your translation. The Editor pane displays the text of the partially translated document: the text already translated is displayed in translation while the untranslated text is displayed in the original language. The displayed text is split into segments and you may scroll through the document and double-click on any segment to open and edit it. In the above case, the segments already translated are shown in yellow.

One of the above segments is the current segment. It is the segment that is displayed in two parts. The upper part is in the source language, in bold characters with a green background color, the lower part is the editing field, ended by a marker: the marker is <segment nnnn> where nnnn is a number of the segment in the project. Use the upper part as a reference and replace or modify the contents of the editing field with your translation.

Note: the segment marker displays <segment nnnn +yy more> when the segment is non-unique. In that case, yy is the number of other occurrences of the segment in the project.

Depending upon the preferred editing behavior, the editing field for the untranslated segment may be empty, contain the source text, or contain the translation of the string most similar to the one to be translated. When you move to another segment, the translation is validated and stored. If you want the translation to be the same as the source, simply make the editing field empty by removing all the text (select all with Ctrl + A and delete with Del ). OmegaT is able to store translations that are identical to the source. This is useful for documents that contain trade marks, names or other proper nouns, or parts in a third language that do not require translation. See Translation editing for more details.

If you right click on the Editor pane, a pop-up menu opens, offering Cut, Copy, Paste (i.e. same functions as Ctrl + X , Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V ), GoTo segment and Add glossary entry functions. In addition, when the right click occurs on an opened segment, other options concerning Alternative translations are proposed, for example to to jump to another instance of non-unique segments.

It is possible to drag text from anywhere in the main window and to drop it within the segment. Texted dragged from outside the target segment is copied, while text dragged from within the segment is moved.

By default, it is not possible to select words in the source segment using the keyboard rather than the mouse. Pressing F2 key allows to move the cursor into the source segment (or anywhere in the editor) with the keyboard arrows. In this mode, "Cursor lock off" is displayed at the bottom of the pane. To come back to the standard mode "Cursor lock on", press F2 again.

The match viewer shows the most similar segments from translation memories, both from internal project translation memory created in real time as you translate your project and from ancillary translation memories you have imported from your earlier jobs, or received from your client or translation agency.

When you move to the next segment, the first fuzzy match (the one with the best matching percentage) is automatically selected. You may select a different match by pressing Ctrl+2, 3, 4, or 5. Of course, pressing Ctrl + 5 will have no effect, if there is no match #5. To use the selected match in your translation, use Ctrl + R to replace the target field with the match or use Ctrl + I to insert it at the cursor position.

The three matching percentages are in the following order:

It is possible to modify the sort order of the three percentages but not which is used to select the fuzzy matches.

The selected fuzzy match is highlighted in bold, words that are missing in the segment you are translating are colored blue and words adjacent to the missing parts green. In the above example the source segment is Context menu command . The top match is 100%, because all words match. So do the next two matches, and the match #4 is similar, but different. The line with the matching percentage also includes the name of the translation memory containing the match. If there's no file name displayed, the source is the internal project translation memory. Orphan segments (match #2) describe segments in the default project translation memory that have no corresponding source segment.

The Glossary pane allows you to access your own collection of expressions and specialist terminology which you have built up in your glossary files. It shows translation of terms found in the current segment. The source segment in the example below was “ Context menu command ”, as in the Fuzzy Matches example above, and the terms shown were found in the glossaries, available (Microsoft's Term collection and Slovenian Linux User group Glossary).

If you have TransTips option activated (Options+TransTips), you can right click on the highlighted word in the source segment to open a pop-up menu with suggested translation, as offered by your glossary. Selecting one of them will insert it at the current cursor position into the target segment. You can also highlight your preferred alternative in the glossary pane and insert it into the target by right clicking on the selection.

Dictionaries are the electronic equivalents of printed dictionaries like Merriam Webster, Duden, Larousse etc., that you may have on your desk. See more about them in the chapter on Dictionaries

The machine translation pane, when opened, contains the suggestions by machine translation tools for the current segment. Press Ctrl + M to replace the translation of the current segment with the suggested translation.

A given source segment may require several different translations, depending on the context. If the current translation of the segment does not fit, the user can select Edit+Create Alternative Translation. The target text entered after that will be treated as an alternative translation of the source segment. You can define one of the alternative - for instance the most probable among them - as default translation by selecting Edit+Use as Default Translation

The translator can add notes to the opened segment, for instance to come back later to the segment and redo the translation, check that alternative translations are correct or to ask colleagues for their opinion. You can browse through notes using GoTo+Next Note and GoTo+Previous Note.

Some of the file formats, specialized for translation work, for instance PO, allow the inclusion of comments. This way the translator can be provided the context about the segment to be translated. In the example below, the author of the PO file included a warning for the translator to check the length of the translation:

The status bar displays work-flow related messages at the bottom of the main window. This bar gives the user feedback on specific operations that are in progress. It also displays the number of fuzzy and glossary matches for the current segment.

The counters in the lower right corner keep track of the progress of the translation (numbers in the left hand column refer to the figure above):

From a practical point of view, the most important pair of numbers is the second pair: it tells, how much you have done so far, in relation to the total or second number. The project in the example is evidently finished, as all the unique segments have been translated.