Chapter 4. The user interface
Prev |  | Next

## Chapter 4. The user interface

## 1. User interface items

### 1.1. Frequently used windows

OmegaT main window

  contains the main menu, status bar and several panes:

  - Editor - where you type and edit the translation

  - Match Viewer - displays the most similar segments from translation memories

  - Glossary Viewer - displays terminology

  - Dictionary Viewer - displays information provided by dictionaries

  - Machine Translation - displays the translation, provided by MT services, like Google Translate

Project Files window

  The list of your translatable files (open with Ctrl+L, close with Esc)

Search window

  Used to search for specific segments in the project (open with Ctrl+F, close with Esc)

### 1.2. Less frequently used

Tag Validation window

  Used to check for tag mistakes in translations (open with Ctrl+T close with Esc)

Help browser

  Used to read the user manual (open with F1, close with Esc)

Match statistics window

  Used to open the window with the statistics of the project, select Tools → Match statistics.

### 1.3. Project settings dialogs

The dialogs below are used to change OmegaT project settings. Each is described in detail in a separate section; the information below summarizes their use and how they are invoked:

Project Properties

  Used to modify the project folders and languages, (access via Project → properties... (Ctrl+E), close via Esc)

Font

  Used to modify the font used by OmegaT to display source, translation, matches and glossary terms, (access via Options → Font..., close via Esc)

File filters

  Used to adjust the handling of supported file formats (access via Options → File Filters..., close via Esc)

Segmentation

  Used to change the way your text is segmented into sentences (access via Options → Segmentation, close via Esc)

Editing Behavior

  Used to change how OmegaT behaves when you iterate between the segments (access via Options → Behavior..., close via Esc)

## 2. OmegaT main window

Figure 4.1. OmegaT panes

The main window consists of several panes, the main menu and a status bar. You can change the position of any pane or even undock it to a separate window by clicking and dragging the pane by its name. Depending on the pane status, different signs can appear at its top right corner:

Table 4.1. Pane widgets

| minimizes the pane, so that only its name is shown at the bottom of the window.
| maximizes the pane
| undocks the pane from the main window.
| puts the pane back within the main window.

You can overlap panes if desired. When this is done the panes display a tab at the top. The separators between the panes can be dragged to resize panes. Should you lose track of your changes to the user interface, you can use Options → Restore the main window any time to return to the original layout.

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):

Table 4.2. Main Window - counters

33/33 | number of segments - translated vs total for the current file
2780/2780 | number of unique segments - translated vs total in the project
3760 | total number of segments (including repeats) in the project
126/127 | number of source and target characters in the current segment

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.

### 2.1. Editor pane

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, but this may be changed to suit your preferences (see Section 1.4, “View”).

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.

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) and the GoTo segment functions.

### 2.2. Match viewer

Figure 4.2. Matches pane

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 matching percentage is roughly equivalent to taking the number of common words in the matched and the matching segment and dividing by the number of words in the longer of the two. 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 Duration of exposure <15 min. The top match is 60%, because 3 out of 5 words match. 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 (the match #4) describe segments in the default project translation memory that have no corresponding source segment.

There are actually three match estimates available (60/60/54 in the case of the top match above). They are defined as follows:

- match percentage when the tokenizer plugin is used

- default OmegaT match - number of matched words - with numerals and tags ignored - divided by the total word count

- OmegaT match, including numbers, tags

### 2.3. Glossary

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, but only for reference purposes: there is no feature for inserting the translation or replacing the term with these.

Figure 4.3. Glossary pane

The source segment in the above example was “In most translation jobs it is considered important to have the translated document look similar to the original.”, and two words in it, document and translation were found in the glossary file. OmegaT also supports multi-word terms:

Figure 4.4. multi-word entry in the glossary

If you have TransTip option activated Options → Transtip), you can right click on the highlighted word in the source segment to open a drop-down menu with the alternative translations, as offered by your glossary. Selecting one of them will insert it at the current 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.

### 2.4. Dictionary viewer

Dictionaries are the electronic equivalents of printed dictionaries like Merriam Webster, Duden, Larousse etc., that you may have on your desk.

### 2.5. Machine Translation

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.

### 2.6. Main menu

The main menu provides access to all OmegaT functions. See the Main Menu appendix for a full description of all menus and menu items. The most frequently used functions are accessible with keyboard shortcuts, so once you become accustomed to them, you will no longer need to browse through the menus while translating.

### 2.7. Status bar

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.

