What are formatting tags and how do I work with them?

Take a look at this short video explainer on formatting tags

What are Formatting Tags?

Markup tags are a set of symbols that are inserted into a rich-text document to control how it looks. Some of those symbols control a document’s structure, while others can dictate how the document is formatted (i.e. Formatting Tags) or how certain parts of a document are related to each other. Unbabel supports the arrangement of Formatting Tags such as bold, italic, underline, hyperlinks, images, etc.

What do Formatting Tags look like?

Special styling is displayed through small elements on the interface called Formatting Tags. These are usually inline elements that represent how smaller sections of a segment will look like in the finished document, as opposed to an entire segment, segment group or whole document.

Formatting Tags will be represented as pink blocks numbered according to their position in the source segment; the block numbers are simply there to help you identify matching source and target formatted sections: they do not need to maintain the same order on the target side. If a target language’s sentence structure is different from that of the source language, it will also likely have a different order of tags which is acceptable and expected.

Formatting tags that span across a section of text (such as bold, italic or underline) are always in an opening/closing pair: the opening tag is used to delineate the start of the text section, while the closing tag signals the end of the section.

Other Formatting Tags only need to appear once at a specific position in the document (such as images or line breaks). They are called self-closing tags as they don’t need to span across a text section and can open and close themselves in the same position.

Paired tags will have an opening (e.g. [1]) and closing (e.g. [/1]) element on the interface. Meanwhile, self-closing tags will only have a single instance.

How do I see tag-type information?

You can view the tag information by hovering over the specific tag:

You will see a tooltip displaying the corresponding information. However, the details may not always be intuitive, as they depend on the source file.

Below are a few guidelines for the most common tags, but if you encounter a tag type that is not listed, we recommend further investigation:

You can customize the level of tag information displayed on hovering by accessing the settings button available in the footer:

This opens a dropdown with a toggle to "Expand HTML tags" or "Collapse HTML tags".

• When collapsed, the tooltip shows summarized tag information (e.g., bold, link, paragraph).
• When expanded, the tooltip displays the raw tag information, which may vary depending on how the tag is generated by the customer’s system.

How do I edit Formatting Tags?

When you receive a task with Formatting Tags, your goal is to move them, if necessary, to match positions between source and target text within the same segment. You can do so by either:

• Using your mouse to drag and drop the Formatting Tags to their correct position
• Opening the Smart Actions menu by pressing the “/” key and adding a Formatting Tag at the current cursor position

What are some common Formatting Tag errors and how do I resolve them?

Some Formatting Tag errors to watch out for include, but are not limited to:

Misplaced opening or closing Formatting Tag

• • Definition: This is where paired tags on the source don’t have the same position on the target. To be correct, source Formatting Tags and target Formatting Tags should wrap identical content.

• • Example:
    • Source: [1]I’m[/1] Rodolphe
    • Target: [1]Je[/1] m’appelle Rodolphe
  • Correction: [1]Je m’appelle[/1] Rodolphe

How to resolve: move the opening or closing Formatting Tag to the correct position

Wrong Formatting Tag order

• Definition: A closing Formatting Tag should come after its corresponding opening one.
• Example:
  • Source: [1]Hello[/1]
  • Target: [/1]Bonjour[1]
• Correction: [1]Bonjour[/1]
  •  

How to resolve: Place the closing Formatting Tag after its corresponding opening Formatting Tag and make sure the content is enveloped.

Intersecting Formatting Tags

• Definition: Formatting Tags should hug text like layers of an onion. The order of closing Formatting Tags should be the opposite order of their corresponding opening Formatting Tags.
• Example: 
  • Target: [1][2]Bonjour[/1][/2]
• Correction: [1][2]Bonjour[/2][/1]

How to resolve: You should move the closing Formatting Tags so that the order is inverted when compared to their opening counterparts.

Misplaced self-closing Formatting Tags

• Definition: This is where self-closing Formatting Tags on the source don’t have the same position on the target.
• Example:
  • Source: [1][2]Hello
  • Target: [1]Bonjour[2]
• Correction: [1][2]Bonjour

How to resolve: move self-closing Formatting Tags to their correct position on the target

Misplaced Formatting Tags around whitespace/punctuation

• Definition: This is where Formatting Tags on the source have a leading or trailing whitespace/punctuation mark on the source but not on the target, and vice versa.
• Example:
  • Source: [1]Hello,[/1]
  • Target: [1]Bonjour[/1],
• Correction: [1]Bonjour,[/1]

How to resolve: You should move the Formatting Tag to the correct position taking into consideration where the whitespace/punctuation mark appears in relation to the tags.

Why can’t I remove Formatting Tags?

To be able to submit tasks, we need to validate that there are an equal amount of tags in the source text and in the target text of the same segment. Therefore, the interface will not allow you to permanently remove a Formatting Tag from a segment. If you attempt to do so, the removed tag will automatically be appended to the segment. 

If you encounter a situation where a Formatting Tag does not translate correctly from source to target, you can instead empty the contents spanned between the opening and closing tags without removing the tags themselves. This might come in handy in situations where the target language is prone to contractions or a character limit is enforced on a segment, such as in the following example:

• Source: [1]Click[/1] [2]here[/2] [3]to access[/3]
• Target: [3]Aceda[/3] [2]aqui[/2][1][/1]).

Also, this is the solution you may need to use when translating dates in English that have a superscript th, as you can see in the examples below:

• Source: John was born on April 5[1]th[/1].
• Target: John wurde am April 5. geboren[1][/1].
  
• Source: July 4[1]th[/1] is a holiday for Americans. 
• Target: Le 4 juillet est un jour férié por les Américains[1][/1].

How do I report issues with Formatting Tags?

If you encounter any problems or issues while working on tasks with Formatting Tags, we strongly recommend that you submit a support request at the following link. To help us troubleshoot your issue quickly, please don’t forget to add the following details to your request:

• Your Unbabel-registered email address
• Request subject
• Description including the task ID and/or browser URL, segment number and/or text, error messages and steps to reproduce the issue
• Language pair
• Topic
• Attachments including screenshots of the segment(s) and/or task