Chapter 2 - Transsoft
Contents
1. CHAPTER II TERMINOLOGY MANAGEMET TOOLS A GENERAL OVERVIEW 1 INTRODUCTION Having been presented with the basics of terminology management as an interdisciplinary science we should now consider terminology management from a pragmatic point of view Therefore the following chapter of the present thesis will focus on the presentation of terminology management tools their general features and functionalities First the users will be presented with the basic principles according to which the terminology management tools operate Since most terminology management tools have a number of common characteristics these will be discussed right after this introduction The differences between particular tools will be illustrated later in the testing procedure applied to the selected programs The features of the tools discussed shall be presented in the order in which the evaluation procedure will later be applied Thus first the readers will find an overview of the general software and hardware requirements of the tools including compatibility issues Next some details of the user interface shall be presented along with on screen display Later the issues of data management will be discussed followed by a thorough discussion of entry models and structures As a next step the issues of data retrieval and access will be detailed The next section shall be devoted to the systems responses to queries security of information data input terminol2. area e global search e restricted filtered e by segments containing a term or phrase if the translation memory module is active e capital vs small letter e punctuation and spacing variation e formatting and mark up features e search history e search log file recording all search procedures within a given work session e browsing alphabetical chronological and conceptual e access via any data category e g part of speech e query language e g SQL Some applications also allow for a combination of search criteria Most of them offer the function of global search and replace Finally since most CAT tools are designed as language independent applications they rarely recognize part of speech of a term especially if the term has the same form as a noun verb or adjective 3 8 System s responses The system s response if the search criteria are not met is another point worth considering Usually terminology management tools display a hitlist of near matches or a term not found message Some tools also log the unfound terms in a special file as well as keep a history of searches For translators working under time pressure getting the right term right away is extremely important Usually they cannot afford delays caused by using a 27 wrong term found on the hitlist Therefore it is vital that the hitlist distinguishes the fuzzy matches from exact matches In most terminology management tools fuz
3. as the possibility to modify the termbase contents Both these aspects are important for the smooth flow of translation work in any configuration of the terminology management systems With the increasing tendency to create more complex and automated translation environments terminology management collections are more frequently enabled for machine translation MT system integration The use of terminology collections in TM systems requires a specific entry structure and usually more linguistic information than is normally necessary for human translators who can simply rely on their linguistic competence and intuition Nowadays there is a tendency to create such terminology management tools which can be used both for translation memory and machine translation systems Also some developers of translation memory software provide MT systems as well e g SDL International SDLX or Star Transit Automatic terminology extraction is another significant development in translation technology therefore some forms of term extraction tools are either combined with the latest releases of CAT tools e g Atril DVX or offered as modules which need to be purchased separately e g Trados ExtraTerm and SDL International SDLX Word frequency programs alignment tools and concordancers are other examples of tools with which it is possible to combine terminology management tools However they frequently constitute part of the workbench environment and are reco
4. indirectly display the working file in a final format without the need to conduct the full export procedure In D j vu 3 s brightly colored background in the translation grid indicated different match status or damaged formatting e g formatting changes caused the whole field to be marked with a bright red background 23 Most terminology management tools have a default display layout at their disposal and a possibility to modify it and save as custom layouts for later use Other tools like D j vu X offer a number of fixed layouts characteristic of particular terminology collections or termbanks 3 5 Data management When describing terminology management tools we should definitely discuss the issue of language support The list of languages supported by the tool is most certainly the first piece information considered by a prospective user of the application Another question is whether all the languages supported by the tool can be used both as source and target languages In some cases also the support of language varieties is crucial Moreover it is sometimes essential that the tool supports bi directional languages and double byte character sets DBCS Another question of great importance is whether the terminological entries may only contain textual data Most terminology management tools are designed to contain textual data exclusively However recent innovations enabled the users to store multimedia fil
5. into the appropriate format Next the text can be exported for proofreading following which both termbase and translation memory should be updated The final export is the last step of the CAT supported translation process The above diagram prepared by the author illustrates this process A more specific description of the functionalities outlined in this process description will be provided in the next section 3 TERMINOLOGY MANAGEMENT TOOLS FUNCTIONALITIES 3 1 Software and hardware requirements Most terminology management tools are designed for use on PC computers However they have specific hardware requirements that need to be met for the software to be fully functional Therefore bearing in mind the high prices of terminology management tools it is necessary to check whether a computer intended for installation of this software fulfills the requirements of hard disc space RAM size and processor type Hardware requirements additionally include such criteria as minimum screen resolution or graphics card Finally terminology management tools like most other contemporary software require such peripheral devices as mouse or trackball CD ROM printer monitor and in the case of multi user versions also a network card If the tool comes also as a client server application it is necessary to have a modem Apart from hardware concerns it is essential to know what additional software is required so that the programs could run success