## 3. Other windows

### 3.1. Project files

The Project Files window lists the project files and displays other project information. It is displayed automatically when OmegaT loads a project. Use Ctrl+L to open and Esc to close it. The Project Files Window displays the following information:

- the list of all translatable files in the project. These are the files present in the Source files folder in a format that OmegaT is able to recognize. Clicking on any file will open it for translation

- the file currently available in the Editor pane is highlighted with a blue background. Pressing Enter will move the Editor pane to the top of the file selected

- the number of segments in each file is shown next to the file name

- the total number of segments, the number of unique segments in the whole project, and the number of unique segments already translated are shown at the bottom

The set of Unique segments is computed by taking all the segments and removing all duplicate segments. (The definition of “unique” is case-sensitive: "Run" and "run" are treated as being different)

The difference between "Number of segments" and "Number of unique segments" provides an approximate idea of the number of repetitions in the text. Note however that the numbers do not indicate how relevant the repetitions are: they could mean relatively long sentences repeated a number of times (in which case you are fortunate) or it could describe a table of keywords (not so fortunate). The `project_stats.txt` located in the omegat folder of your project contains more detailed segment information, broken down by file.

Modifying the segmentation rules may have the effect of modifying the number of segments/unique segments. This, however, should generally be avoided once you have started translating the project. See the chapter Segmentation rules for more information.

Adding files to the project: You can add source files to the project by clicking on the "Import Source Files..." button. This copies the selected files to the `source` folder and reloads the project to import the new files. You can also add source files from Internet pages, written in MediaWiki, by clicking on "Import from MediaWiki" button and providing the corresponding URL.

### 3.2. Search window

You can use the search window to find specific segments in a project. You can also have several search windows open simultaneously. To open a new search window, use Ctrl+F in the Main window. The search window consists of a text field for search strings or keywords, flags and radio buttons for setting up the search and a display area containing the results of the search. See the chapter Searches for more information about the search window.

### 3.3. Tag validation

The tag validation window detects and lists any tag errors and inconsistencies in the translation. Open the window with Ctrl+T. The window features a 3 column table with a link to the segment and its source and target contents:

Figure 4.5. Tag validation window

Tags are highlighted in bold blue for easy comparison between the original and the translated contents. Click on the link to jump to the segment in the Editor pane. Correct the error if necessary and press Ctrl+T to return to the tag validation window to correct other errors. In the first and third case above tags are paired incorrectly, and in the second case the < sign is missing from the starting tag.

Tag errors are cases in which the tags in the translation do not correspond in order and number to the original segment. Some tag scenarios flagged in the tag validation window are necessary and are benign, others will cause problems when the translated document is created. Tags generally represent some kind of formatting in the original text. Simplifying the original text formatting in the source file before commencing translation greatly contributes to reducing the number of tags.

### 3.4. Match statistics

Statistics are accessed viaTools/Match Statistics. The evaluation is rather CPU intensive and can be time-consuming, so a progress bar is shown during the calculation. As far as categories are concerned, the de facto industry standard of classifying matches into the following groups is used:

- Exact match

- 95%-100%

- 85%-94%

- 75%-84%

- 50%-74%

- No match

The word counts are identical to the numbers, provided in the Project Files window, and are based strictly on OmegaT's method of counting, with a few differences in terminology to account for concept differences. This information is computed for segments, words and for characters (without and including spaces). Note that these totals are a good (or as-good-as-it-can-be) approximation of the work involved in the project and thus can serve as a basis for your cost and price calculations.

Spaces between segments are not taken into account in the last column. Repetitions stand for identical segments present several times in the text. The first segment and its contents will be classified as "no match", and the rest of them as a repetition of the first. If the translation for several identical source segments already exists in the translation memory of the project, these segments, together with other, already translated unique segments, will be classified as an "Exact match". The number of unique segments, if needed, is provided in the standard statistics window, regardless of whether they have been translated or not.

The rest of the categories (50-100%) involves untranslated segments with a fuzzy match. Fuzzy matches can come from the `/tm` folder as well - and not just from the internal translation memory in `/omegaT,` as is the case for repetitions and exact matches. The only difference with matches from the `project_save` translation memory is that external TMs cannot give exact matches, only 100%. If one does not wish to use external TMs for counting, one will either have to empty the /tm folder or change the project setup (temporarily) so that the value for /tm points to a different location.

The Match Statistics are tab-separated and you can use Ctrl+A , Ctrl+C , Ctrl+V to copy/paste them, for instance into a spreadsheet or into your cost-accounting application. Once computed, the data also available in `omegat/project_stats_match.txt.` Note that the file is time-stamped, as the calculation (contrary to the standard statistics) is not instantaneous and can thus quickly become obsolete.

### 3.5. Help browser

The help browser (which displays this manual) can be opened by pressing F1 or navigating to Help → User Manual... in the main menu. In the window, the manual and two buttons are displayed: Back and Contents. The user manual is an HTML document with links to different chapters. Clicking on a link as you would do in a web browser brings the desired page to the front.

The user manual is located in the docs subfolder under the OmegaT installation folder, so you may can, for instance, view the English documentation by opening the `docs/en/index.html` file in your browser. Opening the user manual in this way also enables you to follow external links, as the built-in help browser does not accept external Internet links.

Prev |  | Next
Chapter 3. Installing and running OmegaT | Home | Chapter 5. Menu and Keyboard shortcuts