Yesterday we ran into a problem. Our main platform for translation at the moment is SDL Trados 2007. And we don't have premium support agreement because when we started using it there were no such agreements at all, and their support was very responsive and helpful (one of the main reasons why we opted for SDL). Then we haven't had any serious problems for many years, and even if we had some, we always had some opportunity to ask a question or to find an answer in their knowledge base (still open to registered customers, wow!).
So, eventually we ran into a problem. We apparently checked everything we could, ended up with that it is not any setting problem, and decided to contact SDL support, to show them where the problem is and to ask if it can be solved.
So, we went to http://www.sdl.com/en/support. It said: go to My Account, and everything is going to be fine. OK. My Account apparently directs me to My Support. Happy to do so. My Support offers me to review my Primary Services Agreement (which I apparently don't have) or go to SDL Trados Knowledge Base. OK again. Knowledge Base is good. But I don't find answers to my question there. I remember there was a link to ask a question. Not any longer. Or it's just so well hidden that I failed to find it.
It's not too often I disturb their support, but if I do it I really need it. Now there's no way. OK, we'll develop a solution; at least they use XML for the bilingual files, so we can easily parse them without Trados.
But I really like the trick. SDL lost their main advantage (for us, of course), but they translated it into another one, into becoming so deeply integrated into our and our clients' processes during the Good Support Era that it's really impossible just to switch to another tool. And on the other hand, we already developed a lot of proprietary utilities to do this and that in Trados files... maybe we can easily translate it into our own TM system? :)
Showing posts with label SDL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SDL. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
SDL Trados Studio 2009, too much for 1 GB RAM?
At Localization World Berlin a week ago, I non-intentionally stopped by SDL's booth. I don't really like to make an opinion on a product based on any demonstration, but only on my own experience in trying and testing it.
So, they've been showing there that new appearance and how it works in general (which is to my mind not interesting again because if you've been using translation environments tools for ages, you can easily imagine the basics of any new tool in this category).
When I was briefly beta-testing Trados Studio (and the tool is in fact really nice and convenient), I didn't see any preview. I didn't have time to really try to find access to it, but it was interesting to take a look at how this feature works. So, eventually I asked at the booth if the Studio supports preview and how. The guy certainly started demonstrating. He pressed a few buttons, and the preview started being generated. It took some noticeable time to generate it, and I asked if the computer running this demonstration was slow.
'Yes, it's quite an outdated one', the guy responded, 'It only has 1 GB of RAM'. Working currently with 1 GB of RAM and feeling not bad about it most of the time, I didn't say anything. However, I thought that not many potential users of this tool are likely to have faster computers.
Besides that, the preview works great, it updates every time you confirm a segment (which is in fact what MemoQ's preview has been doing at least for 1 year I've been testing it), and is in general a very good reference for a translator. What may be a bit inconvenient is that it is in a separate window, so you have to switch. But for those who use small screens, it's even a benefit, and I assume there is a way to include it to the single Trados Studio window if you have a larger screen (this is something I have to check though).
But what I'm eager to do now is to check the real speed of the tool running on a real average workstation which most of the translators use.
So, they've been showing there that new appearance and how it works in general (which is to my mind not interesting again because if you've been using translation environments tools for ages, you can easily imagine the basics of any new tool in this category).
When I was briefly beta-testing Trados Studio (and the tool is in fact really nice and convenient), I didn't see any preview. I didn't have time to really try to find access to it, but it was interesting to take a look at how this feature works. So, eventually I asked at the booth if the Studio supports preview and how. The guy certainly started demonstrating. He pressed a few buttons, and the preview started being generated. It took some noticeable time to generate it, and I asked if the computer running this demonstration was slow.
'Yes, it's quite an outdated one', the guy responded, 'It only has 1 GB of RAM'. Working currently with 1 GB of RAM and feeling not bad about it most of the time, I didn't say anything. However, I thought that not many potential users of this tool are likely to have faster computers.
Besides that, the preview works great, it updates every time you confirm a segment (which is in fact what MemoQ's preview has been doing at least for 1 year I've been testing it), and is in general a very good reference for a translator. What may be a bit inconvenient is that it is in a separate window, so you have to switch. But for those who use small screens, it's even a benefit, and I assume there is a way to include it to the single Trados Studio window if you have a larger screen (this is something I have to check though).
