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.
The Project Mangement category, managed by Gabriella Ascari, contains topics that are less technical in nature, but which we're sure will be appreciated by owners of small translation businesses and freelancers.
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The Tools section of the L10NWorks website contains a wealth of free resources for translation and localization professionals.
 The list is neatly divided into logical categories such as Encoding, QA Tools, etc. and is easy to navigate. Some of the tools do not need any download or install: You upload your data (the site promises not to retain or use it in any way) and let the programs process it. Once the procedure is complete, you can download the modified data for reuse in your projects. Tools that need a local PC for processing can be easily downloaded and installed with a simple click.
 Each single tool contains specific sub-sections with brief instructions, a feedback form that allows users to rate the tool, and some information about the tool’s author.
All in all a very useful, easy to navigate site which I hope will be kept up to date as new tools are created or improved.
The people in charge of Wordfast development have certainly worked hard since the introduction of Wordfast Pro (the multi-platform tool that uses its separate editor, as opposed to Wordfast Classic, which is Microsoft Word-based). Here is the change log for the latest version, released yesterday. Of particular interest is the "Pre-translate entire file" feature, which may simplify the process of translating Wordfast using a different tools, as explained here.
Added Word 2007 and Excel 2007 Filters
Glossary Stemming (Wildcard searches using *)
Text based formats such as XML and HTML can be opened directly using File > Open
TransCheck supported in table mode
TransCheck can be run while translating
Enable/disable Autopropagation
Edit placeables in the target segment
Pre-translate entire file
Open multiple windows
Adaptive leveraging
via Wordfast: Release Notes.
 Kilgray yesterday announced version 3.6 beta of MemoQ. Although a beta, this is a minor version number change (from 3.5. to 3.6), so, unlike what happens with the numerous revision number changes (e.g. 3.5.23 to 3.5.24) that Kilgray uses to solve bugs, this one contains some significant new features. Let’s take a look at the change log posted by the developers:
Our long-awaited DOCX filter.
This is definitely a very welcome change. MemoQ will now be able to handle Word 2007 files natively and, from what I heard, it does that very efficiently and fast. By the way, MemoQ has always been my top choice for handling complex Word files (performing consistently better than Trados TagEditor 2007).
A PDF filter built on the open-source Xpdf tool that allows you to extract plain text from PDF files for alignment and translation.
Like some users pointed out, this is probably a catch-up feature that allows MemoQ to be as buzzword-compliant as Trados Studio 2009. From what I’ve heard about Trados’ implementation of this filter, it’s definitely not a one-stop solution that will solve all the translator’s PDF problems. (Hint: charge extra when you have to translate PDF files. Half of the time, the client will miraculously find those editable source documents).
MemoQ can now be officially installed on 64-bit systems.
This is very important in view of the introduction of Windows 7 that will take place this Autumn.
A feature to auto-insert the best hit when you enter the next segment after Ctrl+Enter. Look under Translation / Automatic Lookup and Insertion.
This is the single feature I’m most happy to hear about. Until now, if you pretranslated a file and automatically inserted fuzzy matches, MemoQ would not warn you if a better match was saved into the TM since your last pretranslation, so you could end up editing the older, lower-matching segment contained in the pretranslated file if you failed to notice the better match in the TM.
An option (by default, on) to show TB hits in their order of appearance in the source, not alphabetically. Double-click the orange icon above Translation results for settings.
Until now the term base matches were shown in alphabetical order. This makes more sense and it should indeed be turned on by default.
The Concordance window can now be left open as you continue to translate.
Another very welcome new feature for users who like to have more reference windows open. Until now the concordance window was a modal dialog that needed to be closed every time you needed to go back to editing mode.
You can now safely use local projects stored on a network drive (only one user at a time).
I was never affected by this problem since we use MemoQ server to connect to remote projects through the internet and we save all project files locally.
We reinstated our old friend, F4, for inserting the fragment assembled hit. The shortcut can be configured, of course.
This is a minor change. I’m sure some users felt very strongly about it and the developers decided to re-introduce this feature.
An improved terminology check in the QA module that will yield fewer false positives for missing terms.
I have not tested this feature. All I know is that previous versions of MemoQ’s QA module left a lot to be desired, so hopefully this will be a step in the right direction.
MemoQ : Message: MemoQ 3.6.2 [beta] announced.
 We sometimes receive files that have been processed using the latest version of WordFast Pro. These are recognizable from the .txml extension.
This format is just a specific XML structure, and as such it should be possible to translate the files using MemoQ after formatting them properly.
Open the files in WordFast and check the total number of segments
Open the TXML file in WordFast and go to the last line, taking note of the number of segments contained in the file. In the picture below note the presence of WordFast’s tag {ut1}.
