You don't always have to translate a string from scratch as a translator. If the string you're translating is similar to one translated in the past, a translation suggestion will appear in the Editor's Suggestions tab.
Each time a translation is saved, it's added to a database known as Translation Memory (TM for short). Then, untranslated strings are compared against translated ones to see if there are similarities between the two.
Understanding Translation Memory suggestions
If a string has a Translation Memory match, it'll appear in the Suggestions tab of the Editor with a percentage next to the suggestion. The percentage shows how similar the string you're currently translating is to the source string of the suggested translation.
The higher the percentage, the more similar the two source strings are. A 100% match means the two source strings are exactly the same. In such a case, it might be safe to reuse the translation.
For example, let's say you're translating the word "Password", and similar phrases were translated in the past. You might see something like this in the Suggestions tab:
The first is a 100% match because it's exactly the same word as the one you're translating. The second is a 66% match – while the source phrase contains the word "password," it's different from what you're translating.
The TM suggestions are clickable: the available link redirects you to the source entry where the suggested translation version was initially applied.
Using TM suggestions
To use a TM suggestion:
Find the suggestion you'd like to use and click the Use this icon. The suggestion will be copied into the translation box.
Click Save to save the translation.
There are also keyboard shortcuts to use the first TM suggestion:
Difference with the source
If you have a high-match TM suggestion, it might be helpful to see what exactly changed in the source string since the last time it was translated (and stored in TM).
To do so, click the first icon with two arrows, "Show difference with source". It will highlight the words and characters not present in the source (in red) and those added to the new version of the source string (in green).
If you want to enable this view permanently, you can toggle the "Show difference with previous" option in the editor preferences. This way, you will always be able to view these differences.
Concordance search
Concordance search lets you search through the Translation Memory for a specific word or phrase and see how it was translated elsewhere. This is useful when there's no TM suggestion for a string, but you still want to see how something was translated elsewhere.
📝 Note: Concordance Search is available on Growth and Enterprise Plus plans.
To use concordance search:
Click the Concordance Search button near the top right of the Editor, or hit the c shortcut on your keyboard.
Type your search term in the project's source language and hit Enter or click the Search button.
You'll see the matching results to the right of the search box. The left column shows all the source phrases containing your search term (your search term is highlighted). Above the source phrase, you can see the project and resource that this phrase originated from. The right column shows how all those phrases were translated.
Concordance search works on top of a project's Translation Memory. If a project shares TM with other projects, the search results will be from all those projects. Please take a look at Sharing Translation Memory for more details.
Working with TM translations
While working in the Editor, you may get strings already translated by the Translation Memory (see the "Translated by TM" line in the screenshot below).
The TM automatically fills up these translations, as the same source string was already translated elsewhere.
To see all the strings translated by the Translation Memory, use the filter ORIGIN and select the TM from the list.
📝 Note: If you're an Organization Admin or a Project Maintainer, you can learn more about TM autofill in this article: Enabling Translation Memory Autofill.
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