6. should realize that the alignment function primarily belongs to the translation memory modules or is offered as a separate tool Therefore alignment tools should not be looked at as part of terminology management modules Hence they fall out of the scope of the present project 29 3 11 Validation control Terminology databases more often than not are populated automatically through external termbase import Automatic import of terminology involves limited control of the data entered during the process Therefore some measures of control can be set before import For instance using most tools the translator may decide whether to overwrite merge or import as duplicate the entries of the same term Automatic terminology validation usually refers to the function which checks the database for duplicate entries However when the terminology database is used in the translation memory mode validation also refers to confirming whether a given source term has always been rendered identically in the target language The consistency checks are usually run at the end of translation projects and are part of quality assurance functionalities offered by terminology management tools Another control measure is spellchecking It is extremely important to be able to spell check the contents of a termbase for a number of reasons First of all a misspelled access term may cause the term not to be retrieved from the termbase although the translat
7. text is directed right to left while numbers left to right 24 least twenty languages for a single termbase The users may switch the target and source languages freely and sort the terms according to a particular language selected as source Terminology management tools now offer a number of statistical data including termbase size the number of entries and the number of perfect and fuzzy matches However most statistical analysis is carried out by the translation memory module and therefore should not be included in the description devoted primarily to terminology management modules What these modules do offer are basic quality management functionalities such as warning about duplicate entries project status spellchecking and terminology validation In one of the programs tested it is possible to restrict the access to the project or termbase by setting up a password Another operation which can definitely improve the functioning of the termbase is data compression Most tools also record the time and name of the user who introduced any changes in the termbase Unfortunately none of the tools presented in this thesis creates backup files automatically Nonetheless all of them support long filenames which was not the case with the earlier versions Years of gaining experience and perfecting the tools subject to study in this project make them stable and reliable However problems may occur with each of them and the tools sign
8. the translation They can also be fed with the existing terminology collections by way of import The difference between a regular machine readable dictionary and a TMS is that terminology management tools allow not only for the creation of custom dictionaries with a user definable entry structure but also that these tools offer a number of automated functions e g automatic term recognition and insertion quality checks etc The typical workflow for translators using workbench tools consists of a number of phases each involving both TM and TMS modules The first phase preparation consists in preparing all the modules for a given translation project It may require importing external translation memories and terminology collections into respective modules and depending on the tool also importing the SL files into the project Depending on the resources provided by the client it is also possible to create translation memories and automatic terminology extraction by way of alignment Once the data is imported to the modules translation memory and termbase should be associated with the project Pretranslation is the next step This function divides the source file into segments and searches through the termbase and translation memory looking for the matching terms and segments Once the analysis is done and the target segments have been filled with what was found in the databases the actual translation may begin During translation the termi
9. ace in all modules This increases the speed of getting familiar with the tool WaBmer 2003 Also the relative simplicity of SDLX 2004 as compared to the other ones is probably one of its greatest advantages The color coding keeps the users informed about the status match level of each cell in the project Database navigation facilities TermBase minibrowser the saving of search filter and settings internal hyperlinks contribute greatly to the ease and efficiency of search procedures The extensive list of supported file types including among others Trados export format is also an advantage for the users who can focus on translation tasks without having to learn how to use all the file formats It also rids the users of the need to purchase all the expensive software The list of languages supported by the tool which is now fully Unicode compliant is impressive and includes BDCS and bi directional languages 4 3 2 DISADVANTAGES One of the disadvantages of the tool is the inconvenience of the new termbase field definition e g no multiple selections are allowed when selecting values from picklists Another problem is the fact that no graphic or other multimedia files can be entered in the termbase fields Even though MS Word is probably the most popular computer software the fact that it is required in order to translate the doc files in SDLX 2004 may be a problem to those who rely on other word processors Also the fact th
10. al them to the user by showing error messages 3 6 Entry model and structure There are three possible entry models free fixed or quasi free The difference between them is primarily in what margin for manipulation is left to the user In fixed record structure the user can only select one of the available record templates without the possibility to modify it Using this record structure we may decide to only to omit certain fields The scope of manipulation is greater in the case of quasi free record structure which can be defined as a fixed record structure with one or several user definable fields Finally the free record structure means that the record structure can be defined by the user entirely including also field naming and arrangement When designing a free record structure the users are usually allowed to create picklists of values for the different fields Most commonly these include subject customer project as well as grammatical information or usage labels Unfortunately different tools use different field naming conventions as do large termbanks In the case of some terminology collections it is crucial to determine whether there are some limitations as to the length of each field The tools selected for analysis in this 1 Some tools rely on word processors to conduct spellchecking other have their own dictionaries against which the spell check is run 25 project theoretically do not impose any such limit
