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.
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Moravia are the first adopters of the TM Repository.
The main problem with the TM repository so far was: “what is it, and what is it intended for?”
According to statistics, 80% of new software projects fail if there is no clear vision about the project. The TM Repository project has been put on hold for a certain period, but the company has resumed development now that there is such a vision.
Problem statements
TMs can be scattered in hundreds of tiny files.
Or, in a “big mama” type of approach, the TMs are managed by using filters and metadata. A project TM is a TM that only contains the segments (e.g. from a “big mama”) that are relevant to a specific project.
Including the reviewing process into the technology is essential. Some reviewers will refuse to use a translation environment to review a text (this has been solved by memoQ’s RTF columnar export).
TM contents need regular cleanup. What needs to be deleted/fixed: outdated entries, bad translations, “other” garbage.
In technical documentation, there is a lot of terminology that refers to concepts that get deprecated.
Cross-tool TMX transfer does not give good enough leverage. Attributes specified in one tool will often not be transferred to a different tool.
Context information: how can we transfer the context information (saved as hashes in Trados Studio TMs and as clear text in memoQ)? In short, we can’t. The hashing algorithm used in Idiom is patented. In other cases, it’s kept secret.
Features and workflows
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Single database with TMX import/export. At its current stage TM Repository can only receive TMX files.
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It accepts any sort of metadata (client, project number, dates, etc.), no matter which tool was used to create the TMX.
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The TM is extracted from TM Repository and can be modified in any translation tool. The TM then needs to get back into the TM Repository, which offers complex features for comparing the new TM to the current contents of the repository.
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You can import TMs containing one language pair and merge them into a multi-pair TM, then split it again in sub-pairs.
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Version control and rollbacks: entry history is included for every translation unit. If you make a mistake, you can always roll back to the previous version
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TM Repository is tool-agnostic. Every attribute is converted to an attribute system that is specified by the user for the TM Repository. Preconfigured mapping templates are available.
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Full-text (not fuzzy!) concordance search
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Search and replace in the repository
Next steps
- A beta version is available now
- A connector to memoQ Server is in the works. It will make import/exports from/to memoQ transparent through an integration API.
Specifications
Back-end database application with no direct connection to translation management systems (for now). Requires a dedicated server, as it’s resource-intensive.
In its current state, TM Repository will not allow you to upload a translatable project, run a fuzzy-match analysis, and extract the relevant translation units from the repository, regardless of the metadata. From my personal point of view this is a real show-stopper. I cannot see real potential in this product for a small LSP if it does not offer this kind of functionality.
New feature for memoQ 4.2 or later: project archival. Backup and restore functionality for the project including TM and TB. Useful for moving projects to a new PC and keep two PCs in sync.
Speed degradation on network drives: it’s a problem created by the underlying input/output system.
More on archiving and paths. Suggestion to make relative path as the default. This suggestion is being considered.
In 4.2 a brand-new aligner is available. Interface has been reworked, improvements with multiple documents. Segments are editable.
Problems in handling Chinese/Japanese content:The focus from the input method editor shifts away from the main window. Developers are working to solve the problem. It appears to be a rather complex bug. There is also an alleged problem with fonts since version 4.0. If you copy Japanese text from the source to the target and the target uses a Latin-based font, you may get useless squares. However, most users translating from/to Japanese do not have a problem with this.
Dragon Naturally Speaking support: support in the 4.0 version has problems. These should be solved in version 4.2.
Feature request: hide the mouse pointer when the user starts typing. This is probably already supported by your mouse driver.
Plans to have a clone project feature for local projects.
Feature request: search for tags and/or filter for tags. It’s being considered.
Request: make the metadata from the term base visible in the translation environment. In all probability, qTerm will be addressing this issue.
Hunspell problem with the Rumanian dictionary. Perhaps the best solution is to replace the default dictionary with a new one.
Ctrl-shift-B – Ctrl-shift-N keyboard shortcut allows to move the selection to the left/right.
Request: if the source term is in small caps, insert it as small caps even if it’s capitalized in the target term base.
Fragment-assembling: often short segments from the TM take precedence over the same term from the term base. Sometimes the result is that a term is inserted with wrong capitalization. Perhaps this issue will be solved in qTerm. qTerm will also offer filtering capabilities.
Inverting the “direction” of translation memories. Version 4.5 will introduce features that will make this “problem” obsolete.
Inline tags: if you have translated a project containing bilingual files that use the “old” (inserted by F8) type of tags, and then receive a new version that use the “new” version tags (F9), your match rates will decrease because the tags are not substituted on-the-fly. This is something the developers are working on.
Request: LAN access to term bases and translation memories without using memoQ server: this is recognized as an important feature, but it’s not going to happen. Tiny translator groups still have to purchase the server version if they want to share resources.
Request: add a keyboard shortcut to add a term as untranslatable. This is being considered as an addition to future versions.
