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Translate only the colored text in a Word file

Plenty of teams mark changes by coloring the text rather than highlighting it: a proofreader puts every correction in red, or an engineer colors the paragraphs that changed in this revision. Taia can extract just that text, so the rest of the document is never sent to a translator, never counted in your word count, and comes back untouched.

If your document uses Word's highlighter instead, see Translate only the highlighted text. The two are separate settings, because Word stores them separately: red text and a red highlight are different things to Word, even when they look alike.

How to set it up​

  1. Upload the file to Taia as usual.
  2. In the Selected files list, click the gear icon next to the file.
  3. Under Colored text, choose Only text in chosen colors.
  4. Red is selected for you. Click any other swatch to add a color, or click a selected one to remove it.
The Processing options popover for a Word file. Colored text is set to Only text in chosen colors, with Word's standard color swatches below, red selected, and a Black or Automatic (normal text) swatch on its own row. Highlighted text is still Translate everything.

Click Submit Project as usual. When the project is created, only the text in your chosen colors becomes translatable segments.

Which colors count​

The swatches are the Standard Colors row from Word's font color menu: dark red, red, orange, yellow, light green, green, light blue, blue, dark blue and purple. The match is exact, so a custom shade of red, or a red picked from the theme colors above that row, is a different color and won't be picked up. If you mark text yourself, use the Standard Colors row and you're covered.

The last swatch, Black or Automatic (normal text), stands for ordinary body text. It's most useful the other way round (below).

What you get back​

The whole document, with the colored passages translated and everything else exactly as you sent it. The translated text keeps its color, so you can still see what changed.

The other direction​

All text except chosen colors does the reverse: it leaves the colored text alone and translates the rest. Use it when a color marks something that must not be touched, like reviewer notes or product names kept in English.

Nothing is selected for you here, on purpose. Pick the colors you want left alone.

Setting it for everyone​

An organization manager can make this the default for every Word file:

  1. Go to Profile → Manage Organization → Org settings.
  2. Select the Advanced tab and open File Processing Defaults.
  3. Set Colored text under the Word section, then click Save Defaults.

Anyone uploading can still change it per file before creating the project.

Good to know​

  • Word documents only: .docx, .docm, .dotx and .dotm. Save older .doc and .rtf files as .docx first.
  • Highlight and color can both be on, and then text is only translated if it passes both. For "only the red text", leave Highlighted text on Translate everything.
  • "Include hidden text" switches off while a color filter is on, for the same reason as with highlights: Word treats everything the filter leaves out as hidden.
  • A file with none of your chosen colors in it is refused, with a message saying so, rather than being delivered back to you unchanged. Check the color the document really uses; the most common cause is a custom shade instead of a standard one.
  • A file that wasn't saved by Word may be refused with a message asking you to open it in Word and save it again. Some tools that generate documents leave out the default formatting Taia needs to tell uncolored text apart. Re-saving adds it. The same applies if you're excluding Black or Automatic on such a file: without that default formatting, plain text can't be told apart from black text either.
  • Your word count reflects what was extracted, so this is where the saving shows up.
Last updated on by Taia Admin