Pandora's Box Wordfast Classic
Wordfast tries to cover the essential needs of everyday translation, but there are countless special situations that require specific features. Rather that multiplying endless setups with buttons and checkboxes, a raw but efficient "un-natural" interface is used to activate some rarely used features. Just enter one of the following commands in Pandora's box, to obtain a particular behaviour from Wordfast. Commands are separated with a paragraph mark (use Shift+Enter to enter paragraph marks).
During a translation session, Ctrl+Alt+P will turn off (and toggle back on) all the commands entered in Pandora's box.
Important: PB commands are case-sensitive: use them the way they are produced when clicking the "Commands" button, or the way they are written in this manual. Adding or removing the _ (underscore) character makes them inactive or active. The underscore character can be located anywhere within the command. Thus,
AllowEmptyTarget is active; Allow_EmptyTarget is not active; AllowEmpty_Target is not active; _AllowEmptyTarget is active because the underscored is not within the command; Allowemptytarget is ignored because its case is not correct.
Right-clicking the list of commands will toggle between the display of all commands, and only active commands.
| AllowEmptyTarget | Allows Wordfast to validate a segment with an empty target. Empty targets do not pose any particular problem, but in regular mode (especially for beginners), there's a warning that prevents the user from validating an empty segment. | ||
| CapitalizeFirstTargetLetter | This command is useful when a dictation ("Voice Recognition", VR) program is used, and the VR program fails to capitalize the first letter of a dictated sentence. When the segment is committed, WFC will make sure the target segment's first letter is uppercase. | ||
| CleanUpOnlyBookmarks | When this command is active, the WFC / Tools / Clean up tool will process bookmarks (remove the red bookmark markers and move actual bookmarks to the target segment), but the document(s) will not be cleaned up.
If this command is not active, documents are cleaned up, and bookmarks are processed (this is the normal procedure). | ||
| ConcordanceDialog=Always | Forces WFC to always display the Concordance/Reference input dialog box, even when Ctrl+Alt+C or Ctrl+Alt+N is pressed without text being selected. | ||
| ConcordanceCloseAfterCopy | Closes the concordance search window when you use the Alt+F12 shortcut (copy-paste into target segment). | ||
| ConcordanceMaxHits=X | Where X is a number. Limits the number of concordances found to X. The maximum value is 4096. | ||
| ConcordanceNoHeaders | Turns off the display of TU creator, date and attributes when displaying concordances, so that more entries can be visible on one page. | ||
| ConcordanceSearch=X
where X can be All, Source or Target |
During sessions, if you select a term in a source segment, Wordfast will execute a concordance search in the TMs source segments only. If you select a term in a target segment, Wordfast will execute a concordance search in the TMs target segments only.
ConcordanceSearch=All will force Wordfast to search all segments (source and target), regardless of where you selected a term. ConcordanceSearch=Source will force Wordfast to search only source segments of the TM. ConcordanceSearch=Target will force Wordfast to search only target segments of the TM. If this command is not enabled, Wordfast searches concordances in target segments only. | ||
| ConcordanceSearch=
ExactExpression |
With this command active, when you select an expression in a document and press Ctrl+Alt+C, WFC will assume that the exact expression is searched, as if you had provided the expression between quotes. If this command is not active, WFC assumes that you are searching for all the unique words in the expression and their possible ending inflections, with the AND operator. | ||
| ConcordanceSearch=
ExactWord |
With this command active, when you select a single word or term in a document and press Ctrl+Alt+C, WFC will search for this exact term, not looking for beginning or ending inflections. When this comnand is not active, a search for cat will bring cat and cats (but not bobcat). | ||
| ConcordanceWindowArrange | When the Concordance window is created, an "Arrange" (Ms-Word's Window/Arrange All menu) is executed to display the document and the concordances side by side. | ||
| CopySearchWord | Copies into the clipboard the term that is selected for search when a Concordance or Reference search is done. | ||
| CopySourceWhenNoMatch | Is equivalent to using the Copy source icon in Wordfast when no match is proposed by the translation memory. | ||
| CopyTermsWithCase | When the Ctrl+Alt+down shortcut is used to paste a glossary term's translation into the target segment, this command instructs WFC to apply the source segment's term's case to the pasted term. | ||
| Custom_DataEditor=
CustomDataEditor=NotePad CustomDataEditor=Word CustomDataEditor=C:\...\app.exe |
Defines the application that opens a TM or a glossary when you right-click the "Select TM" or "Select Glossary" button in the WFC user interface. "NotePad" is recommended. Excel is recommended to edit and save glossaries, but not for TMs. | ||
| ExcelByColumns | When translating an Excel sheet, the regular order is one row after the next from top to bottom (translating one cell after the next on each row, from left to right). With this command, the order will be one column (cells translated from top to bottom) after the next. | ||
| FirstKeyControl
FirstKeyShift |
With some versions of Ms-Word 2003, the very first character typed after a segment opens is "mute". Enable any of these commands (only one at a time) to cure the problem. They simulate the press of a "mute" key to work around the problem. | ||
| FirstKeyDNS | Solves a problem caused by some versions of the DNS dictation software that makes the cursor jump a few lines up or down after a segment opens. | ||
| KeepTemplate=addin.dot | When you expand the WFC template, WFC de-activates any template or add-in found in Tools/Templates & Add-Ins. Many templates have shortcuts or macros that conflict with WFC's.