Presentation by Thomas Imhof from localix.biz. Just some quick notes here.
Some interesting concepts:
- allows translators to concentrate on the text rather than on the formatting.
- standardized exchange of localization data
- can serve as a common format for localization tool vendors
- supports review comments, translation status of each string
- XLIFF allows to create the target document at any stage
- Custom namespaces and attribute values allow to extend the information included in XLIFF files
Some limitations of XLIFF:
- XLIFF knows nothing about segmentation. [see comments section. This appears not to be the case]
- Extensibility is limited to the specific tool that added the specific extra features.
- Inline elements: XLIFF does not control the filtering process, so the notation of inline elements in entirely in the hands of the translation tool vendor.
XLIFF support in the current translation tools:
Thomas divides XLIFF support in today’s tools into three groups:
level 1: source is copied to target. Considered as “messy”, offered by many translation tools today
level 2: offered by memoQ and Trados Studio: opens the files correctly and handles elements more or less correctly. Use custom namespaces for tool-specific functionality.
level 3: offered by Swordfish and Heartsome, offer full support for all of functionalities and features, do not add custom namespaces. They use the “note” element offered by XLIFF.
memoQ works well when opening third-party XLIFF files. Roundtrip of SDLXLIFF files produced by Trados studio works well, but some Trados-specific attributes (e.g. segment status) are not updated.
Best practices:
- make sure XLIFF file is bilingual and not multilingual
- alt-trans elements are not supported in memoQ
- etc.
Next item on the program is AGITO Translate, a web-based translation environment based on memoQ server. The foundation for this system are the memoQ APIs
The main feature of this system is its simplicity. Thor Angelo from LanguageWire (the translation company that develops AGITO) admits that although AGITO might be even too simple for some translators, it’s the ideal solution for some clients who require super-fast turnaround and who send frequent, but small chunks of material to be translated. For instance, advertising agencies, web service companies, search engine optimization firms.
AGITO offers a modular approach (term base, translation, editor, integration, authoring, etc.). Clients, as well as translators, can access it through the web interface.
Interesting concept: a brief history outlining the transition of tools from everything offline, to TB and TM online, to documents online, to application online, which is supposed to be the final stage we are getting to now.
AGITO allows translators and proofreaders to access the same document simultaneously. No software installation is required, and project managers can see the real-time status of each job.
Some examples of problems on the user’s end were presented, for instance trouble with installing translation tools, problems with the timely delivery, with completeness, etc. AGITO aims to solve this problems by simplifying the whole process on the translator’s end.
During the Q&A session, some concerns were raised by the audience, e.g. spelling control (it’s handled by the browser), quality assessment (there are some basic checks like double spaces etc. but according to LanguageWire a separate proofreader is the way to go). Also, the translator is not allowed to use his/her own translation memories or term bases. Moreover, at the current stage the translator has no local copy of the translation material.
Some concern was expressed about confidentiality. The system is protected by secured passwords. “Just like your home banking system”.
The system is, in theory, ideal for crowdsourced translation projects.
In conclusion, AGITO is certainly not a product tat our team of translators would like to use any time soon, but it’s an innovative concept that could be interesting for some agencies that work with very tight deadlines and require multi-user collaboration without the overhead of supporting local installations.
memoQ term bases
After the lunch break, the structure of memoQ term base entries was discussed. Angelika explained the import mappings for CSV files.
One trick for importing term bases in the fastest way possible: if you work frequently with one language pair and always use the same term base structure, export a sample term base from memoQ and delete all the content except the rows containing the headings. Then use this CSV template every time by pasting your contents under the column headings. When you have to import the resulting term base into memoQ, you will not need to do any mapping, because the column headings will be correctly accepted and configured by memoQ.
In the current version of memoQ, only 5-6 hard-coded fields are available. While this is probably enough for most translators, organizations that have terminology management systems feel the limitation of this setup. That’s why Kilgray will introduce a brand-new terminology system that will contain custom fields and complex structures.
Terminology plug-ins
memoQ 4.2 offers terminology plug-ins. One example is the EuroTermBank: if you start a term lookup (ctrl-P) , you can type a term search and specify to search the term not only in the normal memoQ term bases, but also in the online EuroTermBank database. Kilgray is part of the EuroTermBank consortium and can offer this feature to all its users for free. Needless to say, you need to be online in order to use this plug-in.
Two-column RTF export
Balázs Kis then proceeded to show the brand-new functionality called two-column RTF export. In the presentation, Balázs added a couple of comments to some segments, created a view that only included commented segments, and proceeded to export the view as a two-column RTF file. He then opened the resulting file in Word. The resulting file is a multi-column, editable file that a reviewer can use even if she does not have memoQ. The third column contains a color-coded value of the segment status. The general comment in the room was “this is better implemented than in Déja Vu”, “great!”. There was even some applause! You could really tell that this was a long-awaited feature.
