OmegaT 6.0.1 - User Manual

Project Folder

Default structure

An OmegaT project consists of a set of folders and files that contain the resources used for translating.

By default, a newly created project will contain all the required resources within its folder, and those resources are assigned the default names below.

  • source contains the source files

  • target is the location where the target files are created

  • glossary contains the glossaries

  • glossary.txt is the project writable glossary

  • tm contains the reference translation memories

  • dictionary contains the reference dictionaries

Use Project Access Project Contents to access the project folder and its subfolders.

Use Project Properties... C + E , to easily assign locations other than the default ones to the various resources either when you create the project, or later on.

For example, you can

  • create the translated files in a shared folder outside the project folder, in a location easily accessible to your reviewer, or

  • use a glossary folder from a separate but related project, or

  • use a reference translation memory folder that you have set up for related projects, and so on.

Creating a project gives it a core hierarchy, but its final structure is not fixed. You can always remove or add files and folders to the project.

Note

You can also create OmegaT projects either manually or with scripts by copying a set of prewritten files to a new folder:

  • Any given folder that contains a valid omegat.project file will be recognized as a translation project by OmegaT (even if it later needs manual adjustments).

  • If the folder is an empty repository and the omegat.project file contains remote repository information, the project will be recognized as a team project by OmegaT:

    ...
        <external_command></external_command>
        <repositories>
            <repository type="git" url="https://URL/OF/THE/REMOTE/PROJECT/REPOSITORY">
                <mapping local="/" repository="/"/>
            </repository>
        </repositories>
    </project>
    		  

    See the Set up a team project how-to for details.

Minimal contents

A project is a folder containing, at a minimum, the following:

omegat

This is the project folder that always contains project_save.tmx, the project translation memory, and project_stats.txt, the statistics data file for the project.

Other files will be added over the course of the translation.

See below for details.

omegat.project

This file contains the project parameters defined in the project properties, such as the source and target languages, their respective tokenizers and the type of segmentation.

It also acts as an address book that specifies where project resources are located.

OmegaT also creates a backup of that file (omegat.project.bak) and will automatically use it to restore your project settings in case of need.

source

The source folder contains the files to translate.

Use Project Add Files... or drop files on the Editor pane to add files any time you want.

The contents of the files in a format that OmegaT supports will be displayed in the Editor pane for translation.

You can add folders or remove files with your file manager.

If your translation project involves a number of folders and you feel like working on one folder at a time, use Project Properties... C + E to access the project properties and change the assigned source folder as you wish.

target

This folder is initially empty.

It will be populated with the translated files every time you use Create Translated Files C + D or Create Current Translated File C + S + D .

The translated files that correspond to the contents of the source folder, whether fully translated or not, are then created here, using the same hierarchy as in the source folder.

The files created here will reflect the current state of the translation. Untranslated segments will remain in the source language.

tm

This folder can contain any number of bilingual reference documents (TMX files, but also any file in a bilingual format supported by OmegaT, including PO files, etc.) and the TMX files can also be compressed in the gzip format.

OmegaT can be instructed to automatically insert matches. To remind you that a match was inserted by OmegaT and not by you, OmegaT adds the prefix set in the Insert the best fuzzy match preference.

Matches from the reference memories are displayed in the Fuzzy Matches pane, just like matches from project_save.tmx, the project translation memory.

Such matches are by default limited to the source and target languages defined in the Project Properties dialog, but you can also add matches in languages that are not the target language. See the Include matches from other languages preferences for details.

The folder can contain any number of subfolders, including some that have special functions:

tm/auto

This folder is intended for reliable references files that can automatically fill exactly matching and not yet translated segments.

Translations from TMX files placed in this folder are automatically inserted in matching segments without the automatic prefix, making it unnecessary to confirm these segments.

Translations coming from this folder are considered to be as reliable as the project memory.

Note

Enable the Save auto-populated status option to have OmegaT remember that the inserted matches came from this folder.

  1. Put the applicable memories in the tm/auto folder.

  2. Open the project. You will see that segments identical to source segments in those memories are already filled in. Use View Highlight Auto-Populated Segments to highlight them.

  3. Make a minor change anywhere in the project and save it. This will add the translations loaded from the tm/auto folder to the project translation memory.

Use the navigation menus found in Go To Auto-Populated Segments to navigate to the inserted segments.

Warning

If you remove a TMX file from tm/auto before Step 3, its content will not be kept.

tm/enforce

This folder is made for reliable references files that are also meant to automatically overwrite previously translated contents.

Translations from TMX files placed in this folder are automatically inserted in matching segments without the fuzzy match prefix, making it unnecessary to confirm these segments.

Translations coming from this folder are considered to be more reliable than the current project memory.

If you have no doubt that a given TMX contains more accurate translations than the current project_save.tmx file, put that TMX in the tm/enforce folder to overwrite the existing translations unconditionally.

Note

Enable the Save auto-populated status option to have OmegaT remember that the inserted matches came from this folder.

