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
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Introduction - 3
Terminology and search - 6
Supported file formats - 7
Powerful searches - 8
Keyboard shortcuts - 14
Easy editing - 16
Saving projects - 21
Project settings - 22
Convert between
formats - 25
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Quality assurance - 27
QA features: Instructions - 36
QA features: Add-ins - 37
Settings - 38
Documentation - 41
Future developments - 43
Additional tools - 45
Where to download this
presentation - 49
• The End - 50
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.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
4
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
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
5
Terminology and search
Xbench can search glossaries,
translation memories and bilingual
files in multiple formats.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
6
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
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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
7
Powerful searches
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
8
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).
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
9
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’”.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
10
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/howto-use-wildcard-and-format.html
• http://aboutranslation.blogspot.com/2006/05/anoth
er-useful-wildcard-search.html
• Regular expression search
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
11
Powerful searches
You can also search Google and other
Internet sites directly from within Xbench.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
12
Powerful searches
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
13
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.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
14
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.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
15
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.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
16
Easy editing
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
17
Easy editing
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
18
Easy editing
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
19
Easy editing
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
20
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.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
21
Projects settings
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
22
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.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
23
Project settings
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
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).
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
25
Convert between formats
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
26
Quality Assurance
In addition to terminology search,
you can use Xbench to check the
quality of your translation
projects.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
27
Quality Assurance
Several types of QA checks
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
28
Quality Assurance
Basic
• Untranslated
segments
• Inconsistency
–in source
–in target
• Target same as
source
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
Content
• Tag mismatch
• Numeric
mismatch
• Double blank
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
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
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
Quality Assurance
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
31
Quality Assurance
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
32
Quality Assurance
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
33
Quality Assurance
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
34
Quality Assurance
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
35
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.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
36
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.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
37
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.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
38
Settings
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
39
Settings
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
40
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".
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
41
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
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
42
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.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
43
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).
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
44
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
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
45
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.
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
46
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/
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
48
Where to download this
presentation
• You can find the most updated version of
this presentation on my blog,
About Translation.
(http://aboutranslation.blogspot.com)
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
49
The End
Thank you, for coming to
this presentation,
and a special thanks to
ApSIC for their wonderful
tool!
ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA
50