 XLIFF Translator is a free (MIT license) Windows desktop application for translating XLIFF files. XLIFF is a standard XML format for translation.
Changelog for this version:
- Support for opening single XLIFF files
- Wide range of XLIFF files passing test suite
- Japanese localization finished.
From: Felix Blog
Wordfast Pro 2.3 is out. It’s available for Windows only for the moment. Here’s the changelog:
New Features:
- Wordfast Aligner™ BETA**
- MIF, PDF, and TTX support
- Machine Translation Integration
- MS Office Spellchecker option
- TM Administration Module**
- User-Defined Segmentation
Improvements:
- Autopropagation now has orange color coding
- Added placeable shortcuts
- Allow for full connection string to be entered when defining a Remote TM connection
- Added Concordance search on Target
- Added shortcut for Confirm/Unconfirm Segment
- Copy source / target glossary terms options added
- Memory used by Wordfast can now be adjusted for opening larger files
- Ability to confirm and unconfirm multiple segments has been added
- Added Norwegian Bokmal support and spellcheckers
- Added Toggle between capitalization option and shortcut
- Added Ctrl+H in addition to Crtl+F as a find/replace shortcut
- Removed marking segments as unconfirmed when clicking on another segment
- Pressing Ctrl+Tab copies individual word from source to target
- Warning added when user copies all source to target
- Right-click in editor options updated
**Feature is not present in the free demo version.Available with the purchase of a license only
Wordfast Pro website
Yesterday Kilgray released version 4.0 of their translation environment memoQ. To download and test it, you can use this link (update: see below for new link). Here are some links and snippets containing some further information about the new version:
memoQ 4: Interview with István Lengyel on the Localization, Localisation blog.
The following are edited excerpts from the memoQ mailing list on Yahoo Groups. I’m sure the users who submitted them originally won’t mind if I publish them here:
- Brand new editor, with smaller inline tags display, view hidden spaces, drag & drop.
- The new editor fixes the scrolling issue existing on 64 bits Windows editions for 3.x
- Named undo list (like in Microsoft Word)
- Real-time spellchecking (errors underlined with red squiggle like in Word/Firefox/Thunderbird)
- Unified "Resource console" to manage all resources
- On top of TM/TB, autotranslatables, ignore lists, etc. (basically all project settings) are now also treated as resources
- All resources can be shared and/or imported/exported
- Easy multilingual project management thanks to a handful of new features (handoff export/import, new stats available, etc.)
- Handoff import/export relies on open standards for better interoperability
- Improved QA with less "noise" (false positives)
- Revamped interface – referred to as the Dashboard, new icons and more modern feel
- Resolve QA errors – different interface allowing you to hide warnings/errors
- External view similar to the one found Déjà Vu will not appear in 4.0 but will be ready in 2nd quarter of 2010
- Post-translation analysis feature, which Kilgray considers this a major breakthrough
- If you bought the software between 1 Sept 2008 and 1 Feb 2009, you need to pay an upgrade fee to be eligible for memoQ 4. This relates both to freelancers and corporate users.
Regarding the Server version, it will be available in about two weeks. The developers are ironing out some details in the installer.
2009-02-05 UPDATE:
A new 4.0 build is now available at http://kilgray.com/memoq/memoQSetup.4.0.16.exe. In this build we have fixed about 30 issues, focusing on the more annoying problems you have been reporting since Monday. In particular, there are improvements in the following areas:
– Migration of legacy settings
– Pre-translation
– memoQ 3.6 an 4.0 in parallel
– Extra tags in DOC/RTF import
– Stability while working in the editor
– Joining and splitting
This version also has the AutoUpdate module enabled again, which means that memoQ will be able to update automatically from this build to the next one, 4.0.17, when that is out. Download and enjoy!
 Riccardo Schiaffino’s excellent blog About Translation had a new intriguing post yesterday about circumventing a limitation in Trados that will not let you run two copies of the freelance version on a LAN. He suggested a hardware-based solution. Read more about this on his post.
However, this reminded me of a quick hack I pulled off a couple of years ago when we were still using Trados quite a lot:
Hi Riccardo,
good tip, but I can recall a better one from the time we were still using Trados quite a lot (we later transitioned to memoQ and never looked back) and some freelancers were hooking up their laptops at the office for the purpose of importing/exporting files and memories.
As a workaround for this license limitation I installed a free copy of a software-based firewall (I think it was Comodo Firewall, but the functionality is similar in other firewall packages). I then disabled some of the packets that the newly-connected laptops were sending out on the LAN. I may be wrong, but I think these were the multicast packets. You may need to fiddle a bit with the options before finding the type of packet you need to disable.
With some luck, file sharing will not affected by the modification, while Trados will not complain any longer about the extra licenses.
Legally speaking, I’m not sure how such a modification can be considered in view of the software license agreement. But since you are not touching Trados in any way and are only changing some of the networking features of the OS, let’s say there’s room for interpretations…
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