  1. Put the applicable memories in the tm/enforce folder.

  2. Open the project. You will see that segments identical to source segments in those memories are already filled in.

  3. Make a minor change anywhere in the project and save. This updates the project translation memory.

  4. Make a decision about the immutability of the enforced segments:

    • If they don't need to remain immutable to further changes, remove the TMX from tm/enforce.

    • If they do need to remain immutable to further changes, leave the TMX in tm/enforce. Any modification to the segments that come from these memories will not be taken into account.

Use the navigation menus found in Go To Auto-Populated Segments to navigate to the segments that have been inserted.

Warning

If you remove a TMX file from tm/enforce before Step 3, none of the enforced translations will be kept.

tm/mt

When a match is inserted from a TMX contained in this folder, the background colour of the active segment changes to red.

The background colour is restored to normal when you leave the segment or when you modify the segment.

tm/penalty-xxx

xxx is a number from 0 to 100 that will act as a penalty subtracted from the match percentage of segments coming from this folder.

For example, a 100% match in a TMX, stored in a folder called penalty-30 becomes a 70% match. The penalty applies to all three match percentages. Scores of 75, 80 and 90 for a match are lowered to 45, 50 and 60.

tm/tmx2source

You can display a third language right under the source segment to use as a third language reference. See the Bridge two languages how-to for details.

Note

You can combine folders to create new functions. For example, a 10% penalty folder within the machine translation folder: tm/mt/penalty-010 would never generate 100% matches that could otherwise be automatically inserted by OmegaT, and would always set a red background to the match whenever it is inserted.

exported tms folder

By default, that folder is the project folder itself but you can change its location to make it more practical to share exported TM files. See the Share TMs how-to for details.

dictionary

This folder is initially empty, and is used to store any dictionaries you add to the project.

Dictionary terms that match parts of the segment are displayed in the Dictionaries pane. See the Dictionaries preferences for details.

OmegaT supports dictionaries in the StarDict or in the Lingvo DSL format. You can find some dictionaries on the OmegaT Wiki.

To install dictionaries:

  1. download the file - it should be a tarball archive (extension tar.bz or tar.bz2),

  2. extract its contents into this folder. There should be three files per dictionary, with extensions dz, idx and ifo.

If you want to remove words from potential dictionary matches, add an ignore.txt encoded in UTF-8 to the folder. The file must have one word per line. All the words contained in that list will be ignored by OmegaT.

glossary

This folder is initially empty. It is used to store the default writable glossary and any other glossaries you use in the project.

Glossary terms that match parts of the segment are displayed in the Glossaries pane. See the Glossaries appendix for details.

glossary.txt

This is the project writable glossary. It is created the first time you use Create Glossary Entry... C + S + G .

You can access it with Access Project Contents , open it in a text editor, modify it with a text editor. As soon as you have saved your modifications, they will be taken into account by OmegaT.

omegat

The omegat folder contains, at a minimum, the project_save.tmx and project_stats.txt files. It may also include several other files.

project_save.tmx

This is the most important file in the project. When you create a new project, the file is empty and is gradually filled with the translations of the text in files located in the source folder.

It constitutes the working translation memory of the project.

OmegaT regularly backs-up that file. See the Troubleshoot issues how-to for details.

project_save.tmx.bak

This file is a backup of project_save.tmx and is automatically recreated every time project_save.tmx has been modified: either after using Project Save C + S , or as a regular backup every 3 minutes by default. See the Project data saving interval preference for details.

project_save.tmx.timestamp.bak

Every time a project is loaded, OmegaT creates a backup of project_save.tmx with the name project_save.tmx.[time stamp].bak. OmegaT keeps up to 10 of those files.

project_stats.txt

This is the statistics file for the whole project. It is updated each time the project is reloaded.

Use Tools Statistics to update it.

project_stats_match.txt

This file contains the latest project match statistics. Use Tools Match Statistics to generate it.

project_stats_match_per_file.txt

This file contains the latest project match statistics by file. Use Tools Match Statistics per File to generate it.

ignored_words.txt, learned_words.txt

These files are created and used by the spellchecker. You can add terms in the Editor pane by right-clicking on a word marked as incorrect and selecting Ignore All (for words to skip during spellchecking), or Add to Dictionary (for words to accept as correct), respectively, from the context menu. See the Spellchecker preferences for details.

If you already have a collection of words you want the spellchecker to ignore or accept, simply save them in text files with the corresponding names, and copy the files to the omegat folder of your current project.

segmentation.conf

This file contains the project-specific segmentation rules.

filters.xml

This file contains the project-specific file filters.

uiLayout.xml

This file contains the project-specific GUI settings.

finder.xml

This file contains the project-specific external searches.

files_order.txt

This file is created if you manually change the order of the files in the Source Files window.

last_entry.properties

This file keeps a record of the last segment you visited, including its number, its source contents, the file name and the date, so that you can come back to it when you reload/relaunch the project.

.repositories

In a team project, this folder contains a versioned copy of the project tree structure linked directly to the remote server.

You can make changes to the remote files (such as deleting or replacing them) by making your changes in this folder and using a Git or SVN client to synchronize them with the remote server. See the Set up a team project how-to for details.

In some operating systems, this folder is hidden by default. Turn on the option to show hidden files in your system to make it visible.