If you want to keep a template which can work together with WFC, enter its name. The example provided here would keep the template named "addin.dot" active together with WFC. To keep all templates, use KeepTemplate=All. This setting, however, may cause problems with templates that rely on shortcuts used by WFC. | ||
| KeepLineSpacing | When translating a table, if the table row has a fixed line spacing (or "height"), it may be impossible to display an opened segment. Opened segments use 7 lines, and the cell may be too narrow, vertically speaking, to display teh segment. WFC dynamically sets line spacing to "Automatic" in tables, and restores it to its original value when the segment is closed. This feature disables this behaviour. | ||
| KeepCaseAlways | If the document's source segment is all uppercase, then WFC will change the target match of the TU it may find to uppercase as well - because this is usually necessary. However, this command will inhibit this behavior. | ||
| LeaveColours | At clean-up time, if colours were specified in WFC/Setup/General, colours are reset by applying the "Auto" colour to the entire document. This option inhibits this general colour reset. | ||
| LinkSetupToDocument | It is possible to link documents (but only documents of Ms-Word's native format – DOC ) to a particular setup. If this is done, and a later translation session is opened with a different setup, WFC will issue a warning. This warning gives you the choice of using the new setup (the document's link will then be modified accordingly), or loading the original setup.
The same warning will be issued at cleanup time, on some conditions. Use the WFC menu option "Unlink" on a document to unlink it, or "Relink" to re-link it. See the important note below. | ||
| LinkTMToDocument | It is possible to link documents (but only documents of Ms-Word's native format – DOC ) to a particular TM. If this is done, and a later session is opened with a different TM, WFC will issue a warning. This warning gives you the choice of using the new TM (the document's link will then be modified accordingly), or loading the original TM.
Use the WFC menu option "Unlink" on a document to unlink it, or "Relink" to re-link it. The same warning will be issued at cleanup time, on some conditions. | ||
| !Note on the "Link" settings. | The "Link" feature stamps documents with a marker that links them to a TM or Setup, when opening a translation session. Any WFC, with any setting (even if the two "Link" setting are not checked) will issue a warning if another translation session is started on the linked document with a different TM or setup.
Cleanup, however, will issue a warning only if the WFC/Tools/Cleanup button is used and "Update TM" is required and the corresponding WFC "Link" setting is currently checked. In other words, a linked document will trigger a warning at all times when starting a translation session, regardless of the local and current WFC setup, but the same document will trigger a warning at cleanup time only if the local and current WFC setup's "Link" option is checked. The reason is that many translators translate, but send uncleaned documents to the client or agency, and the cleanup is performed there. This prevents cleanup on a different computer (like the client's or the agency's) from triggering the warning. | ||
| MacroEndSession=XXX | Where XXX is an Ms-Word macro name.
The EndSession macro is executed when a translation session ends, with Alt+End, or when closing a segment in any other way. | ||
| MacroPreSegmentation=XXX | Where XXX is an Ms-Word macro name.
The PreSegmentation macro is executed when a segment is opened, right before the segment is turned over to the translator for translation or edition. See Appendix III for more info on macros. | ||
| MacroPostSegmentation=XXX | Where XXX is an Ms-Word macro name.
The PostSegmentation macro is executed when the translator "closes" a segment, immediately before closure. "Closing" a segment happens if you press Alt+Down on an opened segment, or Alt+Up, or Alt+End, or any other shortcut that closes the currently opened segment. That macro us typical meant to check for errors and warn the user. See Appendix III for more info on macros. | ||
| MacroMaiden=XXX | Where XXX is an Ms-Word macro name.