11. at in order to receive a base form of a given term we need to activate fuzzy search right truncation or wildcard search For the users of English it is in turn important to know whether the tool recognizes spelling variants e g colour vs color or compound spelling differences e g hyphenated vs non hyphenated variants 3 9 Input of information The input of information into a termbase has a number of aspects One of the most important ones is whether it is possible to format characters and paragraphs in any way It is essential in the case of languages where diacritics must be used Unfortunately not all fonts offer diacritical characters Hence it may sometimes be necessary to change the source text font to another for the target language A convenient terminology management tool should also offer a possibility to easily edit both new and existing entries Some of the simplest editing functions except for manual 28 keying in the data is copying pasting dragging and dropping deleting redoing undoing inserting and changing the layout search and replace These functions are offered by most contemporary applications including terminology management tools 3 10 Terminology extraction Terminology extraction can be defined as an automatic collection of terminology from a mono or bilingual corpus of texts Such functionality can highly speed up the completion of pre translation tasks which include terminology work s
12. at there are no external dictionaries can be associated may be perceived as a disadvantage Another difficulty is that automatic search cannot be performed simultaneously in translation memory and terminology database 5 CONCLUSION Following the description of a workbench supported translation process this chapter contained a detailed presentation of the functionalities which terminology management tools 40 offer as well as some aspects influencing their usefulness and popularity among translators The last section contained remarks on what are some of the most significant advantages and disadvantages of the sample tools However explanatory such a description may be it remains general and thus of little significance for translators linguists and any parties interested in the subject if not supported by specific examples In a nutshell at this stage the readers are not given enough information to determine whether these tools may be of assistance in their particular working conditions Also the scientific implications of this type of presentation are scarce Hence it is necessary to immerse in the analysis more deeply testing the tools separately against objective criteria 41
13. ations However the longer the field the more difficult it may be to see the content of the whole field or record Another vital aspect especially in terms of translation work is the number of fields for which entry is obligatory in order to create a valid record The tools discussed here require only the term or lemma However it is possible to define other fields for which entry is necessary in order to save the record This operation may contribute to an increased quality of the terminology collection even though it may significantly lengthen the process of populating the termbase All tools under scrutiny offer the possibility to create cross references across the records Most often they are created manually and can be found either within a text field or in a separate field Unfortunately it is not yet possible to create links to external resources within the terminological records of the tools discussed In addition to considering the limitations of the record field length also the question of the record size should be answered In none of the tools discussed is there any explicit limitation however it should be borne in mind that the larger the records the slower the data retrieval process may become It should also be remembered that creating small records enables the storage of much larger data collections in one file without hampering the functioning of the tool Hence the size of the records should be kept close to the bare minimum in o
14. by the user Thanks to this functionality the frequency count of each term and phrase identified is provided In this way the translator receives a concordance and word frequency analysis Batch deleting the unnecessary phrases and translating the remaining core terminology of the project the user may either leave the lexicon for reference as a separate source or feed its contents to the termbase immediately Having considered the vast possibilities of combining the terminology management tools with other applications in order to support translators in as many aspects of their work as possible we should realize that those integrated applications are indeed powerful 3 14 Fonts and character sets Several words should be devoted to the fonts and character sets in the context of terminology management applications Most terminology management tools support the default Windows fonts and character sets Even though problems with certain special characters are reported by the users the support of diacritical characters and DBCS is increasingly satisfactory given the fact that the latest releases of the CAT tools are Unicode compliant It is important to determine whether the special characters and fonts supported by terminology management tools are also supported by the other modules and functionalities for instance whether it is possible to transfer the special characters among different application windows e g between the context and definition f
15. en von Webseiten Die arn haufigsten verwendeten Browser sind Microsoft eae 7 ji Internet Explorer und Netscape Navigator Benutzer EA Hit List Favourites M Project PAETA owe lt a Figure 1 Multiterm iX interface sample termbase provided with the application File Navigato Source Language Related Terms ile Navigator fem Polish fal sf 3 project journey a Lexicon Locate Term Target Language B Jenalish United States 4 Edt Remove Meroe AllRows SQL Add Edit Remove Related Terms Translation Oil iodine values rtf slini Desinwski Date 2004 04 05 13 31 04 zbiornik paliwa User Kinga Attributes Part of Speech Noun Part of Speech Noun Gender Neutral Gender Neutral Number Singular Number Singular Subject 552 Petrology Petrogra Subject 552 Petrology Petrography Client 002 Fireprotection Client 002 Fireprotection Oil iodine values rtF 4 Lexicon ki C Documents and Settings Kinga Pulpit Kinga Mgr praca mgr elementy TDB_journey dvtdb laas ASr APr ASd ACh OVR 25 0 24 16 575 Last modified by Kinga 2004 04 06 17 11 01 21 Figure 2 D ja vu X interface termbase created for the purpose of this project As we can see even though the content of termbases may be identical it will be displayed in a different way in the different applications Some tools display the termbase contents in the form of a grid occupy
16. es including images audio and video files in Multiterm iX termbases One other issue of utmost importance is the support of different file formats In modern translation business it is difficult to imagine working on text files only Translators are no longer surprised to receive spreadsheet or power point files to be returned translated in the original format The modern CAT tools usually support a number of data formats including not only the above mentioned ones but also database files help contents a number of DTP formats java properties html sgml xml and other SDLX 2004 also offers a solution for the formats unsupported by the tool itself It is possible to copy the text to the clipboard and translate the clipboard contents in the program One important development is that there are no limits to the number of termbases which can be created by the user The only limitation can be the size of the hard disc It is often possible to consult a number of termbases at a time however the number is not great about five termbases Usually also the lookup order can be set up by the user Furthermore the number of languages of the termbase can be greater than just one source and one target language The tools subject to testing within this project offer a possibility of selecting at 1 Bi directional languages typical of the Middle East are characterized by the bi dierctionality of the different elements of the text e g in Arabic the
