presents Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA

presents Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA by Riccardo Schiaffino CTA 5 th Annual Conference Boulder, May 1 -3 2015 Presentation - © Riccardo Schiaffino, 2015 Xbench - © Ap. SIC, 2000 -2014

Introduction • What is Xbench? Xbench is a Windows software tool for: • Terminology management – to search and organize your glossaries, translation memories and bilingual files for specific projects. • Translation QA – to help improve and control the quality of your translations. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 2

Introduction • Why should you use Xbench? Terminology management • You can load a variety of file types • You can use the same terminology tool regardless of the program you use for translating (even if you don't use a translation memory tool) Translation QA • You can work in the same well-documented and configurable tool, regardless of the CAT tool you use Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 3

Introduction Two versions of Xbench: • 2. 9 – freeware • 3. 0 – commercial Both versions of Xbench can be downloaded from Ap. SIC's Web site: www. xbench. net Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 4

Terminology and search Xbench can search glossaries, translation memories and bilingual files in multiple formats. In the list on the following slide, the highlighted file formats are available only in version 3. 0. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 5

Supported file formats • • • • Tab-delimited Text File XLIFF File TMX Memory TBX/MARTIF Glossary TIPP File Trados Exported Memory Trados Exported Multiterm 5 Glossary Trados Multiterm Glossary Trados Tag. Editor File Trados Word File (works also for bilingual. docx files) Trados Studio File Trados Studio Memory Memo. Q File SDLX Memory STAR Transit 2. 6/XV/NXT Directory Tree Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA • • • • • PO File IBM TM/Open. TM 2 Dictionary IBM TM/Open. TM 2 Folder IBM TM/Open. TM 2 Exported Memory Wordfast Glossary Wordfast Pro TXML Deja. Vu X/Idiom File Deja. Vu X/Idiom Memory Logoport RTF File Microsoft Glossary Mac OS X Glossary Qt Linguist File Passolo Glossary Transifex Project Remote Xbench Server 6

Powerful searches Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 7

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 (Power Search, MS Word Wildcard and Regular Expressions). Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 8

Powerful searches • Simple search • Power search With the power search 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: for example, you can tell Xbench “display all segments where the source contains the word ‘agreement’ but the Italian target does not contain the word ‘accordo’ ”. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 9

Powerful searches Power search You can use Ctrl+P to search with more complex criteria. With power search you can find entries: • That contain two or more strings, but not necessarily next to each other (proximity search) • That do not contain a given string • That contain a string or another string • You can combine these conditions into more complex searches • You can use power search together with simple search, with the MS Word wildcard search, and with the regular expression search Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 10

Powerful searches A few power search examples • • • Two words (logical AND), not necessarily next to each other: Boulder Company finds Boulder Mining Company Segments that do not (logical NOT) contain a given word: If we have two strings in our text: Boulder Mining Company, and The famous Boulder Mining Company The power search Boulder Company –famous will exclude the second Segments that contain a word or (logical OR) another, different, word: The power search Denver or Pueblo will find both I went to Denver and I went to Pueblo Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 11

Powerful searches • MS Word wildcard search You can find a couple of detailed articles on the uses of MS Word wildcard search on my blog About Translation: • www. aboutranslation. com/2005/05/how-to-use-wildcard-and-format. html • www. aboutranslation. blogspot. com/2006/05/another-useful-wildcardsearch. html Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 12

Powerful searches • Regular expression search A regular expression (regex or regexp for short) is a special text string for describing a search pattern. You can think of regular expressions as wildcards on steroids. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 13

Powerful searches • Regular expressions Even a cursory treatment of regular expressions would take at least a full workshop all by itself – but we'll see now some examples of things you can accomplish using a regular expression search (and that would be difficult to do otherwise) Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 14

Powerful searches Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 15

Powerful searches A few regular expression examples . $ (in the source field) [: alphanum: ]$ (in target) finds all segments that end with a period in the source, but that do not end with a period in the translated segment (. |? |!|: |; )$ [: alphanum: ]$ finds all segments that end with a period, question mark, exclamation mark, colon or semicolon in the source, but not in the translation petrolifer(o|i) finds both petrolifero (singular) and petroliferi (plural) Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 16

Powerful searches A few regular expression resources www. regular-expressions. info A very comprehensive site that includes comprehensive tutorials on regular expression Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes, by Ben Forta A slim book that helps you learn how to use regular expressions for various purposes Regex Buddy (www. regexbuddy. com), a program that helps you to learn, create, understand, test, use and save regular expressions (recommended by Paul Filkin of SDL) Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 17

Powerful searches You are not limited to searching bilingual files: you could include in your searches a file where you recorded the answers you received from your customer to your queries. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 18

Powerful searches If you recorded them in an Excel file, for example. . . Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 19

Powerful searches. . . you can easily convert them to tab-delimited format. . . Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 20

Powerful searches. . . and load them in Xbench, where you can search them and use them during QA. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 21

Powerful searches You can also search Google and other Internet sites directly from Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 22

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. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 23

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. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 24

Easy editing You can easily edit 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, and *. sdlxliff files in SDL Trados Studio. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 25

Easy editing Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 26

Easy editing Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 27

Easy editing Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 28

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. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 29

Project settings Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 30

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. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 31

Project settings Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 32

Quality Assurance In addition to terminology search, you can use Xbench to check the quality of your translation projects. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 33

Quality Assurance Several types of QA checks NOTE: not all checks are available in the free version (2. 9). On the following pages, the checks that are available only in the commercial version are highlighted. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 34

Quality Assurance Basic • Untranslated segments • Inconsistency – In source – In target • Target same as source Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 35

Quality Assurance Content • Tag mismatch • Numeric mismatch • URL mismatch • Alphanumeric mismatch • Unpaired symbol • Unpaired quotes • Double blank • Repeated word Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA • Key Term mismatch – E. g. : terms defined in quotes in legal documents, if you have them in your Key Term glossary – Keep key term glossaries short, to avoid too many false positives • Camel. Case mismatch • ALL UPPERCASE mismatch 36

Quality Assurance Checklists • Project checklist • Personal checklist QA reports • In HTML, Excel, tab-delimited text or XML format Spell-checking • In various languages • The free version requires separate download of (free) additional dictionaries www. apsic. com/blog/? p=20 Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 37

Quality Assurance Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 38

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Quality Assurance Some of the searches and tests you can use with Xbench might be difficult to remember, but the program lets you save them for later reuse. Remember the regular expression we saw earlier in the presentation? It's easy to add it to your QA arsenal. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 40

Quality Assurance Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 41

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QA integration with Studio Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 47

QA integration with memo. Q Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 48

Other features: Format conversion 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 as a TMX translation memory (TMX is a flexible format supported by most CAT tools). Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 49

Other features: Format conversion Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 50

Other 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 to yourself. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 51

Other features: Programming 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 was developed this way. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 52

Program settings In addition to the settings available for each project, Xbench can be customized in various ways, for example, to use a specific text editor or select specific engines to perform Internet searches. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 53

Program settings Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 54

Program settings Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 55

Documentation 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. Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 56

The End Thank you for coming to this presentation! You can find the most updated version of this presentation on my blog About Translation (www. aboutranslation. com) Xbench for Terminology Management and Translation QA 57