Can we delete entries from TM?

l10n
#1

Hi,

Is there any way to edit Weblate's TM to remove erroneous or obsolete
translations? Sometimes we change terminology, or punctuation, or spaces,
making translations obsolete. More often than not, I click Save and after
that I realize that I have made a typo or that the translation should be
changed to match something that comes up several strings later.

Nevertheless, the old version of every translation I entered stays in the
TM. These obsolete translations gradually pile up and seriously increase my
cognitive load because I have to read them all carefully to decide what to
use every time I use the TM for a similar string (or the string gets
cosmetically changed *again*).

So, is there any way to delete unnecessary entries, or to 'reset' the TM to
only the strings that are currently used in the projects on Weblate,
discarding all strings that are not currently used in any project?

Cheers,
Mihail

PS Also, it would be a great help if it was possible to highlight the
differences between the English version of the current string and TM's
suggestions. Currently, I have to do that manually by copying them to a
diff app for every single string.

#2

Hi,

Dne 15. 04. 21 v 21:22 Mihail Balabanov napsal(a):

Hi,

Is there any way to edit Weblate's TM to remove erroneous or obsolete
translations? Sometimes we change terminology, or punctuation, or spaces,
making translations obsolete. More often than not, I click Save and after
that I realize that I have made a typo or that the translation should be
changed to match something that comes up several strings later.

Nevertheless, the old version of every translation I entered stays in the
TM. These obsolete translations gradually pile up and seriously increase my
cognitive load because I have to read them all carefully to decide what to
use every time I use the TM for a similar string (or the string gets
cosmetically changed *again*).

So, is there any way to delete unnecessary entries, or to 'reset' the TM to
only the strings that are currently used in the projects on Weblate,
discarding all strings that are not currently used in any project?

Cheers,
Mihail

PS Also, it would be a great help if it was possible to highlight the
differences between the English version of the current string and TM's
suggestions. Currently, I have to do that manually by copying them to a
diff app for every single string.

regarding the highlighting of differences, this issue is about it:
https://github.com/WeblateOrg/weblate/issues/4368

I agree that this would speed up translating a lot.

Best regards,
Stanislav

#3

Hi,

With yet another batch of several hundred slightly changed long segments,
this feature cannot come soon enough! :slight_smile: In the meantime, I resorted to
re-translating them with Virtaal which has this feature but hasn't been
updated for almost 10 years.

Nevertheless, what about the possibility of cleaning up the TM? I would
very much like to replace the one for Bulgarian with the current set of
translations from LO 7.1 and master.

Best regards,
Mihail

#4

Hi Mihail,
Sorry for the delay to answer your question

Hi,

Is there any way to edit Weblate's TM to remove erroneous or obsolete
translations? Sometimes we change terminology, or punctuation, or spaces,
making translations obsolete. More often than not, I click Save and after
that I realize that I have made a typo or that the translation should be
changed to match something that comes up several strings later.

Nevertheless, the old version of every translation I entered stays in the
TM. These obsolete translations gradually pile up and seriously increase my
cognitive load because I have to read them all carefully to decide what to
use every time I use the TM for a similar string (or the string gets
cosmetically changed *again*).

So, is there any way to delete unnecessary entries, or to 'reset' the TM to
only the strings that are currently used in the projects on Weblate,
discarding all strings that are not currently used in any project?

You can manage your entries into the TM under your profile. I didn't
test it, but you can download files and upload them. There is not much
more information in the Weblate help. Maybe you can give it a try and
let us know your findings.
Note that there are interesting (for us :slight_smile: issues reported to Weblate:
https://github.com/WeblateOrg/weblate/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+translation+memory

Cheers
Sophie

#5

Hi Sophie,

I searched one more time but my findings were the same as before:

* Weblate’s automatically filled TM is separated into scopes: personal,
per-project, and shared.

* I can manage my personal TM by downloading, uploading, and deleting TM
files. Individual strings cannot be edited or deleted, so the most
practical way to clean up the TM is to delete everything Weblate has
collected and upload a TMX file generated from the latest translations.

* I cannot change project-level TM though. I can only download JSON/TMX
files from it. Also, I seem to have no direct access to the shared scope at
all.

Apparently, while translating, each new entry is added separately to each
scope, so to remove the obsolete entries one has to be able to change the
TM data in all scopes. There is a permission called 'Managing translation
memories' which may or may not help. Judging by the name, it may allow
deleting and uploading per-project and shared TMs. OTOH, if there is no way
to restrict access only to the respective team's language, the server
admins may be reluctant to give it to just any l10n team member. :slight_smile:

A workaround that comes to mind is to have some automated way to reset TMs
(all scopes) at the server side so that a language team may request
resetting the entire TM for that language without causing too much manual
work on the part of the server maintainer. I assume it is currently
possible (but maybe non-trivial) to purge the entire TM for a language and
regenerate it from the existing translations at the backend because I have
some dim recollection of someone requesting such a thing on this list.

Cheers,
Mihail

PS Unfortunately, the Weblate feature request about highlighting
differences in fuzzy matches remains in the 'help wanted' status since
September 2020.