17. est illustrate the usual workflow and basic functionalities of a given tool Sometimes also sample files or termbases are provided along the tutorials Unfortunately the documentation is rarely available in many languages thus it is unavailable to those who do not know English Furthermore documentation rarely covers troubleshooting In order to receive assistance in solving problems the users usually register 22 in a mailing list The listmates share the solutions and workarounds they came up with over the years of experience with the tools This kind of help is extremely important even though there is usually a possibility to contact the manufacturer and report the problems It may also be significant whether the information on the internal workings of the tools their architecture is made available In most cases the codes of a tool are protected by the manufacturers and very little information is given to the users in order to prevent dishonest use of such information by competitors or software piracy The way in which the user communicates with the program is by far the most significant characteristic of the interface Contemporary applications have a wide array of available means of communication These include typed commands function keys traditional menus pull down and pop up menus dialog boxes icons clickable buttons and wizards All these elements can be used separately or combined e g the same task may be c
18. f the first things verified by the purchaser in most cases it does not cause major problems The support of the operating systems and the recommended versions are clearly indicated in the documentation Another issue is the compatibility of the different versions of the tool It is frequently so that the new versions do not support the format of the early versions of the same software It is therefore an extremely important criterion in making up one s mind whether to upgrade the tool or not However if there is no back compatibility between the versions the new version of a program is usually equipped with a functionality which enables converting the files created in the old format into the new one e g in the case of Multiterm 7X a module called MultitermConvert easily converts the files created in MultiTerm 5 x into Multiterm iX format D ja vu X in turn has a similar functionality in the menu under Tools gt Convert Finally if an old terminology database cannot be used in a new version of the program it is often possible to export the contents of the termbase into an intermediary format text or spreadsheet and import into the native format of the new version of the tool 3 3 User interface User interface is the means by which the user can communicate with the computer and its applications Usually it involves such elements as menus typed commands function keys or mouse clicks The first generation of interfaces had the inherent limitat
19. fully Before installing any of the terminology management tools the support of the operating system installed on the computer must be confirmed It is also worth knowing if the program is multi user enabled In most cases terminology management tools can be bought in free lance versions designed for a single user and network versions for translation agencies A very important issue is multitasking All modern operating systems applying graphic user interface GUI ensure full multitasking however it is worth checking whether the tool itself allows for a number of processes to be run simultaneously As Feder explains A user might find it necessary to run two types of searches at the same time or work on translating a given segment and look for occurrence of similar phrases Feder 2001 139 19 Another question of major concern is what additional software is required for the tool to run successfully Most terminology management applications require MS Word MS Excel and MS PowerPoint to be installed in order to be in full working order In some cases also MS Internet Explorer is required 3 2 Compatibility The term compatibility refers to two major issues It denotes the compatibility of the software with the operating system and other additional applications required on the one hand and between the different versions of the same tool on the other Since compatibility of the tool with the operating system is probably one o
20. gnized as separate functions rather than tools Word frequency programs or functionalities allow translators to establish whether a given project is suitable for the use of CAT tools in that it analyses the repeatability of terminology and certain phrases in the source text Also they allow for the better calculation of the actual terminology and translation work that needs to done providing a thorough basis for the correct and fair billing of the client Alignment tools in turn allow for efficient semi automatic terminology extraction Some versions of CAT tools e g DV3 allow for automatic population of the termbase with the term pairs identified as a result of alignment Finally concordancing programs allow for the indexing key word identification and analysis identification of phrases and fixed expressions and comparison between the different usages of the terms Just as in the case of alignment tools which are frequently provided with translation memory modules many workbenches have the concordance search functionality e g Trados Translator s Workbench Another solution which to a large extent addresses the needs solved by the above mentioned tools is the Lexicon function in DVX Lexicon is created separately for each translation project Once 34 the import of files is completed the project lexicon should be created which lists all the words of the project listed separately and in the context of the number of words set
21. ield or between the WP and the termbase Another significant aspect is whether the specific language support means the support of this language s sorting order 3 15 Maintenance operations Termbase maintenance operations include saving the database updating the index termbase compression and repair generation of backup files Updating the termbase index is an operation necessary for terminology retrieval to be efficient and up to date In the earlier generation of terminology management programs this had to be done manually however in the latest releases e g Trados Multiterm Workstation this task is performed automatically Termbase compression is indispensable to speed up the search process and the efficiency of term retrieval The applications discussed in this thesis can also retrieve or repair corrupt termbases protecting in this way the valuable terminology collections from destruction Saving the backup files should be a regular procedure of any translator working with CAT 33 tools It may turn out a useful routine operation not only in the case of application or operating system failure or irreversible damage of a termbase but also when unwanted changes have been made to the termbase content and the valid entries have been altered 3 16 Commercial aspects Finally the commercial aspects of terminology management tools are the decisive factor as far as the presence of the applications on the translation market i
