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Tool Kit * Quality Assurance and Translation Memory
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About the author: Jost Zetzsche is an ATA-certified English-to-German translator and a localization and translation consultant. He co-founded International Writers' Group on the Oregon coast and sends out a free, biweekly technical newsletter for translators (see www.internationalwriters.com/toolkit).
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We're at a point in the development of computer-assisted translation
tools when it's generally understood that translation memory tools are
not primarily time-saving applications; first and foremost they are
programs that allow translators to increase the quality and consistency
of their work. During the translation process this happens (or should
happen) with the use of terminology databases and translation memories
that give on-the-fly access to previously used translation or the
terminology that the client requires for the current project.
What CAT tools have not offered is the functionality to run quality
assurance processes beyond mere spell-checking after the translation is
finished.
However, in the recent releases of several tools this has fortunately
changed. Déjà Vu X (www.atril.com), SDLX (www.sdlx.com)
both offer an integrated method for running quality assurance checks
against selected terminology databases or glossaries. Every time the
term is translated in a different manner than in the terminology
databases or glossaries, it is flagged for review so that the project
manager can send the project back to the translator, or the translator
or editor can make the appropriate changes.
Trados does not offer this functionality as an integrated part of its
main application, but its newly marketed TermExtract
(www.transalationzone.com) offers a similar process with its QA Project
functionality.
Another less expensive possibility for Trados users is the third-party
application Quintilian by Terminology Matters (see
www.terminologymatters.com). Quintilian is an easily installed Word
plug-in that provides the following functionality:
— bilingual term check (manual check of whether a certain term was
translated consistently)
— bilingual glossary check (check of used terminology against a
glossary or a translation memory)
— single term and glossary term frequencies (how often certain terms
were used)
— various conversion methods (translation memories, MultiTerm files,
or Excel files into segmented Trados files or glossaries to Excel files)
— verification of tags (check whether the same tags are used in source
and targets — a step that can be done automatically in TagEditor as
well)
In general I like the tool. It offers nice possibilities to log any
inconsistencies into Excel files or highlight them in the actual file,
and it seems to be well thought-out with the large range of
possibilities that it offers.
There are a few caveats, though. It takes a very long time to verify
terminology against a decently large translation memory, and the
process actually resulted in errors at various times. I also don't like
the fact that it can only be used within Word, for TagEditor is
certainly the future of Trados. This can be circumvented with a free
tool you can download on www.terminologymatters.com to convert TTX
files so they can be opened within Word. (Note that I haven't tried
this and I would advise you to make a few trial runs before relying on
that conversion.)
Lastly, I prefer to be able to do terminology checks not just on single
files but on whole projects, and for that you'll have to either look at
TermExtract, Déjà Vu X, or SDLX.
© International Writers' Group. Excerpt from the Tool Kit
Newsletter, a biweekly newsletter for people in the translation
industry who want to get more out of their computers. For more
information see www.internationalwriters.com/toolkit
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