Instructions for QA Checks
Quality Assurance is one of the most important aspects in today’s translation and localization industry.
In Technografia we have always used QA tools for all our projects, and in this article I will show you how to use the most basic one, which also happens to be free! This tool is called ApSIC Xbench, and you can find it here:
http://www.apsic.com/en/products_xbench.html.
Lately it has been rediscovered by users all around the world. Personally, I have been using this lovely tool for more than 4 years, both as a Freelancer and as a Project Manager, and I can tell you from experience that it helpsa lot when it comes to multiple files, or translations with multiple filetypes. Furthermore, it has the amazing ability to export all the files imported for the QA to tmx format, which helps you create a TM from whatever file you are using.
In a future article, I will be showing you how to use that tool to do other interesting stuff as well, but let’s take it one step at a time.
First of all, some very basic tips on the translation process:
- Read carefully all the reference material provided for the project.
- Perform concordance searches in the TMs provided, for the majority of the terms in the document you are translating, depending on your client’s instructions. Even for seemingly plain expressions, like “for details, see…” etc. You cannot imagine how much time this will save you later, in the editing stage! Check the TMs globally for specific style of language used. Read random segments to see the style.
- Take notes while translating. It’s important to write down your choices in terminology and grammar or style, especially in huge projects with thousands and thousands of words, and more hours than you can imagine. And then you are ready to start!
After finishing the translation:
1) Perform a spell check on the document.
2) Perform one or more of the following Quality Assurance checks, depending on the type of files you are working with.
- QA (Verification) that is included in Trados TagEditor or Trados Studio.
- S-Tagger Verification
Idiom checks- SDLX Checks
- Across Checks
- Other checks
The following filetypes can be used with Apsic Xbench: |
|
| Tab-delimited text files | Star Transit 2.6/XV projects |
| XLIFF files | PO files |
| TMX memories | Wordfast glossaries |
| TBX/MARTIF glossaries | Wordfast memories |
| Exported Trados Workbench memories | Wordfast Pro TXML files |
| Exported Trados Multiterm glossaries (version 5 and XML) | Logoport RTF files |
| Trados TagEditor files | Idiom files |
| Trados Studio files | DejaVu files |
| Trados Word bilingual uncleaned files | Microsoft Glossaries (.csv files) |
| IBM TranslationManager folders, memories and dictionaries | Mac OS X Glossaries |
| OpenTM2 folders, memories and dictionaries | |
| SDLX .itd files | |
| SDLX memories | |
About the author:
Popie is an accomplished Localization Project Manager and Linguist, having worked in these fields for more than 18 years. Her main fields of expertise are Life Sciences, IT, Gaming and Consumer Electronics. She holds a BsC in Translation from the Ionian University, and various other diplomas ranging widely from Project Management, to IT, to First Aid. Her working languages are Greek, English, French, and Italian. Her favorite pastime is to do online research on various ways to solve translation and localization workflow problems, reading paranormal romances and mystery novels, and Pilates. She volunteers for the Red Cross and is a firm believer that if we all work together we can make a great difference in this world, combining our professional and our personal strengths. Last, but not least, she is the elected Secretary of PEEMPIP, and also a Mentor in the Mentoring Program of PEEMPIP, helping new translators.
