Free Translation QA Tool to Help Fight COVID-19

I repost this message which I have received from Yamagata Europe:

Yamagata Makes QA Distiller Free For All to Help Fight COVID-19

From April 2020 onwards, Yamagata Europe will offer its QA Distiller software for translators and technical documentation professionals free of charge. Instead of paying for the software, companies who download QA Distiller will be invited to donate to Translators without Borders. 

The partnership with Translators without Borders (TWB) represents Yamagata Europe’s commitment to making sure everyone has access to information in a language they understand, especially during the fight against COVID-19. TWB is a non-profit organization offering language and translation support for humanitarian and development agencies worldwide. Donations will help TWB fulfill its mission to eliminate language barriers that prevent the dissemination of critical health information. 

TWB uses language expertise and technology to help people access health-related information. TWB offers translation of content for partners such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and Red Cross, monitors and prevents the spread of misinformation, and shares verified multilingual content. The need for this work is underlined by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: “We’re not just fighting an epidemic, we’re fighting an infodemic.” 

The most trusted QA tool since 2004

QA Distiller is a stand-alone tool developed by Yamagata Europe that makes it easy to find formal translation mistakes in bilingual files. You can use QA Distiller to detect inconsistencies, terminology mistakes, wrong numbers, missing brackets and much more.

The free QA Distiller version will include all features of what was previously the Professional License, with support for over 90 languages. QA Distiller users will also benefit from regular updates, including new features and languages, and basic usability and functional support by Yamagata Europe.

Today, QA Distiller has over 1,000 satisfied users. Yamagata Europe developed the tool originally to fulfill its own need for improved language consistency checks after translation. QA Distiller was first presented to the industry at the Localization Industry Standards Association (LISA) congress in Saint Petersburg in 2004. A commercial release followed later that year.

QA Distiller was always offered on a ‘buy once, use forever’ basis, with the addition of an online license check. Basic support was always free and optional support & maintenance contracts with free upgrades were added a few years after the launch.

The software came in three versions: Freelance, Professional and Enterprise. From April 2020 onwards, only the Professional version will be available, free of charge. This version will not be limited in the number of languages and there will no longer be a license check.

The current version and license server will continue to be accessible until the end of April 2020. Current users can visit our QA Distiller support page to find info on how to switch to the new version.

Fight the COVID-19 infodemic: donate to Translators without Borders

A donation to TWB will help the organization fight the current infodemic. According to TWB’s Head of Fundraising and Communications, Sharda Sekaran, “Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, people more than ever need access to accurate information in a language and format they understand. The donations through this partnership will support TWB, so that we can support the emergency response.”

Download and donate now!

You can make donations starting from $10, but we hope that companies will find the generosity to donate substantially more.

Studio QA: actual vs. irrelevant differences

SDL Trados Studio seems to be unable to distinguish, in its QA function, between actual markup differnces (e.g., between italics and bold), and trivial differences in the way the markup is written, and that don't affect correctness of a translation.

See, for example, how Studio is flagging as an error the difference between <cf bold="True"> and <cf bold="true">, where the only difference is the capitalization within the markup:

Both tags are equally valid, and produce the same effects, so flagging a difference like this as an error is only a waste of time. By the way: I tried running QA on the same text in Xbench, and Xbench correctly refrains from flagging this as an error.

New version of my Xbench presentation now available for viewing and download

I've just uploaded the new version of my Xbench presentation, now updated with all the changes I made to it for the workshop I gave at the 5th CTA Conference, earlier this month. You can view a copy of the presentation as an online presentation by going to the Xbench page of this blog, or you can download a zipped copy of the presentation, from the same page.

Xbench currently offered at a 60% discount

Xbench, an excellent translation QA and terminology management tool, is currently on offer at a 60% discount (only Euro 39/year, instead of the regular 99/year). The special price offer will last until June 5.

You can find a through presentation of what Xbench is and how it can help you with terminology management and translation QA in the presentation you can see in another page of this same blog.

