Update Translations in the Translation Memory with Find and Replace

Find and Replace allows you to bulk-update translations in your translation memory. This is especially useful if your content has undergone a change, such as a rebranding, and you want to ensure this change can be leveraged for current or future translations.

You do not have to perform any type of keyword/character search to find and replace translations.

Tip: It is possible to update multiple locales at once by performing a find & replace. This is useful for similar locales e.g. es-ES and es-MX, but should not be performed on non-cross-locale pairs, e.g. de-DE & fr-FR.

How to Find and Replace

To use Find and Replace:

1. Select the units you’d like to replace.
2. Click on the Actions button and choose Find and Replace. 
   
   
3. In the resulting modal that pops up, fill in the replacement wording in the Replacement Text field.
4. Choose to exclude partial word matching by selecting Whole Word.
5. Choose to update project strings.
6. Click Replace.

Note: If multiple units are selected, it may take some time to calculate the number of units that will be replaced.

Tip: For some project integrations, these changes will not automatically appear in the origin system. Instead, files must be re-sent to Smartling for translation to pick up the change. Please reach out to your CSM if you have questions about your project.

Warn: You cannot overlap find and replace with another action in the translation memory.

Whole Word

Smartling uses standard regular expression \b to define word boundaries. "Whole word" essentially looks for any sequence of characters that is bounded by a non-word character (such as a whitespace or period, or the beginning/end of a unit).

Update Project Strings

Choosing this option will update the translation of the unit within the Translation Memory, and will update strings within projects that have used the same translation. The project strings will be updated in whatever step they're currently in, whether that's a translation step or a published step.

Note: Archived projects are not updated.

Best Practices

Generally, we recommend keyword search and quotation marks to get the exact search results. You can then select the translations you want to update on each page of the returned results. When you're happy with your selection, click Actions > Find and Replace. This allows you to bulk-update the "whole word" of the translation.

Character search is also suitable for most use cases, however, because character search is a defined sequence of characters, you cannot match the character search "whole word" if you have selected all units "matching current filter". This could result in an undesired bulk-update in your translation memory.

You cannot Find and Replace using Regex search.

Cleansing Your TM

If you believe the TM may have some "corrupted" translations, there are several options to consider (each with an increased cost implication as leverage will decrease):

1. Edit SmartMatch Settings
   • Instead of sending SmartMatches to published, send them first to the Edit/Review step to enable linguists to correct errors.
   • If the issue is more severe, disable Smartmatch entirely so that as many linguists can make corrections.
2. Penalize the TM
   • It is assumed that 100% matches are valid. Reducing the percentage removes the reason for that assumption and ensures linguists will scrutinize these matches more closely. 
3. Remove the TM from the linguistic package.
   • This might be a drastic option, but it will prevent bad entries from proliferating further, and this may be the only viable option to save a heavily polluted TM. Check with your language services provider, as they will likely offer a TM cleaning service.