ApSIC Tools Weblog

UPDATE: There’s a more recent version of the spell-checking dictionaries for ApSIC Xbench v2.9 here

We’re happy to announce that we are publishing a set of ApSIC Xbench QA plug-ins to add a spell-checking feature to the QA process.

The underlying dictionaries are from the HunSpell project. The first wave of dictionaries includes the following languages (please click an item on the list below to download the files for the corresponding language plug-in):

• Catalan
• Czech
• English (U.K.)
• English (U.S.)
• French
• German
• Hungarian
• Italian
• Polish
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Portuguese (Portugal)
• Russian
• Slovakian
• Slovenian
• Spanish
• Ukrainian

To install the spell-checking plug-in, simply extract the contents of the language’s .zip file into ApSIC Xbench installation directory (typically, C:\Program Files\ApSIC\Xbench).

Once you have copied the files, you will notice that next time you start ApSIC Xbench, an additional entry named Spellcheck appears in the Check Group box.

If the Spellcheck item is checked, next time you click Check Ongoing Translation, a spell-checking window will appear:

Each misspelling variant is listed only once and the Instances column indicates how many actual segments are affected by the listed misspelling. Using this window, you will indicate which items are real misspellings by double-clicking them to move them to the Real Misspellings list box on the right.

Once you have reviewed the list of potential errors, click OK to close the window. Segments with misspellings will be listed among the rest of QA results and you will be able to use the Edit Source feature to get right to the offending segment.

Also interesting are Exclusions, which can be useful for some type of texts prone to false alarms.

You have the ability to change the working mode by right-clicking and choosing Settings->Change Working Mode to indicate false alarms instead of real misspellings (which working mode will require fewer clicks will depend on the type of text you are spell-checking).

We hope you find useful this new QA feature, which is being published as a feature preview and that we are well aware that is still missing important items such as an addendum function. We are eager to get your feedback via our Web Form for future improvements.

Our short term goals for the spell-checking feature are to add more languages for preview, implement an addendum function and make the language dictionary download and installation a seamless experience with ApSIC Xbench.

An Italian version of the ApSIC Xbench v2.8 is now available, thanks to the hard work of Paolo Troiani, an Italian freelance translator specializing in Financial Translation.

We welcome greatly Paolo’s contribution, which will make understanding ApSIC Xbench features easier and more convenient for Italian users.

The Italian version of ApSIC Xbench v2.8 User’s Guide can be downloaded from here.

We’re glad to announce that Michał Tosza, a Polish freelance localizer and blogger, has created a Polish version of the ApSIC Xbench v2.8 User Guide in collaboration with his colleague Małgorzata Pietsch.

A big thanks to Michał and Małgorzata for their great effort and contribution. We are confident that their work will make a lot easier the use of ApSIC Xbench most advanced features among Polish users.

The Polish version of ApSIC Xbench v2.8 User’s Guide can be downloaded from here.

Hello again! We are shipping a second refresh of ApSIC Xbench v2.8 that includes the following enhancements:

• Much faster load of big files. With ApSIC Xbench v2.8, improvements were made to the load process to save space in memory. However, these improvements had the side effect of greatly penalizing the load of very big files. With build 396, the load engine has been revamped and now the load of very big files is again very fast, and still tries to save memory space whenever possible
• Optional automatic unload of alternative project. Earlier builds forced the unload of the alternative project if it had not been used for an hour. Now this is an optional feature and configurable via the Tools->Settings menu item.

In addition to these enhancements, a couple dozen of bugs reported by users via our web form have been addressed as well, so please keep them coming!

We have just posted a new build for ApSIC Xbench 2.8! Build 385 includes some hot fixes for early feedback reported by users.

Fixes and enhancements for this refresh include:

• Fixed display issue for double-byte characters for RTF files
• Fixed search issue affecting some double-byte characters
• Enhanced TMX export so that it is more friendly with SDL Trados for some special cases
• Fixed some glitches with regular expressions in case-sensitive mode
• Enhanced parsing of special characters in RTF files and SDL Trados memories
• Enhanced switch to IBM TranslationManager after choosing Edit Source

You can see the main improvements of ApSIC Xbench 2.8 compared to v2.7 in our earlier blog post.

Please continue to report your feedback with the form for bug reports!

Another powerful new feature of ApSIC Xbench v2.8 is the ability to develop and add QA plug-ins.

ApSIC Xbench QA plug-ins allow you to add your own custom checks within the ApSIC Xbench QA workflow by programming a .dll file with a few pre-defined call-back functions. Your QA plug-in will appear on ApSIC Xbench QA page as shown in the image below for the custom entry Spanish QA.

The results of your QA plug-in will be merged with the results of the default ApSIC Xbench checks, and you will be able to benefit from the whole QA user interface, including the very convenient Edit Source function.

A draft of the Programmer’s Reference Guide to write QA plug-ins for ApSIC Xbench, can be found here.

We are happy to announce the release of ApSIC Xbench 2.8 beta! New features of this release include:

• New support for Regular Expressions and Microsoft Word Wildcards. Now it is possible to search and add check list items using regular expressions grammar or Microsoft Word wildcards. This allows you to specify very powerful search expressions that we believe that will allow you to reach a new level with QA searches. You can check out the power of regular expressions and learn how to use them by running the sample search templates provided against a large glossary such as a Microsoft Windows software glossary.
• Faster search engine. The already fast search engine has been improved in the new search engine to become a 50% faster.
• More supported formats. Now it also supports SDLX memories, Atril DejaVu and Idiom files, and Logoport RTF files.
• Categories for checklist items. Now you can organize your checklist items in categories and run them selectively.
• More fine-grained selection of segments to search. Now you can limit searches to only new segments, only ongoing translation or even exclude locked segments in search results.
• And many other enhancements and fixes!

You can download it now from http://www.apsic.com/en/downloads.aspx.

Please do not hesitate to report any issues or suggestions at http://www.apsic.com/en/products_submit_bug.aspx.

We have just posted a new public build of ApSIC Xbench 2.7, namely build 214. You can download the latest version from http://www.apsic.com/en/downloads.aspx.

Among a number of fixes, the main enhancements from build 183 are these:

• Support for more formats with Edit Source. Now you can open the editor directly at the segment that corresponds to the highlighted entry for search results and QA for the following additional formats: IBM Translation Manager, Trados Word uncleaned, Tab-delimited text, Trados exported memory. This addition extends this useful feature that earlier was only available for Trados TagEditor and SDLX files.
• Context information for Trados exported memories. Now search results show segment attributes and users for Trados memories.
• Long name support for IBM Translation Manager folders. Now file and folder names for IBM Translation Manager appear in long format.
• Support for changing the font for search and QA results. Now the font can be changed for search and QA results, which allows you to adjust the font size to your monitor requirements.
• Addition of QA check “source=target”. A new check has been added to QA. Now you can get a list of all source segments who match the target segment (potential untranslated segments). By default, this new setting is turned off.
• See Context feature is now also available from the QA results. The QA results now allows you to see segments surrounding the selected entry using the See Context function. This feature was already available from search results and now is also available from QA results.
• Checklist entries can be sorted alphabetically. Now you can sort alphabetically the entries of a project or personal checklist simply clicking one button.

We thank you for the valuable feedback provided and hope you continue to enjoy using ApSIC Xbench. We are very interested in your opinions. Please do not hesitate to report any issues or suggestions at http://www.apsic.com/en/products_submit_bug.aspx.