Some additional answers about Xbench

At the ATA Conference in Chicago I gave a presentation on how to use Xbench for terminology management and translation QA (you can see and download the presentation from the Xbench tab in this blog).

I believe that the presentation was well received, and that most people found the program very useful, but I was stumped by a few questions. I've now inquired with the Xbench developers at ApSIC, and they have provided the missing information:

Q. Is Xbench compatible with languages that use non-Roman alphabets (e.g., languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet)?
A. Yes, Xbench 3.0 uses Unicode, and is therefore compatible with other alphabets.

Q. Is Xbench compatible with double-byte languages?
A. Xbench's compatibility with double-byte languages is quite good (Japan is ApSIC's largest customer base after Spain, and Korea is quite big as well, China is the country with most active users and downloads), but there are some caveats. Xbench does not have heuristics in place to identify words within a DBCS strings, so some features that rely on whole words identification do not work well (for example if Chinese is the source language in a key terms check).

Q. Is Xbench compatible with bi-directional languages?
A. With Xbench 3.0 build 1266 (the current build as of now), compatibility is still poor, but ApSIC is actively working to improve bi-directional compatibility.

Q. What are the size limits for files loaded in Xbench?
A. For the 32-bit version, there is a limit of 2GB per file (and a maximum for all files loaded of 2 or 4 GB). For the 64-bit version the limit is the available memory and available swap disk. ApSIC recommends installing the 64-bit version if you have a 64-bit Windows. The 64-bit version used to have a limitation of 2GB per file (however, with an unlimited number of files), but now that limitation has been lifted, and files in excess of 2GB should work.

Please note that all these answers refer to version 3.0 of Xbench (the commercial version of the program).

Xbench 3.0: 50% discount until January 10th

Currently Xbench 3.0 is offered at a 50% discount (until January 10th). You can order it from Xbench.net.
This is an especially enticing offer for all users of SDL Studio 2014: Xbench is soon going to launch a Studio Add-in that permits, among other things, to launch a QA session of a Studio project from within Studio.
The Add-in also lets the users directly access the segments to correct (i.e., when selecting “Edit Source”, Xbench will open the translation in Studio and jump directly to the segment that needs editing).
The Add-in is currently available as a public beta from the download page of the Xbench website.

Special offer for Xbench

Until November 29, ApSIC is offering Xbench, its super-useful terminology and QA tool, at a 50% discount.

While the 2.9 version of Xbench is still free, I highly recommend upgrading to the professional version (3.0): it supports more file types and offers useful additional QA tests.

Above all, by paying for the pro version you help ApSIC actively support and further develop one of the very best utilities for translators.

You can purchase Xbench at www.xbench.net. For more information on how Xbench can be useful for translators, see my presentation (now slightly out of date).

A very special offer on QA Distiller

QA Distiller is a useful translation QA tool that lets you run a series of tests on various types of bilingual files, including Xliff (SDL Trados Studio and MemoQ), ttx (Tag Editor), and TMX.

QA Distiller offers a wider range of QA checks than Xbench or SDL's internal QA tools. When compared with Xbench, it does not have the very useful terminology functions that Xbench offers, but (besides the higher number of tests performed) it does have a useful advantage over Xbench: you can edit the incorrect segments directly from within QA Distiller.

On September 30 only, on the occasion of the International Translation Day, QA distiller is offered at a very special price: 100 Euro instead of the regular 1000 Euro (so a 90% discount).

The link for the special offer is www.qa-distiller.com/anniversary. Other useful links: a flash demo of the tool, the on-line help file (use Firefox to display the online help: I had problems displaying it in Chrome) and a series of FAQs.

Xbench adds support for SDL Trados Studio memories

If you have not updated to version 3 of Xbench, now there is yet another reason to do so: the most recent build of the tool (build 1136) adds support for SDL Trados Studio memories (.sdltm files), so, if you were accustomed to convert them to TMX format just to be able to search for terms in them using Xbench, you no longer need to do so. You can download Xbench from Xbench.net. If you download version 3, make sure to choose the correct version for your operating system: there are both a 32-bit and a 64-bit editions of the tool.

