Transcript ApSIC Xbench A tool for terminology and QA
presents...
ApSIC Xbench
A tool for terminology and QA
by Riccardo Schiaffino
ATA 52nd Annual Conference
Boston, October 26-29 2011 Presentation © Riccardo Schiaffino, 2011 Xbench © ApSIC, 2000-2011
Table of contents
QA features: Instructions - 36
Where to download this presentation - 49
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 2
Introduction
• What is Xbench?
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 3
Introduction
• What is Xbench?
Xbench is a Windows software tool for
terminology management
and
translation QA ,
developed by ApSIC
,
a Spanish translation and localization company. • Xbench
terminology
functions permit to search and organize your glossaries, translation memories and bilingual files for specific projects.
• Xbench also offers excellent
QA
functions to help improve and control the quality of your translations. 4 ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
Introduction
• All that at an unbeatable price: the program is freeware (it is, however, proprietary and closed source).
• Xbench can be downloaded from ApSIC's Web site: http://www.ApSIC.com/en/downloads.aspx
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Terminology and search
Xbench can search glossaries, translation memories and bilingual files in multiple formats.
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Supported file formats
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • Tab-delimited Text File XLIFF File TMX Memory TBX/MARTIF Glossary Trados Exported Memory Trados Exported Multiterm 5 Glossary Trados Multiterm XML Glossary Trados TagEditor File Trados Word File (works also for bilingual .docx files) Trados Studio 2009 or 2011 File SDLX File SDLX Memory STAR Transit 2.6/XV Directory Tree PO File • • • • • • • • • • • • • Wordfast Memory Wordfast Glossary Wordfast Pro TXML DejaVu X/Idiom File DejaVu X/Idiom Memory Logoport RTF File IBM TM/OpenTM2 Dictionary IBM TM/OpenTM2 Folder IBM TM/OpenTM2 Exported Folder IBM TM/OpenTM2 Exported Memory Mac OS X Glossary Microsoft Glossary Remote Xbench Server ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 7
Powerful searches
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Powerful searches
You can use Xbench to search your glossaries and other resources using simple searches, but the program also offers very powerful search functions (using the Power Search, Regular Expression, and MS Word Wildcard search functions).
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Powerful searches
• Simple search • Power search With the “Power search” function you can, among other things, search for segments that contain a certain word in the source, and that do not contain a specific word in the target: that is, you can tell Xbench “display all segments where the source contains the word ‘
agreement
’ but the target does not contain the word ‘
contratto
’”.
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Powerful searches
• MS Word wildcard search You can find a couple of detailed articles on the uses of MS Word wildcard searches on my blog About Translation: • http://aboutranslation.blogspot.com/2005/05/how to-use-wildcard-and-format.html
• http://aboutranslation.blogspot.com/2006/05/anoth er-useful-wildcard-search.html
• Regular expression search 11 ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
Powerful searches
You can also search Google and other Internet sites directly from within Xbench.
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Powerful searches
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Keyboard shortcuts
• The program remains in the background and is minimized to the Windows tray until specifically shut down - this means it is always just a click away.
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Keyboard shortcuts
• Xbench can be called from most applications via simple (and configurable) keyboard shortcuts. • For example, if Xbench is active, when you highlight a word in MS Word then press Ctrl+Alt+Ins, Xbench will automatically search for that word and display the results.
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Easy editing
You can edit on the fly your glossaries or the bilingual files you are working on, to update or correct them.
• Xbench allows you to use your preferred text editor (for example, Notepad++) to edit text files. • Most text editors can be configured so as to open files for edit from Xbench already at the appropriate line.
• To open bilingual translation files in most of the supported formats, Xbench uses the appropriate tools. So, bilingual *.doc files are opened in MS Word, *.itd files in SDLX, *.ttx files in Tag Editor, and *.sdlxliff files in Studio 2009 or 2011.
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Easy editing
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Easy editing
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Easy editing
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Easy editing
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Saving projects
You can save each project with the set of glossaries and other resource you specify.
• This way, the next time you work on a similar assignment, you can use the same Xbench project, with the same set of files and settings.
