Query management the easy way

Using Excel sheets and email to manage translators' queries and comments is inefficient and error-prone. The question is, why send emails or use any other method of communication for conducting discussions about a translation when you can do this in your translation tool itself? Transit NXT has a feature that lets you enter comments relating to individual segments and use them, for example, to pass on comments or other information to translators or project managers. If you are a project manager, you can draw a translator's attention to particular items of specific segments. Or if you are a translator, you can enter comments for segments or highlight instances of unclear wording in the source text. Yes, in the source text! Transit NXT lets you enter comments for source text segments too. To do so, you must first deactivate the read-only setting for the source language by going to Edit > Text > Read-only. We highly recommend that you enable write protection again immediately after.

Comments are also very useful for projects being sent for review. A reviewer can enter comments for translated segments, thus making it easier for the translator/project manager to understand the corrections in detail.

A host of advantages

The most useful aspects of comments are that you can:

1. Enter comments for source or target language segments
2. Navigate through segments that contain comments in order to read them and check the segments in question
3. Print segments that contain comments
4. Filter by segments that contain comments
5. Export segment comments to Excel

In this post, we will look at how to enter comments in source as well as target language segments. In subsequent posts, we will cover the remaining aspects mentioned above.

Comments can be entered and viewed in the Segment info window, which is one of the floating windows and is accessed via the Transit toolbar in the same way as the PDF viewer, for example. Entering comments is a very easy process. In order for comments to be correctly exchanged between the project manager and the translator, it is important that they are entered for the correct language. Follow these quick and simple steps to enter comments for segments:

Step 1: Press ALT+4 to switch to the Segment info window. Transit NXT automatically moves the cursor to the Segment info window.

Step 2: Move the cursor to the Comments section. If you are a translator, press the PLUS key on the keypad to enter comments, if you are a project manager, press the MINUS key. Please note that as a project manager, you can only enter comments if the read-only setting for the source language has been deactivated (Edit > Text > Read-only), as previously mentioned. Please see the screenshot below for a better understanding of how this feature works:

Step 3: Enter your comments. Transit NXT automatically saves the comment for the segment in question. After entering the comment, you can use the ALT+2 shortcut to switch back to the target language window. The screenshot below shows how a translator and a project manager can enter comments:

Transit NXT saves the comments together with the segments in the language pair so that when you exchange projects with other Transit NXT users, Transit automatically includes the comments when the project is sent. You do not have to do anything other than pack and send the project.

It is also worth mentioning that if the language pairs you are using as reference material contain comments, the old comments are not imported into the new language pairs during the import process. Transit NXT thus prevents old comments from the reference material causing confusion in the new project.

We hope you find this feature in Transit NXT useful. Stay tuned for our next post, which will cover what else you can do with segment comments! In the meantime, do let us know if you found this post interesting and please do not hesitate to ask any questions in relation to this topic.