Xbench freeware version (2.9) is still available, and still useful, but ApSIC is clearly adding value to the new commercial version of their terminology management and translation QA tool.

If you need an introduction to Xbench, you can download one from this blog (click here): the intorduction is now a bit out of date, as I had written it for the previous version of the tool, but still touches most important functions.

New version of Xbench released

ApSIC has released today a new version (2.9) of Xbench.
As usual with Xbench, the slight increase in the version number does not mean slight improvements to the tool: the new version now directly supports SDL Studio 2009 bilingual files, PO (gettext) files, the use of multiple personal checklists during QA, and several other very useful improvement to a great free tool.
The new features are well documented in the updated help file; you can read a fuller list of the improved or new features in ApSIC’s blog.
Only downside… I’ll now have to update my Xbench presentation .

Forthcoming XBench presentation

Thursday, February 24, between 6 and 8:30 PM, I’ll give a presentation at the Colorado Translators Association on how to use XBench for terminology and translation QA.
This session is suitable for most language combinations and translation platforms (XBench is a Windows program; it works well together with a variety of different CAT tools) and technical levels.
The cost at the door is $10 for CTA members and $15 for non-members.
The presentation will be at the Lafayette Public Library, which is located at 775 W. Baseline Rd. in Lafayette:
http://www.cityoflafayette.com/SectionIndex.asp?SectionID=24
We will be in the lower level meeting room. The reservation is under Colorado Translators Association.
Here below is a brief description of the main points I’ll touch during the presentation.

***

XBench for terminology and QA

XBench is a Windows software tool for Terminology management and QA. It is developed by ApSic, a Spanish translation and localization company. It offers a wealth of useful features, at an unbeatable price: the program is freeware.

1 Terminology search and management

You can use XBench to search your glossaries, translation memories and other bilingual resources using simple or more powerful search functions.
In XBench you can include glossaries in multiple formats, various kinds of translation memories and several types of bilingual files.
XBench can be called from most application via simple (and configurable) keyboard shortcuts.
Finally, you can update on the fly the glossaries or other bilingual resources you use.

2 Quality Assurance

In addition to using XBench for terminology search and management, you can use it to check and improve the quality of your translation projects. If you use XBench for team projects, you can write your instructions directly within XBench, then distribute your XBench projects to your translators.

3 Saving projects

You can save each XBench project with the set of glossaries and settings 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 QA checks.

4 Documentation

 

5 Other tools to use with XBench

 

6 Future developments and support of other CAT tools

New build of ApSIC XBench available

ApSIC has just released a new build (#385) of XBench version 2.8. The new build fixes certain bugs (see the ApSIC blog for details).

Also newly available for dowlad from the ApSIC web site is a "Programmer's Reference for QA plug-ins", for those of us geeky enough to try our hands at (in ApSIC's words) "adding our own custom checks within the ApSIC Xbench QA workflow by programming a .dll file with a few pre-defined call-back functions".

See the ApSic blog for more details.

New version of XBench released

ApSic has just released a new version of XBench, their wonderful freeware terminology and translation QA tool. Among other improvements, now XBench permits to run regular expression searches, and has expanded the list of supported formats.

You can find a detailed description of the improved features in this post, from
Translator’s Shack, and you can download Xbench directly from the ApSic website.

(Hat tip to Roberto Savelli).

The limitations of project memories

A feature offered by most CAT tools is the possibility of creating project memories from larger memories. Typically, to create a project memory, the PM analyzes the files to translate against a master memory, and the CAT tool includes in the project memory only the segments that would be useful as fuzzy matches. The translator thus receives only the part of the translation memory that provides fuzzy matches and 100% matches.

