Deleted translated files! Can you help?
Thread poster: segment
segment
segment
English to French
May 17, 2006

I am new to Trados. I was working on my second document - 2000 words in Word (with a small TM and Termbase I had just created). All was going well: I was saving regularly in Word; TM and Termbase were working. I did my first draft with Trados, then spent an hour polishing off the text in Word. I saved the document in Word then closed it to do a "cleanup" through Trados... and my translation became nowhere to be found! It was completely removed from my system! I tried to find it with MS "Find Fil... See more
I am new to Trados. I was working on my second document - 2000 words in Word (with a small TM and Termbase I had just created). All was going well: I was saving regularly in Word; TM and Termbase were working. I did my first draft with Trados, then spent an hour polishing off the text in Word. I saved the document in Word then closed it to do a "cleanup" through Trados... and my translation became nowhere to be found! It was completely removed from my system! I tried to find it with MS "Find File" function, in my backup files, with Google Desktop, to no avail! It's like the document never existed. After panicking, I tried running the original document through the TM again and, indeed, it worked... However, what Trados inserted was not my "polished up" version, but the first draft... so I lost 2 hours of work (1 panicking and looking for the file, 1 touching up my first draft again).

Any idea what happened there? I don't want this to EVER happen!

Cheers.

François
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Astrid Elke Witte
Astrid Elke Witte  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 22:45
Member (2002)
German to English
+ ...
It's called the Trados black hole May 17, 2006

It happened to me once in the beginning, in exactly the same way, and I also remember reading in a forum once before about it happening to someone (who reported "Trados eats files"). The documents disappear into the Trados black hole, Trados Bermuda triangle, or whatever. They never turn up again! It must be related to something that beginners touch, or click, that they shouldn't, but I don't know the details. It has never happened to me again since my first week of using Trados.

As
... See more
It happened to me once in the beginning, in exactly the same way, and I also remember reading in a forum once before about it happening to someone (who reported "Trados eats files"). The documents disappear into the Trados black hole, Trados Bermuda triangle, or whatever. They never turn up again! It must be related to something that beginners touch, or click, that they shouldn't, but I don't know the details. It has never happened to me again since my first week of using Trados.

As far as I know, the mystery has never been solved yet. It would make a good topic for innovative research.

Astrid
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Ralf Lemster
Ralf Lemster  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 22:45
English to German
+ ...
Check your log file May 17, 2006

...for any error message.

Having used Trados for 10+ years, I have never seen this - the only thing I can imagine is an error occurring when Trados stores the interim RTF file created for cleanup back to its original path. (Hence my suggestion to check the log for any hints.)

Best regards,
Ralf


 
Peter Linton (X)
Peter Linton (X)  Identity Verified
Local time: 21:45
Swedish to English
+ ...
Puzzling May 17, 2006

You say that you did your first draft with Trados, then spent an hour polishing off the text in Word (presumably not using Trados). Then you saved it in Word and closed it to do a cleanup in Trados.

That sounds to me like a Word problem, not a Trados problem. It is hard to see how Trados can "eat" Word files, or drop them into a black hole when it is not even being used.

In my early days, I too lost to occasional Word files, and that taught me the importance of setting
... See more
You say that you did your first draft with Trados, then spent an hour polishing off the text in Word (presumably not using Trados). Then you saved it in Word and closed it to do a cleanup in Trados.

That sounds to me like a Word problem, not a Trados problem. It is hard to see how Trados can "eat" Word files, or drop them into a black hole when it is not even being used.

In my early days, I too lost to occasional Word files, and that taught me the importance of setting your backup options in Word (via Options/Tools/Save). It also taught me the importance of saving a new version of your document before you start work on it.

I am also puzzled that you did your first draft in Trados, and then polished the document outside Trados. That puts the two documents out of sync, and rather defeats the purpose of using Trados. And as you point out, with Trados you were able to regenerate your first draft (and could have regenerated your polished version if you had used Trados all the time). So, far from being a black hole, Trados was your backup.
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segment
segment
English to French
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you Astrid, Ralf and Peter! May 17, 2006

Being very "green" with Trados, my technical knowledge is quite limited, as you can imagine.

Astrid: Hopefully this will not happen to me again either. I was on a tight deadline and it ended being a very late night! Damn that blackhole!

Ralf: I will check the log file... once I find it! (just kidding...)however, I don't hold much hope as my file was not found with Google Desktop (which is a very reliable application)

Peter: I will set up my Word backup prop
... See more
Being very "green" with Trados, my technical knowledge is quite limited, as you can imagine.

Astrid: Hopefully this will not happen to me again either. I was on a tight deadline and it ended being a very late night! Damn that blackhole!

Ralf: I will check the log file... once I find it! (just kidding...)however, I don't hold much hope as my file was not found with Google Desktop (which is a very reliable application)

Peter: I will set up my Word backup properly - for some reason it does not seem to work well, but that's for another forum! You are right - my work was out of sync. As I said, being very new, I am a shy of Trados and prefer to shut it down when doing my final corrections. I shall endeavour to "trust the machine" and not turn off Trados when polishing up.

