A tool for terminology and QA ApSIC Xbench presents... by Riccardo Schiaffino ATA 52nd Annual Conference Boston, October Presentation - © Riccardo Schiaffino, 2011 Xbench - © ApSIC,

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 2 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 - 25Convert between formats - 25 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 - 49Where to download this presentation - 49 The End - 50

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 3 Introduction What is Xbench?

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 4 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 5 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:

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 6 Terminology and search Xbench can search glossaries, translation memories and bilingual files in multiple formats.

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 7 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 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 8 Powerful searches

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 9 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 10 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 11 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: to-use-wildcard-and-format.htmlhttp://aboutranslation.blogspot.com/2005/05/how- to-use-wildcard-and-format.html er-useful-wildcard-search.htmlhttp://aboutranslation.blogspot.com/2006/05/anoth er-useful-wildcard-search.html Regular expression search

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 12 Powerful searches You can also search Google and other Internet sites directly from within Xbench.

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 13 Powerful searches

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 14 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 15 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 16 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 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 Easy editing

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 21 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 22 Projects settings

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 23 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 24 Project settings

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 25 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 26 Convert between formats

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 27 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 28 Quality Assurance Several types of QA checks

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 29 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 30 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 en/downloads.aspx en/downloads.aspx QA reports in HTML, Excel, tab-delimited text or XML format

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 Quality Assurance

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 36 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 37 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 38 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 39 Settings

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 40 Settings

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 41 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 42 Documentation 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: 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: Displaying help in Windows Vista or Windows 7

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 43 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 44 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 45 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:

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 46 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: 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 47 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.

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 48 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:

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 49 Where to download this presentation You can find the most updated version of this presentation on my blog, About Translation. (

ApSIC Xbench: a tool for terminology and QA 50 The End Thank you, for coming to this presentation, and a special thanks to ApSIC for their wonderful tool!