There are several different reasons to do this: from the need to give the translator smaller files, to the requirement of not sending out a full translation memory because of the risk of disclosing some sensitive or proprietary information.

Whatever the reason for creating limited project memories, end customers, translation companies and project managers often overlook something important: a project memory is, by definition, an incomplete memory. This harms translation by limiting the usefulness of concordance searches. A term already translated in a segment that is not similar enough to other segments as to be a fuzzy match would not be found by a concordance search on a project memory, whereas that very segment would be found if the same search were conducted on the master memory. Not finding an already translated term because of the limitations of project memories affects the quality and consistency of the translation.

The customer or the translation company may still decide that security reasons outweigh the quality disadvantages of using project memories, but the choice should be deliberate, not something arrived at by chance out of not trusting the translator.

TM-Europe 2009

TM-Europe 2009 will be held on October 1st and 2nd in Warsaw. This year, the conference theme is Quality and Terminology Management, and Business Terms and Conditions for Translation and Localization Services.

In the 2008 TM-Global Translation and Localization Market Survey customers and providers alike reported that consistent high quality was the number one factor they take into account when managing processes or selecting a vendor, yet they had problems pin-pointing how quality is defined, measured and manifested.

The conference's schedule covers an interesting range of topics, among which:

• a workshop on translation and localization technology (Daniel Goldschmidt and Jost Zetsche)
• a discussion between customers and translation companies on how they do business together
• a panel and several presentations on terminology management
• a panel and presentation on quality management
• a presentation on different approaches to selling translation in the US and Europe (Dave Smith of Lingua-Lynx)
• a post-conference workshop on Selling Translation

TM-Europe is the annual conference of the Polish Association of Translation Agencies (PSBT) and is organised by PSBT and TM-Global.
For more information on the conference visit www.tm-europe.org.

Pro se translators

A leading legal blog is trying to get a translation into English of a Mexican law on fire arms .

The initial translation was done via machine, and then reviewed and modified by very inexpert humans.

They are soliciting

readers with good Spanish skills to provide suggestions for improvements in any or all of the 91 Articles of the Mexican firearms law. Please focus on improving the translation.

That is, they are trying to get a long legal translation on a delicate subject requiring well-polished professional skills by relying on the skills of a mob of untrained amateurs.

I'm afraid my suggestion was a bit off-topic:

You could pay a professional and get a high-quality translation. A good legal translator should complete the translation in about a week (plus another couple of days for editing, by a second professional). If you ask an experienced translator, the cost will be around $2500 to $3000.

Or you can do what you are doing: rely on untrained amateurs and software programs, get the translation for free or on the cheap, and end with the quality you are paying for.

I know that many assume that mere knowledge of a language is enough to translate. A professional translator, however, is the product of a rigorous university and postgraduate course of study, followed, at least for those who succeed in their job, by several years' professional experience.

Hoping that untrained amateurs and a software program can produce a reliable translation is as plausible as hoping that a pro se defendant and a software program can produce a useful legal brief.

Update

Seems to have sparked a bit of a debate over there. From one of the commenters:

I would also recommend against paying for a professional translation. In addition to being ridiculously expensive, there' just no reason for it, particularly when one is translating into one's native language and has a decent knowledge of the original language.

Trados: beware of wrong links

I have complained in the past of various problems Trados has with fuzzy matches. A particularly insidious one is the way Trados treats Internet URIs and other links.

For matching purposes, Trados processes URIs as if they were no different than any other text segment. By doing so, it considers two identical URIs (say, for example "http://aboutranslation.blogspot.com") as 100% matches (which is OK), but it also consider two different URLs (for example, "http://flickr.com" and "http://facebook.com") as fuzzy matches.

This is wrong and dangerous.

If the two URLs are as different as Flickr.com and Facebook.com, the problem may seem trivial: a glance suffices to see that they are different, and to copy over the correct URL.


But other addresses looks much more similar, and we can easily accept the wrong link while translating quickly:

Trados, in fact, consider these two links as 97% similar.