Again thank you all for your input - I am very grateful. I will be attending training at the end of May so hopefully I will be a bit "wiser" with my next dealings with Trados.

Merci encore.

François
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Corza
Corza
Mexico
Local time: 15:45
English to Spanish
Trados blackhole May 19, 2006

It's more than 24 hrs I've been thinking what happened to your text. I have the feeling your problem was with the clean-up command. The clean up dialog box shows four choices under Changed Translations (to your right). Changed Translations options apply to documents in which changes have been made to the translation units in the document without using Translators Workbench (your case). As a result some translation units in the document differ from those in the translation memory. If you selec... See more
It's more than 24 hrs I've been thinking what happened to your text. I have the feeling your problem was with the clean-up command. The clean up dialog box shows four choices under Changed Translations (to your right). Changed Translations options apply to documents in which changes have been made to the translation units in the document without using Translators Workbench (your case). As a result some translation units in the document differ from those in the translation memory. If you select UPDATE DOCUMENT your document is updated according to your TM and all changes are ignored. If you select UPDATE TM changes made to the translations units in the document are updated to the translation memory. I hope this helps you solve your problem. I would recommend you to make a copy of your unclean, polished documents before cleaning them up. GOOD LUCK CORZA.Collapse


 
Michelangela
Michelangela
United States
Local time: 14:45
German to English
+ ...
Trados 2017 deleted 50%+ of my translated segments Aug 20, 2017

I've been working on finishing the last 25% of my translation today (of ca. 1400 segments in total). When I was about 80% done, the statistics started to be messed up (the number of untranslated segments was incorrect at 5%), then all remaining segments were filled with the original language translation showing as being translated.

To make the long story short, I reopened Trados and the first 50% of my translation vanished completely.

Is there any way to retrieve it?<
... See more
I've been working on finishing the last 25% of my translation today (of ca. 1400 segments in total). When I was about 80% done, the statistics started to be messed up (the number of untranslated segments was incorrect at 5%), then all remaining segments were filled with the original language translation showing as being translated.

To make the long story short, I reopened Trados and the first 50% of my translation vanished completely.

Is there any way to retrieve it?

Trados has no decent free technical support that I am aware of.

Please, help!
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Mirko Mainardi
Mirko Mainardi  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 22:45
Member
English to Italian
TM Aug 20, 2017

Michelangela wrote:

I've been working on finishing the last 25% of my translation today (of ca. 1400 segments in total). When I was about 80% done, the statistics started to be messed up (the number of untranslated segments was incorrect at 5%), then all remaining segments were filled with the original language translation showing as being translated.

To make the long story short, I reopened Trados and the first 50% of my translation vanished completely.

Is there any way to retrieve it?


You dug up a thread from 11 years ago, so you might not get a reply from the people who originally wrote there.

At any rate, if you confirmed those segments once, they should still be in the main translation memory you were using for that project. Can't you see a perfect match if you move to one of the now deleted segments? If so, it's just a matter of pre-translating the file to repopulate the missing segments.


 
Michelangela
Michelangela
United States
Local time: 14:45
German to English
+ ...
TM is completely blank Aug 20, 2017

I created a new TM for this project and has remained completely blank.

 
Sandra & Kenneth Grossman
Sandra & Kenneth Grossman  Identity Verified
Israel
Local time: 23:45
French to English
+ ...
I don't understand the question Aug 21, 2017

It seems that the author of the initial question was working in Workbench, not in Studio, so this thread is not relevant.

If you confirmed each segment before moving on to the next one, you should have an .sdlxliff file containing them. You may have inadvertently selected a chunk of text and entered an instruction to insert the source text in it.
In addition, you should have a TM in which you stored these segments. You must have seen these segments in the Translation Results
... See more
It seems that the author of the initial question was working in Workbench, not in Studio, so this thread is not relevant.

If you confirmed each segment before moving on to the next one, you should have an .sdlxliff file containing them. You may have inadvertently selected a chunk of text and entered an instruction to insert the source text in it.
In addition, you should have a TM in which you stored these segments. You must have seen these segments in the Translation Results screen.
Consequently, you should be able to reconstruct your file from either of these two resources.
Close your file without saving and reopen it, or as suggested, add the original file again and pre-translate.
If you saved the corrupted file and did not use a TM, you have a problem.
HTH,

Sandra

Incidentally, the Studio community is quite helpful.
https://community.sdl.com/solutions/language/translationproductivity/f/90
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Michelangela
Michelangela
United States
Local time: 14:45
German to English
+ ...
Oops! Aug 21, 2017

Sandra& Kenneth wrote:
It seems that the author of the initial question was working in Workbench, not in Studio, so this thread is not relevant.


Yes, you are 100% correct. I realized that I initially posted this in the wrong place. Second try:
http://www.proz.com/forum/sdl_trados_support/317810-[trados_2017_sp1]_how_to_rescue_translated_segments_lost_by_trados.html

And thanks for the SDL community suggestion, quite helpful!


 


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Deleted translated files! Can you help?







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