About this blog Translator's Shack is a collection of links, news, reviews and opinions about translation technologies. It's edited and updated by Roberto Savelli, an English to Italian translator, project manager and company owner of Albatros Soluzioni Linguistiche, a team of English-Italian translators, which hosts and supports this blog.
Here are links to my pages on some social networks:
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 PrepTags is a file preparation software designed to prepare a wide range of formats using a powerful regular expression engine. It allows to “prep” tagged files such as HTML, PHP, XML, ASP, Javascript, SQL, PO, etc. by converting them to RTF and protecting the code. Once a file is prepared, the translator can use his regular CAT tool to translate it. PrepTags-prepared files can be translated with Wordfast, Trados, Deja Vu, MemoQ, and any other tool with support for prepared RTF files (a format originally designed for Trados).
There are 3 versions:
- PrepTags Lite: Free and functional but limited to 1 file at a time and without advanced features.
- PrepTags – eBook: €15. Comes together with TransBook. Limited to 20 files at a time, but without advanced features.
- PrepTags Pro: €39. Fully functional and unlimited number of files.
The PrepTags website contains video tutorials to help will the installation and use of the the program.
From Translation Solutions Blog » PrepTags – Officially Launched!
A brief manual, including screenshots, has been posted for the open source CAT tool Anaphraseus. Here are some of Anaphraseus’ main features:
- Text segmentation
- Terminology recognition
- Plain-text TM (Unicode UTF-16)
- Fuzzy search in Translation Memory
- Unicode UTF-16 TMX export/import
- User glossary
- OpenOffice.org extension
Anaphraseus Manual 1.23b
 An e-mail sent from XTM today describes some of the new features offered by XTM (”the leading web 2.0 complete translation environment”) version 4.0:
- Documents can be split into bundles of segments to allocate to multiple resources.
- Multiple translators and reviewers can work simultaneously on one document.
- Greater flexibility within the workflow to reroute jobs and reallocate resources.
- Many more standard workflows available for selection.
- Enhanced project metrics showing the progress of each step of the workflow.
- Individual translator statistics for progress monitoring and reporting.
- Improved performance from XTM Engine for analysis and matching.
- PDF filter – XTM can now process PDF files.
- Faster and more consistent processing of complex .doc files.
To sign up for a free test drive of XTM version 4.0, click here
Jaap van der Meer of TAUS (Translation Automation User Society) says in his recent post about Google Translation Toolkit:
Translators using the Translation Toolkit ‘share’ their translations with Google. If 100,000 translators start using the service, Google will be harvesting 50 billion words of good quality translation data per year to help Google improve their automatic translation engines. In addition translators may be uploading their own (or their customers’) TMs.
Read the ret of the post at the URL below:
Google Translation Toolkit | Technology.
This link came through Twitter this morning. Google has taken one more step towards implementing a web-based translation environment that supports both human and computer-generated translations. Here is a brief description from Google Translator Toolkit Help:
Google Translator Toolkit is part of our effort to make information universally accessible through translation. Google Translator Toolkit helps translators translate better and more quickly through one shared, innovative translation technology.
Here’s what you can do with Google Translator Toolkit:
- Upload Word documents, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML, text, Wikipedia articles and knols.
- Use previous human translations and machine translation to ‘pretranslate’ your uploaded documents.
- Use our simple WYSIWYG editor to improve the pretranslation.
- Invite others (by email) to edit or view your translations.
- Edit documents online with whomever you choose.
- Download documents to your desktop in their native formats — Word, OpenOffice, RTF or HTML.
- Publish your Wikipedia and knol translations back to Wikipedia or Knol.
How is this different from Google Translate? Google Translate provides ‘automatic translations’ produced purely by technology, without intervention from human translators. In contrast, Google Translator Toolkit allows human translators to work faster and more accurately, aided by technologies like Google Translate.
Here’s a 1 1/2 minute YouTube video that illustrates the main features.
Google Translator Toolkit basics
 The Okapi Framework has recently received a general update and is now available as release 00022. Part of Okapi is the TMX editor Olifant, a utility that I strongly recommend to all translators who use translation environments / CAT tools. Below is a brief description of the various components and their main functionalities.
