About Perfect Match
A Perfect Match is a form of context match that compares updated source files to a corresponding set of existing bilingual files rather than to a translation memory (TM). Segment matches, known as Perfect Matches, are checked for context, that is, the surrounding entries are checked to ensure that they are the same.
If your existing bilingual file was segmented differently to the current file or had merged segments, Perfect Match can dynamically merge up to three consecutive segments in your current file to improve your match results. The translations are then extracted from the existing bilingual files and transferred to the updated source files.
Because the Perfect Match segment matching process includes a check for context and segmentation, Perfect Match units typically need no further translation or editing during translation.
Why Use Perfect Match?
There are two scenarios where you might want to apply Perfect Match:
You have an existing Trados GroupShare project that has been fully reviewed. At the start of a project, you can base a new project on an existing project that has been fully reviewed. This will use the translated bilingual files in the project for Perfect Match. For example, this could be useful if you are starting translation on a technical manual for a second version of a product where the product is almost the same as the first version.
You have an existing bilingual SDLXLIFF file available on your computer. At the start of a project, you can easily leverage translations from project files that are no longer available on Trados GroupShare. Creating projects based on bilingual files instead of reference projects gives you more control over which translation file is mapped to which source file.