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Termbases > Search settings

Use the Search Settings to specify which results are displayed during termbase searches and to specify the order in which termbases are searched when searching multiple termbases.

These settings appear in multiple dialog boxes in SDL Trados Studio.

Search Settings are divided into two sections:

  • Search Settings section. This defines settings for automatic terminology recognition.
  • Search Order section. This defines settings for manually searching multiple termbases.

Search settings

These settings affect which results are displayed during termbase searches Studio performs a termbase search when a segment becomes the active row or you can choose to manually perform a termbase search.

BoxDescription

Show recognized terms with no available translation

Select this if you want Studio to display a recognized term even if the term does not have a translation in the termbase.

Enable recognition of two-letter terms

By default, terms that consist of two letters only are not searched for in the termbase automatically as this can slow down terminology recognition. However, you may want to select this option if your source document contains two-letter acronyms, such as the UN (United Nations).

Minimum match value %

The match value is the similarity, expressed as a percentage, between terminology in the source segment and the matching terminology found in a termbase. This value specifies the minimum acceptable similarity required for Studio to consider the terms to be a match. SDL recommends that you specify a value between 65% and 75%.

Search depth (10-999)

This value controls how far Studio searches for terms. Increasing the Search Depth value may increase the number of terms found, but slows down terminology recognition. Decreasing the Search Depth value may decrease the number of terms found, but speeds up terminology recognition.

Only specify high values if you are working with large termbases.

For medium-sized termbases, the default value of 200 should yield good results.

Term repetition threshold (2-20)

By default, when a term appears ten or more times in the same segment, Studio does not look up that term in the selected termbases. This is to avoid running term recognition on common words like the or and.

You can set this threshold to any value between two and twenty. The minimum threshold value allows Studio to ignore all the terms that occur more than once in the same segment. The maximum threshold value allows Studio to run term recognition on all the terms that occur up to nineteen times in the same segment.

Search settings > Search order

When you are searching multiple termbases you have to specify the order in which the termbases are searched. This setting applies to the manual searches in the Termbase Search window and also affects the appearance of the Term Recognition window. There are three options to choose from:

BoxDescription

Search hierarchically until a matching term is found

In a hierarchically, the termbases are searched one termbase at a time beginning with the default termbase. If any results are found in the default termbase (even if only one matching term is found) the results are displayed in the Termbase Search window and the other termbases are not searched at this time. If no results are found in the default termbase, the search moves immediately to the next termbase in the list.

Search all termbases in parallel and group results by term

In a parallel search, all termbases are searched at the same time and a single list of search results is created. The terms in the list are sorted into alphabetical order.

Search all termbases sequentially and group results by termbase

In a sequential search, the termbases are searched one after the other, beginning with the default termbase. After the default termbase has been searched the other termbases are searched in the order in which they appear on the Termbases page. The search is a continuous process searching each termbase in the sequence until there are no more termbases to search or the maximum number of search results you have specified, has been reached.

Results from a sequential search are displayed for each termbase in order. Terms are sorted alphabetically:

Termbase 1

Terms A-Z

Termbase 2

Terms A-Z

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