Also check for the presence of text in the target column. This will cause problems, so, you will need to delete it. The presence of < > signs in the source text may create problems, so you will need to replace them with some different placeholders.
Once you have done these checks, close the file.
Open the .txml file with an editor and replace some strings
- Open the .txml file using the jEdit text editor. Click here to go to the download page. It is important to use this editor because it allows for a very simple search/replace syntax that takes care of “greedy” wildcards. You can obtain the same results using a different editor, but the syntax to use might be different.
- After opening the file in JEdit, place the cursor at the top and choose Search > Find…
- In the Search for field, insert the string below (be careful not to add superfluous spaces if copying from this page):
<segment(.*?)>(.*?)<source>(.*?)</source>(.*?)</segment>
- In the Replace with field, insert the following string:
<segment$1>$2<source>$3</source>$4<target>$3</target></segment>
- Check that the search options are configured as in the screenshot below:
- Click on Replace All, save the file and quit jEdit.
Open the modified file in MemoQ
- First perform a quick check by opening the file you just saved with WordFast. Now the target column should be identical to the source column, tags included. The total number of segments should be identical to the value you saw when you first opened the file in WordFast. After checking this, you can open the file in MemoQ.
- Add the .xml extension to the file name (e.g. filename.txml.xml), since MemoQ likes this better.
- Open MemoQ and create a new project. Call it for instance “Wordfast”, so you can re-use it easily for subsequent projects that involve translating WordFast files.
- Go to the Settings > Source segmentation rules pane. (Warning: NEVER modify these settings using the Tools > Options > Segmentation rules menu because this will affect the global segmentation rules. We only want to change local rules for this project.)
- Select the various segmentation rules in the Rules list on the left and delete all of them. We need to do this (only once if you the re-use the same “WordFast” MemoQ project) so that MemoQ’s segmentation has no effect on WordFast’s.
- Go to Translations > Add document as…
- Select the file with .XML extension and open it.
- The Document import settings window is displayed. Download this this MemoQ XML definition file, then click on the … on top to import this file.
- Click OK at the bottom of the window. The window closes and the file is imported.
- Open the file in MemoQ and check that the total number of segments is identical to the number you checked when opening the file in WordFast initially. MemoQ should also have inserted the any tags in the correct positions corresponding to the tags contained in WordFast.
- Translate the file normally.
- When ready, export it with Export (dialog)
Check the translated file in MemoQ
- Restore the .txml extension and open the translated file in WordFast. You should get no error messages. Check that the total number of segments is still the same, check the tag position, etc.
- Confirm all segments in WordFast (the only way I know is to press Alt – down arrow in each segment.
- Save and deliver the file.
 Terminotix recently launched YouAlign beta, a text alignment service. Powered by the company’s AlignFactory engine, this solution allows to create bilingual files from a source and a target text. Here is some more information from their website:
No software to purchase, no software to install. With YouAlign you can quickly and easily create bitexts from your archived documents. A YouAlign bitext contains a document and its translation aligned at the sentence level. YouAlign generates TMX files that can be loaded into your translation memory. YouAlign can also generate HTML files that you can publish on the Internet, or use with a full-text search engine to search for terminology and phraseology in context.
YouAlign, in its beta version, is being offered as a free service for a limited time only.
YouAlign is powered by the LogiTerm AlignFactory engine, which supports all kinds of formats, including Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, PDF, HTML, XML, Corel WordPerfect, RTF, Lotus WordPro and plain text.
YouAlign – Welcome
XANADU a.s. published version 1.3 of the TRANS add-on utility for AutoCAD. Here are some details:
You can use the TRANS add-on utility to translate drawing texts to another language – either manually, or CAT-assisted (e.g. with Trados or other CAT tool), or automatically (via Google Translate).
TRANS extracts (exports) Text and Mtext entities from AutoCAD drawings into a text file (you can then translate it using any automated text translation tool or by human translator) and then puts the translated texts back into your DWG drawing (to the original places/positions and with the original properties). The automatic mode employs the API of the online tool "Google Translate" to perform language translation between the specified language pair.
The utility supports batch processing and translating the contents using Trados (or any other TEnT, since the format is RTF with tags). The tool does not support Unicode. A free trial version is available for download. The commercial version costs 39 USD.
Trans – AutoCAD DWG text translation
 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
Update: the previous link does not work any longer. Apparently the domain has expired. A new version of the manual is being published on this page.
 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.
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The list is neatly divided into logical categories such as Encoding, QA Tools, etc. and is easy to navigate. Some of the tools do not need any download or install: You upload your data (the site promises not to retain or use it in any way) and let the programs process it. Once the procedure is complete, you can download the modified data for reuse in your projects. Tools that need a local PC for processing can be easily downloaded and installed with a simple click.
Each single tool contains specific sub-sections with brief instructions, a feedback form that allows users to rate the tool, and some information about the tool’s author.
