Tips & Best Practices

Efficient LLM Usage

Batch vs. single-segment translation: Every LLM call includes a system prompt (~400-800 tokens) with language pair, format instructions, glossary, and TM context. Sending 10 segments individually costs ~5,000 tokens just in system prompt overhead, while sending them as a batch costs ~500 tokens. Always prefer batch pre-translate (⇧⌘P) when translating multiple segments. Use the per-segment Translate button only when you need a quick translation for one specific segment.

Build your TM first: Before pre-translating a large file, confirm a few representative segments first. These get added to TM and are included as context in subsequent LLM calls, improving consistency. The auto-propagation feature also fills identical segments for free — no LLM tokens needed.

Use scope wisely: The Pre-Translate sheet lets you choose scope: Untranslated, Selected, or All. Use Untranslated (default) to avoid re-translating segments that already have TM matches or manual translations. Use Selected when you want to retranslate specific segments with a different provider.

Maximizing Translation Memory

Confirm early and often: Pressing ⌘↩ not only finalizes a segment but also saves it to TM. The sooner you confirm good translations, the sooner they become available as matches for similar segments.

Domain matters: Set a meaningful domain when creating projects (e.g., "Legal", "Medical"). TM scoring applies a penalty to entries from different domains, keeping results relevant. A "Legal" project will prefer legal TM matches over general ones.

Auto-propagation with numbers: When you confirm "Article 1 of the Agreement", tradumacos automatically fills "Article 2 of the Agreement", "Article 3 of the Agreement", etc. with adjusted numbers. This works across the entire project.

Import existing TM: If you have TMX files from other CAT tools, import them via File > Import TMX.... You can enable/disable specific TMX files per project file — useful when a TMX contains entries from an unrelated domain.

Workflow Recommendations

Recommended Translation Workflow

Create a project with the correct language pair and domain.
Import your file(s).
Exact TM matches are auto-applied on import (if enabled).
Run batch pre-translate (⇧⌘P) for remaining untranslated segments.
Review each segment: edit the MT draft, then confirm (⌘↩).
Run QA check (⇧⌘Q) to catch any issues.
Export in the desired format.

Use notes for context: Add translator notes to segments that need special attention — ambiguous source text, client instructions, or review comments. Notes are preserved in the project file and exported in XLIFF format.

Leverage concordance search: Double-click any word in a source segment to search for it across all TM entries. This shows how the term has been translated in past projects, helping maintain consistency.

Selection checkboxes for batch ops: Use the circle checkboxes next to segment numbers to quickly build selections for batch operations. This is faster than ⌘+Click for non-contiguous selections.

Project File Format

tradumacos saves projects as .tradumacos files, which are JSON documents containing:

Project metadata (name, languages, creation date, status, domain, LLM provider override)
Imported files with all segments and per-file TMX enable/disable settings
Segment data including source text, target text, status, inline tags, notes, and match information
Glossary entries (source term, target term, domain, definition, mandatory/prohibited flags)
File bookmark data for sandbox-safe file access

Note: API keys are not stored in project files — they are kept securely in the macOS Keychain.

Project files can be freely backed up, shared, or version-controlled.

Supported Languages

tradumacos supports the following languages as source or target:

Turkish, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Korean

Language names are displayed in the currently selected interface language using the system's localization data.