Trados TM penalties

Consult this topic which provides a definition for each TM penalty.

Missing formatting penalty

Missing formatting penalties are applied when the formatting of TM translation is missing, but the actual translation is present. For example, a <b> tag is present in the TM, but it is not present in the source segment (or vice versa).

Different formatting penalty

Different formatting penalties are applied when the formatting of the TM translation does not match that of the source segment. For example, a <b> tag is present in the TM instead of an <i> tag.

Multiple translations penalty

Multiple translation penalties are applied when there is more than one exact TM match for the source segment.

Auto-localization penalty

Auto-localization penalties are applied when the TM translation of a source segment (consisting of dates, times, numbers, or measurements) has the same pattern as the source segment, instead of being adapted to the specifics of that target language. For example, in Romanian, the number one thousand is written like this, 1.000, but in English, the number one thousand is written liken this, 1,000. If the English TM stores the translation as 1.000, instead of 1,000, then an auto-localization penalty is applied, because the number was not adapted to the target language correctly.

Note that fuzzy auto-propagation is not supported in Trados Online Editor, but it is supported in Trados Studio. As a result the auto-localization penalty is not applied for fuzzy auto-propagated segments in Trados Online Editor, but it is applied in Trados Studio.

Text replacement penalty

Text replacement penalties are applied when the TM translation of a source segment has a different acronym, variable, or alphanumeric string than the source segment. For example, the English acronym for the European Union is EU, but in French it is UE. If the French translation is EU, instead of UE, a text replacement penalty will be applied.

Note that fuzzy auto-propagation is not supported in Trados Online Editor, but it is supported in Trados Studio. As a result the text-replacement penalty is not applied for fuzzy auto-propagated segments in Trados Online Editor, but it is applied in Trados Studio.

Alignment penalty

Alignment penalties are applied when the TM translation of a source segments has different alignment than the source segment.

Character-width difference penalty

Alignment penalties are applied when the TM translation of a source segment has different character-width than the source segment.