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Troubleshoot AI translations/FAQ

1.

Not all languages are showing up in the Translate with AI dialog window.

  • Check if the language has been activated in your Paligo instance.

  • Check if the target language is supported by the AI translation service.

  • Check that the correct alternative language code has been set for the language. For more information , please see Prepare for AI translations

2.

The glossary doesn't always use the glossary term I assigned

In some cases, where the AI translation service deems the glossary target language term to be too dissimilar from its original meaning, it will revert to the default translation term. For more information, please see AI translation glossaries

3.

The content doesn't get translated.

  • Check if there is any untranslated content in the component you are sending out for translation. By default, content that has been translated, but has not yet been approved, will not be included.

  • Check if you have any tokens left in your account. 

4.

What constitutes a token?

One token is equivalent to one character in the list below:

  • Standard letters and numbers: a, b, 1, 7 etc. each count as 1 character.

  • Punctuation and symbols: !, @, #, etc. and even emojis count as 1 character each.

  • Spaces and formatting: invisible characters such as spaces, tabs, and line feeds (newlines) all count as 1 character.

  • Multi-byte characters: characters from languages like Chinese, Japanese, or Greek (e.g., あ, 深, Δ) count as 1 character, even though they take up more bytes in computer memory.

Note

Keep in mind that the token calculation is a rough estimate of the actual cost. 

5.

Is there anything that does not count towards the token total?

DocBook XML elements are not counted as characters.

6.

How many tokens are needed for a typical publication?

While it is hard to say what a “typical” publication is, we can provide a rough guideline. Technical documentation in English normally uses slightly longer words than regular English texts (an average of around 6 characters per word compared to around 4 characters per word for regular texts). This means that a text of 1 million words would consume on average around 8 to 10 million tokens (at 6 characters per word, plus all spaces and punctuation).

7.

Do (translated) terms from the glossary included in the text count towards tokens used?

While existing (approved) translations are by default not included in the content sent out for translation (and therefore are not included in the total character count), already translated glossary terms are included since they are required for the translation service to make sense of a sentence (i.e. you cannot have gaps in the middle of a sentence just because it's a term that has already been translated). Since these glossary terms by necessity need to be processed by the translation service, they do count toward the total character count and therefore will incur a token cost.

Note

You can include already approved translations in your export by selecting “Include approved translations”. This does mean that they will count towards the total character count.

8.

Do you offer refunds for AI translations if we are not happy with the quality of the translation? 

Unfortunately, Paligo cannot take responsibility for the quality of third-party services. We therefore recommend that you start with the smallest token package and perform some real world tests to see if the quality of the translations meets your expectations.