Trados Aware Chat
The 💬 Chat tab in Workbench’s right panel is a full AI assistant that supports OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Ollama, and any OpenAI-compatible custom provider. When you have Supervertaler for Trados running with its Assistant panel active, Chat automatically picks up the project context from Trados – active segment, surrounding segments, TM matches, termbase hits, project metadata – and answers questions about your real translation work without you having to switch out of Trados.
This is especially useful on small laptop screens where there’s not enough room to keep the in-Trados Assistant panel visible alongside the editor. Summon Workbench, click the 💬 Chat tab, and ask away while Trados stays in front for the actual editing.
How it works
Supervertaler for Trados runs a tiny localhost-only HTTP service called the Sidekick Bridge while the AI Assistant panel is active. (The name is historical – it predates the Sidekick retirement in Workbench v1.10.4 and is kept stable because the Trados-side C# class looks up the bridge by that name.) Workbench’s Chat panel detects the bridge automatically and uses it to fetch the current Trados project state on every message you send.
Nothing leaves your computer – the bridge listens only on 127.0.0.1, requires a per-session authentication token, and is never reachable from outside the machine.
The 🔗 Trados chip
Above the chat input you’ll see a row of context chips (Document, TMs, Termbases, Files). When the Trados plugin is detected, a fifth chip appears:
- Hidden until the bridge is detected for the first time. Users without the Trados plugin never see this chip.
- Lit green – bridge is reachable; Trados context is included in chat messages.
- Greyed – the bridge was previously available but is now unreachable (e.g. you closed Trados mid-session). The chip recovers automatically when Trados restarts.
Click the chip to toggle it off if you want to ask a non-Trados-related question without the project context being included. The chip pref is shared across all chat views – toggling it in one place affects every send path.
What the chat sees
When the chip is on, every message you send to Chat is preceded by a context block that contains:
| Field | What it is |
|---|---|
| Project name and file name | So the AI knows what document you’re working on |
| Source and target language | The language pair from Trados, used as a sanity-check against the chat’s reasoning |
| Active segment | The source segment you’re currently editing in Trados, plus your current target draft (if any) |
| Surrounding segments | A few segments before and after the active one – gives the AI enough context to know what kind of document this is (legal, technical, marketing, patent…) |
| TM matches | Fuzzy and exact matches Trados has found for the active segment, with their match percentages and TM names |
| Termbase hits | Term entries from your enabled termbases that match the active segment, including definitions, domains, and notes |
This is the same context the in-Trados Supervertaler Assistant chat already uses, so answer quality is comparable.
QuickLauncher prompts from Trados
When Supervertaler for Trados is running, you can also send a Trados QuickLauncher prompt (Ctrl+Q from inside Trados Studio) over the bridge to be processed by Workbench’s Chat panel instead of the in-Trados Assistant. The Trados plugin builds a redacted display version (e.g. [source document — N segments] instead of the full project text) for the chat transcript and sends the fully-expanded prompt to the LLM. Workbench pops to the foreground on the Chat tab, the prompt and response render there, and the user can carry on the conversation as a normal Chat session.
This is opt-in on the Trados side – a dropdown in Trados → Settings → AI Settings → “QuickLauncher prompts go to:” picks between the in-Trados Assistant (default) and Workbench Chat. Workbench is always ready to receive; nothing in Workbench needs to be configured.
If Workbench isn’t running when Trados tries to send a prompt, Trados silently falls back to its own Assistant – the prompt is never lost.
→ Sidekick Bridge (Trados help) – wire format and troubleshooting
Example questions
The Trados-aware chat shines when you ask questions that depend on what you’re actually translating right now:
Which termbase entries apply to this segment?
The chat will list the termbase hits and explain how to apply them.
What’s a more natural English translation for the segment I’m currently editing?
The chat will read the source, your draft target (if any), and any surrounding segments, and propose a polished translation.
Are there any TM matches I should reuse for this segment?
The chat will summarise the TM matches and tell you which ones are close enough to confirm as-is.
What domain is this document about?
The chat will infer the domain from the surrounding segments and reply.
Privacy
- The bridge listens only on
127.0.0.1(loopback). Other devices on your network can never reach it. - Each Trados session gets a fresh authentication token – stale tokens from old sessions are useless.
- The bridge only starts when you have Assistant access (paid subscription or trial). Without Assistant access, no bridge is started.
- You can disable the bridge entirely on the Trados side by editing the plugin’s
settings.jsonand setting"sidekickBridgeEnabled": false. See Sidekick Bridge for details.
Troubleshooting
The 🔗 Trados chip never appears. The bridge isn’t being detected. Check:
- Trados Studio is running with Supervertaler for Trados v4.19.52 or later
- You have a paid subscription or active trial (the bridge is gated behind Assistant access)
- You’ve opened the Supervertaler Assistant panel at least once in this Trados session – the bridge starts lazily when the panel is first activated
- The handshake file
~/Supervertaler/trados/runtime/bridge.jsonexists. If it doesn’t, check the bridge log at%TEMP%\Supervertaler-bridge.logfor diagnostic information.
The chip appears but the answers don’t seem to use the project context.
Send a question that explicitly references your segment, like “Which termbase entries apply to this segment?”. If the answer cites specific terms from your termbases, the bridge is working. If the answer is generic, the chip may have been toggled off, or the bridge may have lost reachability – check the chip’s tooltip.
The chip is greyed out.
The bridge was reachable earlier but is no longer responding. Make sure Trados Studio is still running and the Supervertaler Assistant panel hasn’t been closed. The chip recovers automatically (within ~3 seconds) when Trados is reachable again.