Voice Commands
Control Trados Studio hands-free with spoken commands: confirm segments, navigate, insert TermLens matches, apply translation results, add terms and more – without touching your keyboard. Designed to pair with dictation tools such as Wispr Flow or Dragon: they type your translation, Supervertaler handles the commands.
Starting and stopping
Two ways to toggle voice commands:
- Click the 🎤 microphone button in the TermLens panel header (next to the ↻ refresh button)
- Press Ctrl+Alt+V (also available in the editor right-click menu)
The microphone button shows the state at a glance:
| Colour | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Grey | Off – click to start |
| Orange | Starting (or downloading the voice runtime on first use) |
| Green | Listening |
Each command you speak flashes briefly in the TermLens status label (e.g. 🎤 "confirm"), so you always know what was heard.
If the TermLens panel isn’t open, a small floating status strip appears instead (bottom-right). You can drag it anywhere – the position is remembered.
Default commands
Everything works out of the box – no configuration needed. Most commands also respond to an alias, so you can use whichever phrasing comes naturally:
| Say | Or | Action |
|---|---|---|
| ”confirm" | "confirm segment” | Confirm segment and move to next unconfirmed |
| ”next segment" | "go down” | Move to the next segment (without confirming) |
| “previous segment" | "go up” | Move to the previous segment |
| ”go to the top" | "go to top” | Jump to the first segment (Ctrl+Home) |
| “go to the bottom" | "go to bottom” | Jump to the last segment (Ctrl+End) |
| “copy source" | "copy from source” | Copy source to target |
| ”clear target” | Clear the target segment | |
| ”term one” … “term nine” | Insert TermLens match 1–9 (with capitalisation adaptation) | |
| “match one” … “match nine” | Apply Translation Results match 1–9 (Ctrl+1–9) | |
| “term picker" | "pick term” | Open TermPicker |
| ”term popup" | "show terms” | Open the TermLens popup |
| ”add term" | "new term” | Quick-add the selection to your write termbases (Alt+Down) |
| “add project term" | "project term” | Quick-add the selection to the project termbase (Alt+Up) |
| “translate" | "translate segment” | AI-translate the active segment |
| ”concordance" | "search memory” | Concordance search on the selection (F3) |
| “zoom in" | "bigger font” | Increase the editor font size (see setup below) |
| “zoom out" | "smaller font” | Decrease the editor font size (see setup below) |
| “escape" | "close window” | Close the focused popup or dialog |
| ”stop listening" | "voice off” | Turn voice commands off |
One-time setup for “zoom in” / “zoom out”
Trados Studio’s font-size actions ship without a default keyboard shortcut, so these two commands need a one-time binding:
- Go to File > Options > Keyboard Shortcuts > Editor
- Scroll down to the actions named simply Increase and Decrease (note: the Keyboard Shortcuts page has no search box – you have to scroll)
- Set Increase to
Ctrl+Alt+PgUpand Decrease toCtrl+Alt+PgDn - Click OK
From then on, “zoom in” and “zoom out” control the editor font size hands-free. (Make sure Adapt font sizes is enabled under File > Options > Editor > Font Adaptation.)
Safety and privacy
- Fully offline – recognition runs locally on your machine (Vosk engine); no audio is ever sent anywhere.
- Grammar-constrained – the recogniser listens only for your command phrases, which is what makes commands fast and reliable. Normal speech and dictation are ignored.
- Foreground guard – commands only execute while Trados Studio is the active window. Speaking in another app can’t trigger anything (“stop listening” is the one exception – it always works).
Customising commands
Right-click the 🎤 button (or click ⚙ on the floating strip) to open the Voice command settings dialog (also reachable via the ? in its title bar and F1 for this help page):
- Enable/disable individual commands
- Edit spoken phrases and add aliases
- Add your own commands, mapped to either:
- a keystroke chord sent to Studio (e.g.
ctrl+enter,alt+up,f3) – any Studio or Supervertaler shortcut works - an internal plugin action:
insert_term_1…insert_term_9,term_picker,termlens_popup,navigate_next,navigate_previous,stop_listening
- a keystroke chord sent to Studio (e.g.
Commands are stored in trados/settings/voice_commands.json in your Supervertaler data folder, in the same format as Supervertaler Workbench’s voice commands – so you can exchange command sets between the two products.
Default commands added in plugin updates are merged into your saved set automatically – your customisations are never touched. Because of this, if you want to get rid of a default command, untick it rather than delete it (a deleted phrase would come back if a later update re-ships it). Restore defaults replaces everything with the built-in set, discarding your customisations.
Troubleshooting
- “Voice commands could not start” – check that a microphone is available in Windows sound settings, and that the first-run download completed (an interrupted download can be retried by simply starting voice commands again).
- A command isn’t recognised – speak the phrase on its own, at normal pace. If a phrase never triggers, give it a more distinctive alias in Voice command settings.
- Corrupt model – delete the
trados/voice/modelsfolder in your Supervertaler data folder; the next activation re-downloads it.