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The Translation Grid
The translation grid is where you spend most of your time: each row is a segment (usually a sentence or paragraph) with source and target text.
Columns
The grid has five columns:
| Column | What it is |
|---|---|
| # | Segment number (row index) |
| Type | Segment type (depends on the file format/importer) |
| Source | Original text (typically read-only) |
| Target | Your translation (editable) |
| Status | Segment status (dropdown) |
Editing behavior
- The grid is optimized for speed, but edits are intentionally lightweight.
- Double-click a cell to edit.
- Use Shift+Enter for a line break inside a cell (multi-line target).
Confirming & status
- Use the Status dropdown to set the segment state.
- Keyboard confirm is supported (see Editing & Confirming).
Common statuses include:
- Not started
- Translated
- Confirmed
- Proofread
- Approved
INFO
If you plan to reimport into a CAT tool, do not merge/split content across segments. Segment boundaries must stay compatible.
Tag view modes
The toolbar at the bottom of the grid offers three tag display modes:
| Mode | Button | What you see |
|---|---|---|
| WYSIWYG | WYSIWYG | Formatting tags are rendered (bold, italic, etc.) and other tags are hidden |
| Compact | Compact | Verbose tags are shortened to numbered placeholders like {1}, {/1} |
| Tags | Tags | Full raw tags are shown exactly as stored in the file |
Press Ctrl+Alt+T to cycle through the three modes.
Compact mode details
Compact mode replaces verbose XML/HTML tags with short numbered placeholders in both source and target columns. This makes segments much easier to read and edit.
<bmk id="0" name="_Toc219208699" transform="open">becomes{1}</bmk id="0" transform="close">becomes{/1}- Self-closing tags become
{1/} - Trados numeric tags like
<92>and</92>are also compacted
Simple formatting tags (<b>, <i>, <u>, <em>, <strong>, <sub>, <sup>) are left untouched since they are already short.
Compact mode is display-only — full tags are always preserved in the underlying data. When you use Ctrl+, to insert a tag in Compact mode, the compact placeholder is inserted, and the full tag is transparently restored when saving.
Visual cues
- Tags (CAT tool placeholders and formatting markers) are highlighted to make them hard to miss.
- Spellcheck (if enabled) underlines misspelled target words.
- Glossary matches can be highlighted in the source.