The Maiden macro is executed only once, the very first time a WFC translation session is started on a document. If your macro ends with a Visual Basic "End" instruction, this will also halt the WFC translation session opening, and the document will remain "virgin". Running the WFC menu "Misc/Unlink" option renders the active document "virgin" again. see Appendix III for more info on macros. | ||
| MacroRetire=XXX | Where XXX is an Ms-Word macro name.
The Retire macro is executed right before a clean-up is attempted on a Wordfast-translated document. See Appendix III for more info on macros. | ||
| MacroStartSession=XXX | Where XXX is an Ms-Word macro name.
The StartSession macro is executed when a translation session begins. | ||
| MacroQualityCheck=XXX | Where XXX is an Ms-Word macro name.
The QualityCheck macro is executed right before a MacroPostSegmentation, that is, when the translator closes an opened segment (by using Alt+Down, Alt+Up, Alt+End, or any other shortcut that closes the currently opened segment). See the note on QA macro interactive mode. See Appendix III for more info on macros. | ||
| NoPowerPointNotes
OnlyPowerPointNotes |
When working on a PowerPoint presentation, this command will force Wordfast to ignore the notes that are attached to slides, or to only translate notes. | ||
| NoPrompts | Inhibits prompts when doing a "RestoreSegment". | ||
| NoPromptToSaveIni | Inhibits prompts to save settings when closing the Wordfast setup window. All changes are saved automatically. | ||
| NoSendKeys | Wordfast sends a dummy Control key after opening a segment on Ms-Word 2003 because of a VBA bug. Use this command to prevent this behaviour, if you have no problem opening segments with Word 2003. The most common symptom of the problem is that the first character you type remains blank - but only with an unpatched Word 2003. | ||
| OptionalTags
example: OptionalTags=< >,<" |
Enter a list of tags, separated with commas, after the equal sign.
These tags are ignored when WFC performs QA to verify that tags are identical in source and target. See the section on tagged documents for more information. | ||
| Tenders all words placeable. Ctrl+Alt+Up toggles this mode on or off during a session. | |||
| ProcessDiacritics | This command is used is conjunction with a CE character set (with diacritic letters), to minimise TM matching mishaps due to diacritic letters. | ||
| ProcessExtended | If "ProcessNoDiacritics" does not give satisfaction, use this command. | ||
| ProcessQuotes=147,148 | This command will force WFC to always use the required quotes when proposing a possible target segment, regardless of what sort of quotes are in the translation memory. Possible values are:
ProcessQuotes=171+160,160+187 will force French-style quotes (with the required unbreakable spaces) as in « example ». Mac syntax: ProcessQuotes=199+202,202+200 ProcessQuotes=147,148 will force curly double quotes (up) as in “example” Mac syntax: ProcessQuotes=210,211 ProcessQuotes=145,146 will force curly single quotes as in ‘example’ Mac syntax: ProcessQuotes=212,213 ProcessQuotes=132,147 will force curly double quotes of another sort (up/down) as in „example“. PC only. Mac: no equivalent, but note that 227 is for closing curly double quotes. ProcessQuotes=34,34 will force straight quotes as in "example" ProcessQuotes=Source will replicate the source segment's quote style Note: in case isolated segments should not receive the quotes you specified, but re-use the source segment’s quotes (this may be the case for technical parameters), use the Ctrl+Alt+U shortcut to copy source quotes to the target segment. | ||
| ProcessApostrophes=39 | Similar to “ProcessQuotes”. This command will force a certain style of apostrophes, regardless of what the TM has. Possible values are:
ProcessApostrophe=39 will force straight apostrophes as in l'exemple ProcessApostrophe=146 will force curly apostrophes as in l’exemple Mac syntax: ProcessApostrophe=213 ProcessApostrophe=Source will replicate the source segment's apostrophe style Ctrl+Alt+U will replicate the source segment’s apostrophe style. | ||
| ProcessDashes=45 | Similar to “ProcessQuotes”. This command will force a certain style of dashes, regardless of what the TM has. Possible values are:
ProcessDashes=45 will force simple dashes (minus sign) as in attaché-case ProcessDashes=150 will force the endash (short) as in attaché–case Mac syntax: ProcessDashes=208 ProcessDashes=151 will force the emdash (long) as in attaché—case Mac syntax: ProcessDashes=209 ProcessDashes=Source will replicate the source segment's dash style. Ctrl+Alt+U will replicate the source segment’s dash style. | ||
| Propagate1 | When using CopySource, all recognized terminology (if terminology recognition is turned on) in the target segment is replaced with its translation. This command is also active with the "Translate" tool, but only for unknown segments which are replaced with the source segment using the CopySource function. This command uses glossary #1. This command is often associated with CopySourceWhenNoMatch.