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Projects settings
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Project settings
You can assign high, medium and low priority to glossaries and other resources, and also order them within each priority level, so that the most relevant answers are displayed first.
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ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
Project settings
24
Convert between formats
Through the Export Items function, you can also save all or part of a project either as a tab-separated text file (a suitable format for glossaries), or to TMX translation memory format (a flexible format supported by most CAT tools).
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Convert between formats
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Quality Assurance In addition to terminology search, you can use Xbench to check the quality of your translation projects.
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Quality Assurance Several types of QA checks
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Quality Assurance
Basic • Untranslated segments • Inconsistency –in source –in target • Target same as source Content • Tag mismatch • Numeric mismatch • Double blank ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 29
Quality Assurance
Linguistic • Key Term mismatch – Key term example: terms defined in quotes in legal documents – It is important that key term lists be of limited length, to avoid too many false positives • Project checklist • Personal checklist Spellcheck • In various languages • Requires download of (free) additional dictionaries http://www.ApSIC.com/ en/downloads.aspx
QA reports in HTML, Excel, tab-delimited text or XML format 30 ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
Quality Assurance
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Quality Assurance
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Quality Assurance
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Quality Assurance
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Quality Assurance
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QA features: Instructions
• You can write your instructions for the project directly within Xbench.
• Useful when working on team projects... or even solo, when you write reminders for yourself.
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QA features: Add-ins
Xbench now also includes an interface for programming add-ins to the QA features, to add specific kinds of QA tests that are not offered by the base program. • The spell-check add-in has been developed this way.
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Settings
In addition to the settings available for each project, Xbench settings can be customized in various ways, for example, to use a specific text editor or select specific engines to perform Internet searches.
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Settings
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Settings
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Documentation
Unlike most other freeware programs, Xbench help system offers complete and well written documentation of the program. Whenever some feature is added or changed, the help system is updated. • The help system is particularly useful to explain how best to use the more sophisticated search options, such as the "power search". 41 ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
Documentation
Displaying help in Windows Vista or Windows 7 • On computers that are running Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 R2, you may be unable to open help files (*.hlp) that require the Windows Help (WinHlp32.exe) program. • If your computer does not display the help file, you can find more information on how to solve this issue and you can download the necessary program from the following address: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917607 • In addition to English, the documentation has been translated into German, Italian and Polish. The translated help files can be downloaded from the ApSIC Web site: http://www.ApSIC.com/en/downloads.aspx 42 ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
Future developments
• ApSIC is currently working on version 3 • Regarding other CAT Tools, the roadmap is mostly driven by ApSIC's internal needs, so when ApSIC is involved with a new CAT tool in projects of sizeable volume, they tend to add support for it in ApSIC Xbench quickly.
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Future developments
• That means that every single CAT tool or popular format is somehow under the radar, but ApSIC only adds support for the format when they feel they have enough files to test it internally and full access to the tool to make sure they are able to support it when users submit bug reports (so as to avoid the scenario where ApSIC cannot reproduce the user's issue because they happen to lack a license for a specific external tool).
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Additional tools
• CSVedit is a tool for creating bilingual glossaries in tab-delimited format. It is freeware and offers several useful functions. You can download it from: http://csved.sjfrancke.nl/index.html
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Additional tools
• If you need a simple tool for creating bilingual glossaries, TablePro is a small and inexpensive database program (shareware). You can download a trial copy from Softpedia: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/Finances-Business/Table-Pro.shtml
Unfortunately, at the moment it looks like TablePro is no longer in development, but the copies available online for download are fully functional.
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Additional tools
• Another small database program that could be used for creating bilingual glossaries is dBworx, available both as freeware and as a cheap “professional” version.
http://www.plworx-software.com/index.html#iddbworx ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 47
Additional tools
• As a text editor, I mostly use Notepad++: a good open-source program with many advanced features. If you decide to use Notepad++, the command line parameters
$Filename -n$Line
allow Xbench to open a text file at the appropriate line. You can download Notepad++ from the following site: http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ 48 ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
Where to download this presentation
• You can find the most updated version of this presentation on my blog, About Translation. ( http://aboutranslation.blogspot.com
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The End
Thank you, for coming to this presentation, and a special thanks to ApSIC for their wonderful tool!
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