- Rainbow – A ready-to-use graphical user interface to launch Okapi-compliant utilities. Utilizing Rainbow allows the users to have a simple and common way to specify some of the options of all utilities. Rainbow can also be used in command-line mode.
- Translation Package Creation – A utility that makes use of the various Okapi filters to extract translatable text from different file formats and generate translation kits in different formats such as XLIFF or RTF that can be used with different translation tools such as Wordfast or Trados Translators Workbench. It can also create more specific packages some products such as OmegaT.
- The Regex Filter – A component that provides you a way to read and write any text-based file and extract text parts using regular expressions. It implements the programming interface common to the all the Okapi filters. This simplify the development of programs or scripts to perform any type of tasks on the translatable text of the files. Many other formats are have also their own filter.
SourceForge.net: Okapi Framework: Files
Here is the changelog for version 6:
- New parsers for source code localization: Java, C++, PHP, Perl, Java Script, VB Script, Symbian LOC and RLS files, SQL.
- Samples for all major platforms and common localization scenarios
- Now you can translate Style, StyleEx in Win32 applications
- .NET, MFC and VCL: Flipping for Right-To-Left (RTL) languages localization
- Terminology added: pretranslate and check consistency
- Exchange Wizard usability is improved a lot
- Translation Hints panel: translation matches from terminology, translation memory and Google Translate
- VCL and .NET: Control mapping in Form Editor. Now you substitute any specific control with common control
- VCL form editor is improved dramatically: colors, images, alignment, autosize and fonts
- VCL image localization
- Multilingual rebranding support
- Accelerator localization for VC++, MFC
- Language specific exclude from localized file
- Automatic translation with Google Translate was improved drammatically
- Preview fonts and colors in form editor for VCL localization
- Localizer Standard edition – base functionality for small localization projects
- Edit Translations allows multiple edit operations for coordinates other parameters.
- Find panel was redesigned completely
- More than 500 other improvements for .NET, VCL, MFC, Database and Java localization, usability and productivity
via Lingobit Technologies – Software Localization Tool.
Here is the changelog:
- TM Precedence – Adds function in TM Profile to allow arranging of TM order. Presents TM matches to translator in that order.
- Download All Offline Files – When translating or reviewing offline, new button allows for download of All Files from All Tasks with status “In Progress” with one click.
- Consolidate TM’s for offline work – When translating or reviewing offline, allows user the option of consolidating TMX files into one when working a job with multiple source files.
- TermBase API’s – Allows access to Terminology Management through Web Service API’s. Perform tasks such as add, edit or delete of terminology entries from an external application.
- New TermBase Search – Provides more flexible and granular search capability on terminology entries.
- SID Support – provides support for String ID fields in GlobalSight TM’s.
- XML Rules Testing – Allow ability to test an XML file when building XML Rules (similar to testing SRX).
Via GlobalSight 7.1.3 Streamlines Offline Translation Process
 This looks like a promising localization tool that includes several features, among which translation memory, and that has an affordable price.
Below are the specifications. The Radialix website contains detailed descriptions and screenshots of all the main features.
Localize PE32, PE32+ files, .NET assemblies, resources and INI files
Localize .NET applications that do not support standard localization methods
Localize strings in the application code
Plug-ins for IDA
Unicode support
Auto-translation, including fuzzy matching
Auto-translation using PROMPT 8
Translation validation check
Edit dialogs, forms and menus visually
Memory translation editor
Project files in XML
via Radialix 2.
The Microsoft Research Machine Translation (MSR-MT) Team Blog has published some details about a translation plug-in for Microsoft Office.
Now you can translate your Microsoft Office documents with Microsoft Translator – right within Office! You can translate words, phrases, or even your entire document, through the Research task pane. We blogged about setting this up manually for Office 2007 or Office 2003 previously – now it’s really easy!
This works for both Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007. The current default in Microsoft Office is WorldLingo – this installer will update your task pane to use Microsoft Translator as the default translator for the languages we provide.
Download the installer now and let us know what you think over in the Forum!
Via Microsoft Research Machine Translation (MSR-MT) Team Blog
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