When a propagate command is used, the Alt+Insert (Alt+S on a Mac) shortcut has a toggling effect between A. CopySource and propagate. B. Just CopySource without propagation. Important note: if propagation must be active during the pretranslation of documents (using WFC's Translate tool), see the command "ToolsTranslateWithTR" further below. | ||
| Propagate2
Propagate3 |
Same as above, but using glossary #2, or #3. The three commands can be used together. | ||
| PropagateAndHighlight | When propagation is done, propagated terms in the target segment are highlighted. | ||
| PropagateCase=X | Where X can be 0, 1, 2, 3.
0 is the default setting: the glossary's case is propagated as it is. 1 forces a propagation of the target term in all lower-case. 2 forces a propagation of the target term in all upper-case 3 tries to re-use the source term's case. | ||
| PropagateInReverse | Propagates terms in reverse order (useful by language pairs that have a reverse syntax order), when PropagateOnlyKnown (see below) is activated. | ||
| PropagateMethod=[],many,add | Determines the method for the propagation of recognized terms. The first two characters (here, [ and ]) specify the characters that are added around propagated terms. The many switch determines whether all possible glossary entries are propagated, in case the glossary has multiple entries for the same source term (i.e., one given source term is repeated, with different target terms). The add switch determines whether propagated terms are added to the target segment, or whether they replace the target term, which is the regular method. | ||
| PropagateOnlyKnown | Normally, propagation will be done on a copy of the source segment. In contrast, this command will insert all known terminology (separated with a space) in the empty target segment.
When this command is active, the CopySource (Alt+Ins on a PC, Alt+S on a Mac) shortcut toggle effect will have three states: A. CopySource and propagate in the desired order (see above); B. CopySource and propagate in the opposite order; C. Just CopySource with no propagation. | ||
| PropagatePlusSpace
|
When propagartion is done, this command adds a space after the propagated term, if no space is found after the term.
In the plural form, PropagatePlusSpaces also adds a space before a propagated term, if no space is found there. | ||
| PropagateWhole | If a recognised single term ends with a wildcard, the whole word is replaced, rather than just its root. Thus, if the glossary has affect* = affecter and the source text has affection, the final result will be affecter rather than affection. | ||
| ReportFolder="C:\MyFolder" | This commands tells Wordfast in which folder the various reports (Cleanup, Analyse, Translate etc) should be saved.
If CleanUp, Analyse, Translate fail, make sure this setting points to a valid folder. | ||
| ReportMany
Normally, all reports (for the Cleanup, Analyse, Translate functions) have the same name, and new reports overwrite previous ones. This command instructs Wordfast to add a time stamp in the report's name, so that they all have unique names. | |||
| Right_Click=IE/http://iate.europa.eu/iatediff/SearchByQuery.do?method=search&saveStats=true&query={SearchedWord}&sourceLanguage={sl}&targetLanguages={tl}&domain=0&typeOfSearch=s
Right_Click=IE/http://www.eurotermbank.com/Search.aspx?text={SearchedWord}&langfrom={sl}&langto={tl} |
When a segment is opened, this command activates a smart right-click on a source segment term. The right-click will direct Microsoft Internet Explorer (sorry, other browers are not supported yet because Ms-Word is a Microsoft component) to a URL that queries terminology, and bring the browser to the front.
Two examples are provided here. Other URLs can be used to access other terminology resources. The line must begin with Right_Click=IE/ . The rest is a URL, where {SearchedWord} will be replaced with the term to look for. {sl} and {tl} are replaced with your source and target language codes - but you can hard-code your own language codes instead. | ||
| ReportWithTabs | This command instructs WFC to separate elements of the report with tabs rather than spaces, so that they can be copied into an Excel worksheet. | ||
| SegmentAll | Normally, Wordfast does not segment isolated numbers, or other pieces of text that do not contain any alphabetical letter. This command forces Wordfast to segment everything. | ||
| Segment_Style=HideHiddenText
Segment_Style=Light Segment_Style=Transparent Segment_Style=Shaded Segment_Style=UnShaded Segment_Style=VGA |
This gives the opened segment different styles or shades. If you are not happy with the way segments appear on your monitor, or if your monitor's colours are washed away, you may find your happiness here. | ||
| SetReference=Paragraph | When a search for Reference is done, results are limited to the sentence where the searched expression is found. This command displays the entire paragraph. | ||
| ShowGlossaryAlways | When using Ctrl+Alt+right/left to cycle through recognized terms in the source segment, these terms are looked up in the relevant glossary and displayed in the glossary toolbar. | ||
| Welcome: shows a brief message in Ms-Word's status bar when the WF toolbar is expanded, reminding of the current INI and setup.