22. ince the terminology lists created in the process of automatic extraction can be quickly imported into a termbase Unfortunately efficient terminology extraction tools usually do not go along terminology management modules or workbench packages One exception is the lexicon function in D j vu which is a very simple but efficient terminology extraction tool The manufacturers of the other tools discussed do provide terminology extraction tools however they need to be purchased separately Terminology extraction form a bilingual corpus is probably the most desired function of a term extraction tool It is even more attractive due to the fact that the bilingual corpus can be created by the users themselves through alignment Although alignment is more frequently applied for creating translation memories the corpus created through this process can also be used for terminology extraction As Feder defines it Alignment refers to turning two texts into a TM database file and it basically consists in properly storing SL segments and the corresponding TL segments as pairs translation units For the alignment to be executed properly first the SL text and its translation must be segmented i e divided into translation segments Segmentation is also very important when working with a new TM file i e inputting only the SL text and only subsequently producing its translation Feder 2001 163 Bearing this definition in mind we
23. ing one of the several panes e g DVX while others SDL TermBase C Documents and Settings Wtasciciel Moje dokumenty Praca magisterska k BAX TermBase Edit Concept View Tools Help D G amp m No Filters Q h SEX ME ela gt gt 2 Polish rzepak x Definition jednoroczna ro lina oleista b d ca jedn z odmian kapusty E Synonyms Related Items English United States canola x Synonyms E Related Items e E English Britain rape E x ra Ready Figure 3 SDLX 2004 termbase created for the purposes of this thesis like Multiterm 7X and SDLX display the entries in the form of text files indicating fields with colors indentations and font sizes The interface usually allows a number of primitive actions in order to achieve the same effect e g a new entry can be created either by clicking a button selecting the function from a menu or by striking a hotkey Another feature is the dialog language i e the language in which all the menus commands and messages are displayed In most cases several dialog languages are available and can be switched while working with the tool Further elements of the interface are the forms of help available to the user In terminology management tools usually a user manual or getting started manual are provided with the software or can be downloaded from the manufacturer s webpage Other forms are tutorials and demos which can b
24. ions e g hindering the simultaneous accessibility of termbase entries for editing and reference Fontenelle amp Mergen 1998 Nowadays virtually all personal computers are equipped with the GUI consisting of windows panes bars buttons icons and menus The same is true for the modem terminology management tools However there are sometimes significant Native format the file format characteristic to a given terminology management or translation memory tool EAGLES 1995 141 20 differences between the applications in the way the program communicates with the user and displays data Figure 1 represents the interface of Multiterm iX while Figure 2 shows the interface of DVX Termbase Project Entry Search View Help ig v Engish iv D German iv E E MutiTem Classic x Al xi Active Server Pages Entry number 4 ASP Subject General Windows browser character English Eat Term browser client computer com Type Short form Definition see Web browser Ll Term Web browser Local Sample Type Full form Definition Application used for viewing Web pages The most common browser applications are Microsoft Internet m F 3 Explorer and Netscape Navigator With a Web Project Untitled xdp cower users can i ay online databases for Local Sample example online phone books and online termbases Component Object Model German Term Browser Definition Software zum Betracht
25. nology database can be searched and the terminological records can be consulted in order to make the best possible choice New terms can be added throughout the whole process either by way of automatic sending the term pairs to the termbase or by manual data entry Also translation memory is updated during translation Finally all kinds of quality checks are performed including spell checking numbers and terminology checks i e whether all instances of a 7 Some applications require importing the SL file into the application The translation process is then carried out in the native format of the tool Other applications act as macros associated with word processors and do not require import but operate directly on the original file 17 existing translation memories source existin files glossaries import import import termbase TDB translation translation memory roject TM proj oiite Pretranslation TM search Automatic and display search and of matching ae of segments terms found Translation Quality check terminology numbers spell check 1 Export for proofreading Implementing corrections updating translation memory and termbase Diagram 1 Usual workflow model in translation using TM and TMS modules 18 given SL term have been translated in the same way into TL and all numbers have been converted
26. nt functionality unfortunately not implemented in all the applications discussed is that several data collections should be available for reference at the same time without the need to merge them into a single termbase Finally just as in the case of the stand alone termbase modules the logging of the unfound terms is a desirable functionality Another possible step in termbase module integration is the integration with translation memories i e creating the so called workbenches As it has been mentioned combining the terminology management tools with other modules in particular translation memories enables certain functions which are unavailable in the standalone mode Therefore for instance connecting Trados Translator s Workbench with Multiterm iX enables automatic term recognition Another Workbench function allows for the automatic replacement of the terms found in the termbase Some tools allow the insertion of a single term identified at a time while others replace all the terms found in one operation All the translation memory tools are tailored to the specific workflow translators usually follow Therefore it is possible to add term pairs to the termbase while actually translating in the workbench This procedure is usually of a summary nature in contrast to the process applied when manually creating a new termbase from scratch Most rapid entry options create terminological entries containing only the target and source terms Howe
