How to avoid overlooking forbidden terms in termbases

Some of our key customers mark terms as ‘forbidden’ in their termbases. Even though these terms appear as suggested terminology in Trados during translation, they are still marked as ‘forbidden’ or ‘outdated, do not use’. To ensure the status of these terms is shown in Trados when translating or editing, you need to configure the termbase once. In future, we will send you a settings file with these customers’ projects on myFREELANCE. This is called the terminology ‘hitlist’. It needs to be integrated into the Trados project for this customer just once and will ensure you have the right settings for each termbase right away. You do not have to reconfigure them each time.

Default setting:

Import hitlist settings:

Click on ‘Hitlist settings’ in the Term Recognition window.

Click on ‘Load…’:

Select the ‘.mthits’ file provided by Apostroph and click on ‘Open’.
Click on ‘OK’ to close the settings window.

The instructions ‘forbidden’ or ‘outdated, do not use’ (or similar) will now appear next to the terms in the Term Recognition window:

Instructions for myFREELANCE

We have posted instructions on myFREELANCE for customers who work with forbidden terms in their termbases: Please note: Termbase contains forbidden terms. This means that you are alerted before you start and know that you still have to change the settings if you have not already done so.

We also work with termbases that do not contain any forbidden terms. However, there are comments on terms that should not be used with each terminology entry. In these cases, it is important that you expand the field settings so that you can see the entire entry.

To do this, use the ‘Select Fields…’ option in this window to add the additional fields such as notes/remarks for the target language terms.

Don’t forget to run the QA check (press the F8 key)

As terms are displayed as suggested translations – albeit with the status ‘forbidden’ or ‘do not use’ – there is a risk that you will accidentally adopt a forbidden term in your translation. When you run the QA check in Trados (by pressing the F8 key), a message will appear telling you that you have used a forbidden term. You can still correct your translation at this point. This is why we emphasise the importance of running the QA check in Trados. You should always do this.

If you find it confusing and tedious to click through the messages when lots of them appear, here’s a useful tip: The messages can be sorted by type – i.e. by errors, warnings, notes:

They are also categorised by type within the ‘Origin’ column:

We are certain that this will make everything easier for all of us and that complaints about forbidden terms being used will become a thing of the past.