Format of variables
Variables are recognized tokens and also a language resource.
Theoretically, you can use any character in a variable. However, a translation memory (TM) segments text before it checks for variables, so you should not use any character that might cause a segment break in variables. For example, you would normally not use a period, colon, semicolon or question mark in a variable.
Also, although you can have spaces within a variable, do not start or end a variable with a space.
For most languages, a variable must be followed by a punctuation mark or a space (or other white space character), so that a TM can recognize the variable in source text. However, this is not the case for languages which do not use blanks to separate words, such as Japanese, Chinese or Thai.
Example
Assume:
- The TM contains the following variables:
- Mary Brown
- John Smith
- A TM entry contains the source language text: Mary Brown works here.
- The source text presented for translation is: John Smith works here.
The TM recognizes an exact match for its stored source, and provides the translation, substituting John Smith for Mary Brown.