[xliff-tools] PO Representation Guide: The PO Header

[Josep Condal]

>> 1. There is no target element.
>> 2. The state attribute is "needs-translation".
>> 
>> Only the latter allows for the concept of fuzzy-pretranslation (like 
>> in SDLX or Trados, where a segment of the memory is primed into the 
>> bilingual file as proposal for the given segment, normaly at 
>> pretranslation time).

> If the translation tool notices that there is no <target> or that an 
> existing <target> is empty, it can check the TM database and offer 
> translations, without verifying the value in the "state" attribute. 
> Why do you say that only having state set to "needs-translation" 
> allows for the concept of fuzzy-pretranslation?

Let me expain first with an example what I wanted to mean by "fuzzy 
pretranslation", I think it's not really self-explanatory.

The example is: Let's say you have a Trados memory and an MS Word file 
to translate. You pretranslate it with Trados allowing matches above 75%

and by doing so you have some bilingual segments with 100% matches and 
some fuzzy matches with 75%-99% similarity (normally with a different 
color these ones).

Then you mail the file for translation to a Translator that has MS Word
but not Trados, with the idea that he finishes the translation with
Word but not with Trados (this is how it used to be done in the late
90s). 
He just has to respect the Trados delimiters. Those fuzzy-matches that
the 
translator sees is what I call fuzzy pretranslation.

If you think about the PO format with leverage, it resembles very much 
the above process.  So what I was trying to figure out is how to reflect

this pretranslation scenario in XLIFF.

Since we already saw that there is no place for a fuzzy without source
in the <alt-trans> element, I was trying to think how to convey this
information into XLIFF without overloading other attributes, and the
state attribute seems to be the only place at priming time (after
the priming by the filter, the Editor can do anything it wants with 
the state).

I hope this clarifies it.

Josep.