27. ogy extraction validation and control Also the issues of data exchange import and export will be presented briefly Finally the discussion will focus on the interaction of the terminology management tools with other applications such as word processors translation memories and other Also some attention will be devoted to fonts and character sets and maintenance operations Commercial aspects of the tools under investigation will be discussed as the last step of the presentation Before applying the evaluation procedure the author decided to remark upon the advantages and some possible limitations of the particular functionalities and solutions A long term membership of the mailing lists of users of the tools later subject to evaluation helped the author to monitor the problems and inconveniences the professional users face as well as acquire a broader understanding of the tools advantages The comments resulting from this research seem to be a good complement to the above presentation and as such will 16 constitute a good background for conducting the evaluation procedure in chapter IV of the present thesis 2 TERMINOLOGY MANAGEMENT TOOLS IN THE TRANSLATION PROCESS Terminology management tools act as specialist machine readable dictionaries equipped with a number of additional functionalities The termbases may be populated manually by the translators either at the beginning of a project or while actually performing
28. ological entry 30 applications The most common import and export formats are text and spreadsheet formats Recently also the XML format has been gaining significance Import and export are automatic processes which can save a lot of time and unproductive mouse clicking and typing However it should be borne in mind that there are a number of criteria which should be user definable so that the imported data complied with the existing termbase definition and contents For instance it must be possible to set the same languages as target and source Also the in born limitations of exchange formats must be considered e g the fact that while using MS Excel we may only use the first sheet and there must not be any empty columns between the target and source or other field categories Another aspect is the record structure Albeit importing termbase files in the native format does not pose much difficulty the situation with non native formats might turn out risky Not only can the import process be unsuccessful but it may also bear serious consequences for the termbase which was to be populated with a new terminology collection Therefore data designed for import should be well prepared and termbase parameters set very carefully Also back ups of all files involved in the export import process should be saved to other directories on another disc or CD if possible Export on the other hand is a process which sends the contents of the
29. ompleted by striking a hotkey selecting the function from a menu or clicking a button In most terminology management tools it is possible to manipulate the taskbars menus as well as the size and arrangement of the different panes Also the color coding of different fields in termbanks and glossaries as well as translation memories can be customized It is vital for instance if the user finds it difficult to read the text from a brightly colored background which was the case in the earlier versions of D ja vu 3 4 On screen display On screen display is usually definable by the user Using different techniques in different programs the users may easily resize and rearrange the taskbars and windows Also the coloring of the field status indications can be customized All the changes made by the user in the default display are usually clearly visible or are indicated with a tick on the menus and can be easily reset to default if needed In some applications the contents are displayed in the what you get is what you see WYGIWYS manner meaning that the users can see the effects of their work in the way it will look in the target format However in many CAT tools a translation grid is used instead which shows both the source and target language together in a tabular form Ass nat Falcone 2000 In order to see the final effect though it is sometimes possible to activate a preview function also referred to as external view which can
30. on allows for an automatic lookup of terminology found in the source file Entering new terms into the termbase is usually possible Moreover the procedure for entry creation from within a word processor is usually reduced to the bare minimum i e entering the source and target language term Other functionalities available in this environment include direct copying and pasting both from WP into the termbase and in the opposite direction as well as automatic replacement of the terms found Since new information may be found while working with a text it should be possible to modify the 3 Speech recognition systems are in this context understood as tools which allow the user to dictate the text instead of typing it According to the members of CAT software mailing lists the combination of these systems with CAT tools highly increases the translation productivity The translation dictated instead of typed has also this advantage that it is usually of better quality as the user can hear the translated segment as a whole Consequently the translator produces utterances which are more stylistically correct It is important to know that using a speech recognition system is not mutually exclusive with using other input devices keyboard mouse trackball etc so the functions activated by a single keystroke instead of uttering several words are still active 32 existing entries to enter the new findings in the WP mode Another importa
31. or or terminologist did spend time establishing an equivalent target language term What is even worse spelling errors may cause the misspelled term to be inserted in the target language text The fact that specialist terms usually are not included in the spell checker s dictionary makes the detection of spelling errors which are inexcusable even more difficult and time consuming 3 12 Exchange of information The ease of exchange of termbase contents has become a must in the globalizing translation market Therefore it is essential that terminology management tools produce termbases whose contents can be exchanged either between users or applications The easiest form of data exchange is printing The applications presented in this thesis either support printing directly e g Multiterm iX has a print this entry function or require a regular export procedure to a text or spreadsheet format which can later be printed D j vu X and SDLX 2004 The fact that the user may decide to export only certain data for printing e g only terms and their translations or only a pair of languages matters as well Nevertheless the most indispensable feature of modern terminology management tools is the import export functionality It allows for a quick conversion of the native formats of a given tool into more universal ones for the ease of exchange between users and 12 Access term is any search string which can lead the user to a given termin
32. plication Freelance translators do not have access to network termbases so it is extremely important that their terminology can now be stored in the format which facilitates the ease and speed of data exchange 36 According to Nogueira Trados works and works well mainly in the translation of Microsoft Word documents which is what many of us translate all the time Nogueira 2002 Effective translation of texts is what the majority of translators aim at and a good tool able to cooperate seamlessly with the most frequent file formats is hard to overestimate Finally MultiTerm fulfills its role as a source of consistent terminology The fuzzy matching option allows for the recognition of terms even when they are used in a different grammatical case than in the termbase This is of utmost importance when translating from inflectional languages such as Polish 4 1 2 DISADVANTAGES Having browsed through the 325 pages of the MultiTerm User s Manual any translator has the right to feel overwhelmed The flexibility of the tool the staggering number of available settings and customizable functions in every operation might turn disadvantageous One of the professional users of CAT programs aptly expresses the frustration that accompanies translators when using heavily customizable applications DV and Trados offer you a lot of various windows and functions that may be useful to computer wizards but scare away the majorit
