Custom Translator frequently asked questions

This article contains answers to frequently asked questions about Custom Translator.

What are the current restrictions in Custom Translator?

There are restrictions and limits with respect to file size, model training, and model deployment. Keep these restrictions in mind when setting up your training to build a model in Custom Translator.

• Submitted files must be less than 100 MB in size.
• Monolingual data isn't supported.

When should I request deployment for a translation system that has been trained?

It may take several trainings to create the optimal translation system for your project. You may want to try using more training data or more carefully filtered data, if the BLEU score and/ or the test results aren't satisfactory. You should be strict and careful in designing your tuning set and your test set. Make certain your sets fully represent the terminology and style of material you want to translate. You can be more liberal in composing your training data, and experiment with different options. Request a system deployment when you're satisfied with the translations in your system test results and have no more data to add to improve your trained system.

How many trained systems can be deployed in a project?

Only one trained system can be deployed per project. It may take several trainings to create a suitable translation system for your project and we encourage you to request deployment of a training that gives you the best result. You can determine the quality of the training by the BLEU score (higher is better), and by consulting with reviewers before deciding that the quality of translations is suitable for deployment.

When can I expect my trainings to be deployed?

The deployment generally takes less than an hour.

How do you access a deployed system?

Deployed systems can be accessed via the Microsoft Translator Text API V3 by specifying the CategoryID. More information about the Translator Text API can be found in the API Reference webpage.

How do I skip alignment and sentence breaking if my data is already sentence aligned?

The Custom Translator skips sentence alignment and sentence breaking for TMX files and for text files with the .align extension. .align files give users an option to skip Custom Translator's sentence breaking and alignment process for the files that are perfectly aligned, and need no further processing. We recommend using .align extension only for files that are perfectly aligned.

If the number of extracted sentences doesn't match the two files with the same base name, Custom Translator will still run the sentence aligner on .align files.

I tried uploading my TMX, but it says "document processing failed"

Ensure that the TMX conforms to the TMX 1.4b Specification.

Next steps

Try the custom translator quickstart