But there is no such a think as a "similar" link: it either gets you to the correct page or file, or not, and the way Trados matches them adds to the risk of inserting a wrong link in our translations.

Changing the internal logic to treat URLs differently would be trivial, but the Trados programmers (or, more likely, their managers), cannot be bothered to spend the necessary time for a simple improvement that would ensure higher quality.

Rush Jobs

Corinne McKay has an excellent post on "How to do an acceptable job on a rush job".

I would add a few things:

1. Set a rush rate with your customers, and demand it for rush jobs. When you set a rush rate, also remember to define what a rush job is for you, for example:
   

   "Rush/weekend rate: from +30% to +50% of base rate, depending on the project. Rush: projects that require the translation of more than 2,500 words, or the editing of more than 7,500 words, or the proofreading of more than 10,000 words in a day. Weekend: projects that require a substantial part of the work to be done on Saturday, Sunday or other holidays."

2. The importance of QA is greater on rush jobs - the quality is already going to be lower because of the time constraints, and the chance of making errors increase when we work faster. All the more reason to devote the necessary time to QA.


3. If you are translating with a CAT program, use a Translation QA tool (XBench is a good one, and is free; you can find a list of other QA tools in this post from Translation Quality Blog). A QA tool helps catching such errors as untranslated and inconsistent segments. The latter are particularly slippery: in the flux of fast translation you may accept a fuzzy match without changing the translation, but you do not notice that a small word completely changes the meaning of the sentence. A QA tools is also very useful to catch inconsistent numbers and measurements, and wrong terminology (if you have a key terms glossary).


4. Both in your source segments and in your target ones, search for those words which, by themselves, are liable to completely change the meaning of a sentence. It is just too easy to forget (or add) a short word such as "not" and completely change the meaning. After all, "Do not pay attention to him" and "Do pay attention to him" look remarkably similar, when you are in a hurry (especially when you see them as suggested matches in a CAT tool).

On a lighter note: if you can listen to music while translating, put on your earphones (to help your concentration), and some fast music. If you enjoy classical music, the William Tell overture helps establishing a fast typing rhythm. When you are in a tearing hurry, Khachaturian's Saber Dance from the ballet Gayaneh is just the ticket.

Results of Translation QA Tool Survey

Tamara Lukyanova and Julia Makoushina, of Palex Languages & Software, have concluded their work on the interesting survey of translation QA tools we announced here in August.

From August through September 2007 Palex performed a translation community survey to evaluate acceptance of translation quality assurance tools by the translation community, to define where such tools currently are, their advantages and disadvantages and to visualize their future capabilities and their role in the translation process. In parallel with the survey, Palex tested and benchmarked translation quality assurance tools currently available in the market.

Julia has recently given a presentation ("Translation Quality Assurance Tools: Current State and Future Approaches") at the 29th Translating and the Computer conference that took place on 29-30 November 2007 in London. In addition to the presentation (which can be downloaded from the previous link), Julia has also written a paper with the same title. Both paper and presentation are very interesting and well worth downloading (you can do so from the previous links) and reading.

Translation QA Tool Survey

Tamara Lukyanova and Julia Makoushina, of Palex Languages & Software, have set up an interesting survey about translation QA tools.

From 1 August through September 28, 2007 Palex will perform a translation community survey to evaluate acceptance of translation quality assurance tools by the translation community, to define where such tools currently are, their advantages and disadvantages and to visualize their future capabilities and role in translation process.

[...]

In parallel with the survey, Palex is going to test and benchmark translation quality assurance tools currently available in the market. The survey and benchmarking results will be presented at 29th Translating and the Computer conference that will tale place on 29-30 November 2007 in London, as well as in other industry publications.

According to Tamara and Julia, if you respond to the survey and provide your e-mail address, you will be able to receive the survey analysis as soon as the survey is closed.

Please feel free to point other colleagues to the questionnaire.

To access the survey, click here (or on the link at the beginning of this post).