33. rder to retain high speed of information retrieval Again there are no limitations to the number of terminological entries except for hard disc size 3 7 Retrieval of information The principal purpose of terminology management tools is to provide quick access to terminological data Therefore it is important that they provide a number of efficient search options Exact match option is very often insufficient It is especially true for highly inflectional languages such as Polish where a given term would have to be entered into the termbase in all cases numbers and genders in order to be found by the tool when working with a text or when automatic term recognition is activated Therefore most tools also offer e partial match e right truncation omission of the final part of the term in the search string e wild card search replacing an unknown character or characters with an asterisk or a question mark e free text search searching all the text fields of the termbase in order to find the search string 26 e fuzzy search listing all the nearest matches to the search string e search via record translation unit number e KWIC key word in context e Boolean operators operators signifying logical connections AND OR NOT e relational operators gt lt lt 4 e morphological suffixes prefixes inflectional endings e search by synonym cross reference internal external link e proximity e subject
34. s concerned These aspects include the developer and distributor of the tool and strongly affect the tool s position and perception Another crucial issue is the pricing which unfortunately is nowadays the key deterrent for the freelance translators However other aspects such as the frequency of issuing updates and upgrades tool availability on the domestic market the number of users also the renowned ones determine the popularity of a given terminology management tool among translators 4 TERMINOLOGY MANAGEMET TOOLS DISADVANTAGES AND PROBLEMS COMPARED WITH THE BENEFITS As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter this section shall be devoted to presenting the author s remarks concerning the advantages and disadvantages of the sample applications tested in this project For the sake of convenience the comments are broken down to the separate tools and split into advantages and disadvantages 4 1 MULTITERM 4 1 1 ADVANTAGES One of the greatest advantages of Trados Multiterm 7X is its self explanatory Windows based interface The Multiterm iX Wizards guide the users through all the procedures step by step The user friendly design of the tool is definitely encouraging for a novice translator or a person who only starts working with it It is also worth mentioning that Multiterm iX is rather fast to set up and begin the actual work One other undeniable advantage is that the XML format support has been introduced into the ap
35. ssue related to display is the fact that in AutoSearch mode the application does not display term definitions which may be a serious drawback if the termbase contains multiple translations of the same terms e g client specific terminology Another difficulty is the reliability of the source file analysis Some discrepancies have been reported between the word count performed on the same document by DVX and Trados Workbench however it is difficult to attribute the problem to either application One issue which can certainly be considered a disadvantage is that the once existing function of the automatic feeding of the termbase with the term pairs collected during alignment has been removed in the DVX version The D j Vu listmates share the problems they encounter while installing the new upgrades or the new version of the program DVX The diversity of complaints regarding DVX ranges from installation problems to slow conversion of older DV databases to file import problems Some of the users also report OS compatibility problems This diversity is highly indicative of the complexity of the software 14 Atril s support team promised to re introduce this function in one of the upcoming builds S OS operating system 39 4 3 SDLX 4 3 1 ADVANTAGES Finally several comments will be devoted to the SDLX 2004 translation suite One undoubted advantage of this tool is that there is a similar user interf
36. t where the members share their problems and try to work out the solutions together Even passive membership of the mailing list can turn advantageous for the beginners as they may learn from the experienced translators and users with an impressive expertise concerning the program and its numerous versions All these features and many others which had to be omitted due to the inherent limitations of the theses of this type contribute significantly to the improvement of speed and efficiency of translators without affecting the quality of their output 38 4 2 2 DISADVANTAGES Being convinced of the many advantages the tool has we should not turn a blind eye to the imperfections it has as well As has been mentioned above D ja Vu as a whole discourages novices in translation and inexperienced computer users with its complexity Gerasimov 2001 We should bear in mind the sad truth that still not many of the linguists who most frequently become translators reach advanced levels of computer literacy Moreover even a careful study of the 534 page long User s Guide usually turns out insufficient for a beginner It is not perhaps surprising that using DVX with the most popular languages causes fewer problems than in the case of minority languages The users who work with minority languages e g Japanese report display problems Also diacritical letters e g the Polish z turn out to cause some problems A slightly different i
37. termbase into an external format This process should also be preceded by a careful definition of the parameters and properties of the export files The users should take into account the purpose of the procedure and the destined use of the exported termbase To help decide what data and in what form should be exported or imported the software engineers designed export and import wizards which guide the user through subsequent steps prompting for selection of necessary criteria file names and locations As has been mentioned the most widespread termbase exchange formats include text formats most common are delimited text files such as comma separated values csv or tab delimited text files spreadsheet formats MS Excel and XML A fairly new exchange format TBX Terminology Base Exchange Format is an XML based terminology exchange format comparable with the TMX created in order to enable seamless exchange of translation memories between different applications TBX is supposed to provide the same ease of exchange of terminological data between applications and users According to Localization Industry Standards Association LISA TBX enables exchange of data between termbases with different data models Melby 2001 Finally terminology management tools may support the native formats of other CAT tools e g DVX supports Trados format and SDLX supports DV and Trados derived formats 31 3 13 Interaction with other applica
