ApSIC Tools Weblog

We’re glad to announce that the ApSIC Xbench 2.9 User’s Guide is now also available in Spanish, thanks to the great work of Fernando Streckwall (fernandostreckwall@hotmail.com), an English to Spanish and Spanish to English freelance translator based in Argentina.

Fernando’s volunteering effort makes ApSIC Xbench more accessible and easy to use for the whole Spanish-speaking translator community, one of the largest translator communities in the world.

We are thrilled to see the community of ApSIC Xbench users grow, and we are certainly thankful for the contributions by volunteer translators that make ApSIC Xbench even more useful to non-English speakers.

The Spanish version of ApSIC Xbench 2.9 User’s Guide can be downloaded from here.

We’re happy to announce that we have just published a new set of spell-checking dictionaries for 33 languages.

This new release includes several fixes and enhancements, and you are now able to create one or more addendums per dictionary. To check out the new addendum feature, just choose Addendum->Manage Addendums from the main spell-checking window to create an addendum.

As the previous release, it is also based on Hunspell dictionaries.

The languages now available are:

• Basque
• Bulgarian
• Catalan
• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• English (UK)
• English (US)
• Estonian
• French
• German
• Greek
• Hungarian
• Italian
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Macedonian
• Norwegian (Bokmål)
• Norwegian (Nynorsk)
• Polish
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Portuguese (Portugal)
• Romanian
• Russian
• Serbian (Cyrillic)
• Serbian (Latin)
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Turkish
• Ukrainian

To install the spell-checking plug-in, simply extract the contents of the language’s .zip file into ApSIC Xbench’s 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 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).

As usual, please do not hesitate to contact us with your feedback using our Web Form.

We’ve just published a new maintenance build for ApSIC Xbench v2.9 with the following main fixes:

• Enhanced detection of XLIFF and SDLX XLIFF segment statuses.
• Fixed corruption for Asian characters in Manage Checlistks dialogs.
• Fixed See Context dialog for PO files.
• …and 22 more subtle enhancements and fixes that we are too lazy to detail!

Please keep coming your valuable feedback via our web form!

You can download the newest build from our Dowloads page at http://www.apsic.com/en/downloads.aspx.

Michael Widemann, Senior Project Manager at Mareš, has updated the ApSIC Xbench User’s Guide to version 2.9.

We want to thank greatly Michael, who also took on the endeavour of translating the ApSIC Xbench v2.8 User’s Guide, for his continued effort to maintain the German version of the User’s Guide.

The German version of ApSIC Xbench v2.9 User’s Guide can be downloaded from here.

Franck Charreire, a French translator specializing in technical translation, has translated the ApSIC Xbench User’s Guide v2.9 into French.

With this significant contribution by Franck, French now joins the list of languages with documentation translations supported by the community of users and also becomes the first language to provide a translation of the User’s Guide for v2.9, barely just a couple of weeks after release.

A big thanks to Franck for his effort. We are confident that French users will enjoy the convenience of learning about ApSIC Xbench capabilities in detail in their own language.

The French version of ApSIC Xbench v2.9 User’s Guide can be downloaded from here.

We are happy to announce the release of ApSIC Xbench 2.9 beta! New features of this release include:

• More formats supported. A few more bilingual formats have been added. Now it is possible to load XLIFF files, Trados Studio files, PO files, MARTIF files, IBM TM Memories, Wordfast Pro TXML files and OpenTM2 files.
• Folder tree support for most formats. Now you can load folder trees for all formats that do not require special file-dependant settings.
• Revamped checklist engine. Now multiple personal lists can be run in a single QA pass and can also be linked to projects. A powerful inheritance engine has been built into checklists to reuse items from other checklists and override items as required.
• Font support for Instructions tab. Now the Instructions tab can use any of the system fonts to allow for better presentation and enhanced support of non-Western languages.
• And many other enhancements and fixes across the board!

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 relatively often receive praise e-mails about ApSIC Xbench which are extremely rewarding to the development team. Developers are like artists, and they need to reassert that their work is understood and liked. Some users really insist on that our tool is really worth some money as Stefan Keller from Solocal also reminded us today:

–
Dear Madam or Sir,

Thanks a lot in advance and best regards,
Stefan Keller
–

This perception is so encouraging. It’s not that we do not like money but, currently, our focus revolves about growing the user base and the freeware model is one channel to achieve that goal faster. We believe that sooner or later we will find ways to monetize the effort by trying to find new ways to bring even more value to our user base. After all, we believe that there’s still a lot left to be done to improve a translator’s life.

Also, a larger user base means a more polished product and more potential for future leverage, and we will try to capitalize on that. But it is great to know already that ApSIC Xbench is making such an impact on the way translators work and that some are already clearly willing to put their money where their mouth is.

Last week, Riccardo Schiaffino, President of Aliquantum Inc. and blogger conducted a presentation on ApSIC Xbench for the Colorado Translators Association.

The slides for the presentation, a great primer of ApSIC Xbench features, can be downloaded here.

We’ve just created an account in twitter (@xbenchdotnet). We’ll try to keep you posted there with our whereabouts as we push ApSIC Xbench 2.9 to release in the next couple months.

Michael Widemann, Senior Project Manager and SDL Trados Trainer at Mareš in Munich has translated into German the User’s Guide for ApSIC Xbench v2.8.

This contribution is great news for ApSIC Xbench German users, who now can read the documentation in their mother tongue, joining Italian and Polish users that already were benefiting from localized documentation.

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