But what I'm eager to do now is to check the real speed of the tool running on a real average workstation which most of the translators use.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
QA functionality in SDL Trados QA Checker 2.0
SDL Trados QA Checker 2.0, plug-in to SDL Trados 2007
Supported checks. Basic set of checks performed by SDL Trados QA Checker is rather extensive compared to other plug-in tools and may be extended using regular expressions. This tool does not allow to specify Chinese full stops as valid punctuation marks. Moreover, Arabic and even Easter European characters cannot be included into forbidden characters list. It also does not check quotation marks and number formatting.
False positives. Unlike all other tools, it generates false positives by counting skipped and empty segments as incomplete ones.
Conclusion. In general, the tool is good enough for translators who work in Trados TagEditor, but may be hard to employ in dedicated quality assurance departments where batch processing of mono- and multilingual projects is normally required.
Supported checks. Basic set of checks performed by SDL Trados QA Checker is rather extensive compared to other plug-in tools and may be extended using regular expressions. This tool does not allow to specify Chinese full stops as valid punctuation marks. Moreover, Arabic and even Easter European characters cannot be included into forbidden characters list. It also does not check quotation marks and number formatting.
False positives. Unlike all other tools, it generates false positives by counting skipped and empty segments as incomplete ones.
Conclusion. In general, the tool is good enough for translators who work in Trados TagEditor, but may be hard to employ in dedicated quality assurance departments where batch processing of mono- and multilingual projects is normally required.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
QA functionality in SDLX 2007 QA Check
SDLX 2007 QA Check, build 7014
Supported checks. Basic set of checks performed is also rather limited. A user can extend and customise it using regular expressions; however, regular expressions are often beyond the qualification of a QA manager.
This tool does not check number values and does not check number formatting, double punctuation marks and brackets unless you set up a regular expression. It also does not check tags, and though it is hard enough to change tags in SDLX, TTX files converted to SDLX format may contain corrupt tags which won’t be detected.
Skipped translations are not converted from TTX files and therefore are also not found.
SDLX does not allow specifying Chinese full stops as a valid punctuation mark.
False positives. QA Check generates false positives for forgotten translations (counted as partial translations as well). Also many false positives are generated for partial/incomplete translations (they are not differentiated in SDLX) because incompleteness is determined only by translation length, not taking into account the number of sequential source words found in target segments.
Multilingual project support. As many other tools, QA Check Checks translation consistency between different languages.
Right-to-left language support. QA Check displays such texts left-to-right which hinders work with files and leads to reporting non-existing terminology errors.
Conclusion. With additional customisation, this tool is quite a good solution for SDLX users that do not want to involve additional standalone tools into their work processes.
Supported checks. Basic set of checks performed is also rather limited. A user can extend and customise it using regular expressions; however, regular expressions are often beyond the qualification of a QA manager.
This tool does not check number values and does not check number formatting, double punctuation marks and brackets unless you set up a regular expression. It also does not check tags, and though it is hard enough to change tags in SDLX, TTX files converted to SDLX format may contain corrupt tags which won’t be detected.
Skipped translations are not converted from TTX files and therefore are also not found.
SDLX does not allow specifying Chinese full stops as a valid punctuation mark.
False positives. QA Check generates false positives for forgotten translations (counted as partial translations as well). Also many false positives are generated for partial/incomplete translations (they are not differentiated in SDLX) because incompleteness is determined only by translation length, not taking into account the number of sequential source words found in target segments.
Multilingual project support. As many other tools, QA Check Checks translation consistency between different languages.
Right-to-left language support. QA Check displays such texts left-to-right which hinders work with files and leads to reporting non-existing terminology errors.
Conclusion. With additional customisation, this tool is quite a good solution for SDLX users that do not want to involve additional standalone tools into their work processes.
Monday, April 6, 2009
SDLX sickness
This weekend I thought about what will Trados and SDLX together result into. And I recalled my very first tests that I did in 2002 or 2003. I had to make a comparison and select a TM solution for our new company and our main client. I'll try to find this comparison chart in my archives and publish or quote it here. I do remember there were Trados, SDLX, Deja Vu, Wordfast and some more TM systems.
Based on it, what I suggested to our client was SDLX. Why? Because it was nice, made use of TMs and glossaries in quite a convenient way, supported a lot of file formats and languages and had a free "lite" version for freelance translators. But what was maybe the most important thing was that the company was very responsive. They replied messages immediately, fixed bugs within 24 hours and always were ready to help, even to import our files into a new project if we experienced some troubles doing it locally.
I still remember the names of people who responded my mails. It was so nice to feel they care and you may rely on them. There were a lot of different problems with this software, but if we ever missed a deadline, it was not because of them. They all got resolved promptly.