38. tions In the translation and localization business nowadays it is impossible to rely on stand alone terminology management tools only Therefore the tools discussed in this thesis usually can be integrated with other applications in order to create more complex translation environments The most frequent combinations are Termbase module and a word processor Termbase module and a translation memory depending on the tool this environment may involve the word processor as well Termbase module and a machine translation system Termbase module and a concordancer i e a tool which analyzes source texts to deliver an alphabetical list of all the words in a text shown together with their context and references to line in source text Khurshid 1994 Termbase module and a word frequency program Termbase module and a speech recognition system The integration of terminology management tools with the above mentioned applications usually enhances the applicability of the termbase module itself especially that these tools are nowadays primarily intended for use as integral parts of larger translation environments If it is possible to combine the termbase with a word processor many functions of the tool are available directly from the word processor interface Usually a new toolbar or menu appears next to the regular WP toolbar after the selection of an appropriate template from the program installation folder The integrati
39. ver time saving this may seem this may be a shortcoming for those who store all their terminology in a single termbase but have a number of customers who use different corporate language In this case it is indispensable to enter the customer s name in the entry to make it useful for the future translation projects Another issue worth considering is the number of termbases which can be consulted at a time Some workbench tools allow for consulting multiple termbases others do not Therefore it is crucial to choose the tool which best suits our preferred style of working i e if we have separate termbases for each client it is better to be able to consult several of them at a time However there are simple solutions to the limitation of CAT tools in this respect It is usually possible to merge different termbases by way of import or export Another significant aspect is the way the search results are displayed if a number of data collections were consulted In order to make appropriate terminology choices it should be possible to identify the source termbase of a given term in the hitlist Some tools solve this problem by opening separate hitlist windows for each termbase others produce a single hitlist but arrange the terms found by termbase in the order defined by the user 33 Other issues also present in the integration with word processors include the ability to log the terms unfound and all unsuccessful queries as well
40. y contained in the lexicon is ready at hand during translation On the other the new terminology does not have to be sent into the termbase until the project has been completed and all terms validated Hence the main termbase is not fed with invalid terms and the time which would have to be spent on finding and correcting the erroneous contents of a large terminology collection is saved Another undisputable advantage of this tool is that whatever file type a translator works on D j Vu presents them with a uniform interface displaying only translatable text and protecting the tags This assures comfort in performing translation tasks without having to worry about overwriting the formatting and layout information Numerous spell and consistency checking functions help the user ensure the publishing quality of the output One other noteworthy feature of D j Vu is that it is very easy to add or modify the contents of the database Thanks to the ease with which the lexicon once edited and translated can be entered in the terminology database the time spent on preparing a translation project can also be reduced to a large extent Finally the on line support of D j Vu deserves a special mention in this section The supporting team of Atril is extremely helpful The response to any technical problem reported can be expected within a few hours including weekends which is not commonplace on the market The users are invited to join a mailing lis
41. y of translators They are basically meant for translation managers and translators who are also very advanced PC users Besides all these sophisticated functions are very seldom used if ever Gerasimov 2001 Another comment seems to express a similar opinion MultiTerm the terminology management utility is a Rube Goldbergian piece of software that requires no less than 12 steps to add a new term to a glossary whereas most competing programs require only three Nogueira 2002 This statement referred to the 5 x versions of Multiterm The new Multiterm iX has to a large extent addressed the problem of too much complexity and is now much more intuitive and user friendly Another development which can be considered an inconvenience is that when using Mutliterm 7X in combination with other workbench modules or word processors which is the most frequent configuration only one termbase can be consulted from within the integrated environment 37 4 2 DEJA VU 4 2 1 ADVANTAGES Among the many advantages of the way D j vu X handles terminology is the function of the Lexicon i e a project specific bilingual multilingual list of terms and phrases Even though the fact that only one termbase can be associated with a given translation project may seem an inconvenient limitation the project specific lexicon makes up for this in a number of ways On the one hand the project specific terminology and phraseolog
42. zy match must be activated manually so the translator realizes that the hits displayed in the search results may not be appropriate Another important question is whether the tool is able to recognize a misspelled term The logical assumption is that if the tool offers a fuzzy match search option it should be able to return a misspelled term The problem is however that sometimes a simple typing error may alter the initial letter or letters of the term thus causing the tool to return absolutely irrelevant matches This means that the type of the spelling mistake is not without significance One more important issue is the tool s response to compound term searches As has been already said the tool usually displays the list of nearest matches With the advent of hybrid systems combining CAT with MT some of the tools offer the so called assemble function which causes the tool to automatically create its own proposals for rendering the unfound compound term or phrase Again the user must be aware of the fact that the output string is not a validated term but a proposal of the MT module and as such should be approached with a dose of mistrust and subject to verification For the users of inflectional languages it may also be crucial to determine whether a tool returns the canonical form of a word if the search string contains an inflected form The tools discussed within this project only return forms entered in the termbase This means th
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