InSegment: shows session messages between source and target segment (recommended). Session: shows messages during a translation session. ToolBar: shows session messages in a toolbar. Only available with Word versions 97 to 2003. %PR: shows an estimate of the translation progress in the current document. Accuracy can only be possible during a top-down (regular) translation session. Ctrl+F5 refreshes all counters and gives a better translation progress estimate. %PRW: the progress estimate includes a wordcount. INI, LANG, TM, BTM, MT, WFA, WFS, TU, GLO, TERM: includes a reminder of those values in the messages. If this command is not used, the default value is ShowMessages= Welcome,InSegment,Session,TU,TERM | |||
| ShowMemoryAtStart | This command enables TM display (for exact or fuzzy matches) from the start of the session. It's equivalent to clicking the "Memory" icon right after starting a translation session. | ||
| ShowMemoryIf<100 | Will display the contents of the TM above the currently opened segment if the match rate (the match precentage) verifies the value range (here it is "<100"). You could use ">80" or "<99" as well: the operator can be < or > and the value can be any number. | ||
| ShrinkTags | Shrinks all tags to a short, numbered tag system to shorten segments with long tags and make them more legible. This is done as a visual aid; actual tags are actually preserved. | ||
| SkipSegment>99
SkipSegment<80 |
When manually translating an already segmented, bilingual document (using Alt+Down), all segments that have a match rate higher than 99 (or less than 80 in the example) will be skipped. Other values can be specified, for example, SkipSegment>95. | ||
| TMX_TW4WIN | |||
| Produces a TMX export that'scompatible with TWB version 2.0. | |||
| SortTerminologyCompanion | Alphabeticaly sorts terminology in the Terminology companion. | ToolsTranslateSkipUnknown | Skips unknown segments when Wordfast's Tools/Translate tool is being used. |
| ToolsTranslateWithTR | WFC's Translate tool is slow because it segments documents from within Ms-Word. This is why terminology recognition (TR) is turned off during this process, because there is no need to highlight known terminology. Terminology recognition can be even more time-consuming than segmentation or translation memory operation.
However, translators who want to have propagation occur when using the Translate tool (this action is often referred to as the "pretranslation" of documents) should activate this command, because propagation requires terminology recognition. | ||
| TranslateIgnoreBookmarks | When using the Wordfast / Tools / Translate tool, this command will prevent Wordfast from marking bookmarks with red markers. | ||
| UpdateOfficeWhenTranslate | When Wordfast's "Translate" tool is used to pretranslate an MsOffice document (Excel, PowerPoint, Access), the translation process does not send back translated target segments to the Office document (i.e., does not update the Office document), as would be the case in a "live" translation session. This command will force it to do so. | ||
| UpdateWithQuickClean | Before a Quick-clean operation, you will be asked if you just want to update your TM, without cleaning-up. If you say no, you can go on and proceed with Quick-clean anyway, so the regular use of Quick-clean is not affected. | ||
| WaitForMT=X | Where X is, for example, 5. Instructs Wordfast to pause X seconds while a segment is being machine-translated. | ||
| WfToolbarPosition=A,B,C
WfToolbarPosition=1,0,0 |
(only active with versions of Word up to Word 2003).
This command will make WFC position its toolbar as follows, replacing A,B,C with numbers: A is for the position style where 1 is horizontal top (regular), 0 is vertical left, 2 is vertical right, 3 is horizontal bottom, 4 is floating; B is the vertical position, in pixels, from the top of the Word window: C is the horizontal position, in pixels, from the left of the Word window. The example (WfToolbarPosition=1,0,0) is for a "regular" position, docked top left. Note that Office X/Mac and later tend to force a vertical position for custom and add-on toolbars. |
The syntax of these commands is complex. Thus, rather than writing them into, and deleting them from, Pandora's box, you may consider leaving them in Pandora's box. To turn off a command, just insert an underscore in the command. In other words, SegmentAll is active, but Segment_All is not active. The underscore can be positioned anywhere inside the command.
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