SDL was growing, SDLX was developing, new features were added and old features were considered to be "obsolete". Free lite version was discontinued. Technical support first became slow, then paid. I don't know how prompt is currently their paid support. Unpaid one is pretty slow and useless, at least if you don't know addresses of real people you need to contact.
Knowing some SDL people almost in person, I'm quite sure they are pretty dedicated and doing their best, just like their predecessors were back in 2002 or 2003. What's changed is the environment they're in. I don't know if it's true for all large corporations, or if SDL just was unlucky on this way, or it it was their intention and they're really lucky to achieve their goal. But I really miss that nice cozy company that I selected 6 or 7 years ago.
Based on it, what I suggested to our client was SDLX. Why? Because it was nice, made use of TMs and glossaries in quite a convenient way, supported a lot of file formats and languages and had a free "lite" version for freelance translators. But what was maybe the most important thing was that the company was very responsive. They replied messages immediately, fixed bugs within 24 hours and always were ready to help, even to import our files into a new project if we experienced some troubles doing it locally.
I still remember the names of people who responded my mails. It was so nice to feel they care and you may rely on them. There were a lot of different problems with this software, but if we ever missed a deadline, it was not because of them. They all got resolved promptly.
SDL was growing, SDLX was developing, new features were added and old features were considered to be "obsolete". Free lite version was discontinued. Technical support first became slow, then paid. I don't know how prompt is currently their paid support. Unpaid one is pretty slow and useless, at least if you don't know addresses of real people you need to contact.
Knowing some SDL people almost in person, I'm quite sure they are pretty dedicated and doing their best, just like their predecessors were back in 2002 or 2003. What's changed is the environment they're in. I don't know if it's true for all large corporations, or if SDL just was unlucky on this way, or it it was their intention and they're really lucky to achieve their goal. But I really miss that nice cozy company that I selected 6 or 7 years ago.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
A few notes on SDL Trados QA Checker 2.0
A few days ago I had to perform formal QA on a project translated from English into German. I used SDL Trados QA Checker 2.0 (SP3) for this tasks and have a few interesting findings.
First of all, I received a lot of capitalization error reports. Apparently all nouns are capitalized in German which is not true for other languages, and this result into differences in capitalization. Quite annoying though!
Then, it reports repeated words like "OCR-A OCR-B" or "Task 1, Task 2", which is also annoying.
Third, it reported untranslated segments, and the segments really were untranslated. The problem was that those segments were just untranslatable, and TagEditor didn't even open it, but QA Checker still reported it. It's a good added safety feature, but annoying again. One example of such segment:
©2009
And last but not least, report on inconsistent translation is hard to work with as it doesn't reference the other translation compared to which this one is inconsistent. You have to use search feature and keep in mind what translation was there and what is here. Needless to say, annoying.
I would like to apologize to Patrik Mazanek who developed this plug-in. It in fact is a very useful and very capable tool, it can detect a lot of errors and is quite flexible, but as long as it works good, I apparently don't notice how good it was at detecting this or that error. And as soon as it comes to annoyance, I certainly notice it. Anyway, this post is apprently not to state how bad QA Checker 2.0 is. It's really great. But the purpose of this post is to make people (including Patrik and other developers who will be able to solve the problems) aware of the existing drawbacks.
First of all, I received a lot of capitalization error reports. Apparently all nouns are capitalized in German which is not true for other languages, and this result into differences in capitalization. Quite annoying though!
Then, it reports repeated words like "OCR-A OCR-B" or "Task 1, Task 2", which is also annoying.
Third, it reported untranslated segments, and the segments really were untranslated. The problem was that those segments were just untranslatable, and TagEditor didn't even open it, but QA Checker still reported it. It's a good added safety feature, but annoying again. One example of such segment:
©2009
And last but not least, report on inconsistent translation is hard to work with as it doesn't reference the other translation compared to which this one is inconsistent. You have to use search feature and keep in mind what translation was there and what is here. Needless to say, annoying.
I would like to apologize to Patrik Mazanek who developed this plug-in. It in fact is a very useful and very capable tool, it can detect a lot of errors and is quite flexible, but as long as it works good, I apparently don't notice how good it was at detecting this or that error. And as soon as it comes to annoyance, I certainly notice it. Anyway, this post is apprently not to state how bad QA Checker 2.0 is. It's really great. But the purpose of this post is to make people (including Patrik and other developers who will be able to solve the problems) aware of the existing drawbacks.
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