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No matter how experienced the translator is, and no matter how attentive the editor who checks his work, this in itself hardly guarantees the complete absence of errors in the translation. This is especially true in cases where the total amount of text to be translated is quite large, and new texts are received almost continuously and for a long time. After all, a quality passport translation should not only accurately convey the meaning of the original and comply with the rules of spelling, punctuation and grammar.
In addition, to achieve impeccable quality, such things as the same translation of terms throughout the body of texts (if any, in accordance with the glossary approved by the customer), uniform spelling of words in cases where there are several valid options (for example, in the case of with complex English words that can be written together, separated and hyphenated), following the rules of typography (for example, using non-breaking spaces in the right places), writing numbers in accordance with the rules of a particular language, and much more. Therefore, in order to eliminate the errors caused by the imperfection of human memory and attention, the verification process must be automated.
Of course, not everything in a translation can be checked automatically. For example, only a living person can appreciate the correspondence of the meaning and beauty of the language. However, a computer program can do even better when evaluating the formal parameters of a text. And there are many such formal parameters. These are the presence of untranslated fragments of the original, and spelling (checked by comparing words with a dictionary), and a combination of grammatical forms, and the presence of a pair for each bracket or quote used, and the use of certain translations in case certain terms appear in the original … Moreover, the program can detect things that a person is unlikely to notice.
With the help of formal criteria, some stylistic defects can also be found: words that are unacceptable for a given type of text (as a rule, they are specified in a list), clusters of consonants at the junction of words, too long sequences of definitions, overloading the sentence with pronouns. It is useful to be able to check the coincidence of numbers or fragments that should remain in a foreign language. As a rule, they are copied from the original.
As you know, Word can automatically check the text or, for example, the Open Office editor, into which additional checking macros can be imported. However, they do not compare the translation with the original.
You can check the translation more effectively with the help of software tools specially designed for this purpose. As a result, the editor will have to do a lot of unnecessary work. To avoid it, there are specialized solutions for ensuring the quality of translation – Translation Quality Assurance (TQA). They use a much larger number of criteria for verification and allow the user to set their own settings, which reduces the number of false errors, but at the same time allows you to detect more real ones. In addition, they are able to simultaneously work with a large number of files that can be uploaded to them in whole folders.
If the files belong to the same project, you can set the same validation criteria for all at the same time and process them all at once. Naturally, in order to view files with such a program, the original sentences in them must be correlated with the corresponding translation sentences, and for this the translation must be performed in a CAT program. TQA tools can only work with certain file formats, but a translation or translation memory to be checked can be exported to at least one of the valid formats from the program in which it was made. Let’s take a look at some of the most well-known TQA tools.
First of all, it is a powerful search tool in the translation of words or expressions of certain types. In fact, a high-tech concordance. For this, special codes (wildcards or wildcards) are used, as well as a formal language for searching text elements, which is called regular expressions. The program provides a list of the most relevant expressions, in addition to which the user can create their own.
There is no own editing environment in X Bench; from the error list line, the user goes directly to the program in which the translation was performed.
The corrected file can be exported to various formats, including tmx translation memory or Excel spreadsheet.
Projects can be saved to continue working with the same files and settings.
QA Distiller
This is a separate program for finding errors in translation. You can upload several bilingual files or even folders of files into it. To check the terminology, glossaries are loaded, for example, in xml format. Separate files from the set selected for checking can be deleted using the Del button.
The user can set their own validation settings, with different default settings for different languages (for example, quoting rules or spaces combined with punctuation marks).
Verification
| Operating system | Windows® 7 SP1, Windows® 8, Windows® 8.1, Windows® 10 x64 versions |
| Free disk space | 75 MB free space for installation |
| RAM | Recommend 2GB RAM |
| Processor | multi-core Intel or AMD processor, 2.5 GHz or higher |
This is a cheaper, but at the same time more convenient program to use. It even has a free version with a fairly good set of features.
Bilingual files of various formats (or entire folders) as well as glossaries are also uploaded for verification. At the same time, the set of acceptable glossary formats is noticeably expanded compared to QA Distiller. For example, you can use glossaries in Excel. It is also possible to import lists of prohibited terms in various formats.
Conclusion
Thus, a major advantage of XBench is the ability to continue working with a previously loaded set of files with the same settings, which is useful when working on several projects at the same time, in which text has different requirements. In addition, some benefit can be derived from the advanced search capabilities offered by this program – for example, to search for terms in a specific context.
QA Distiller is focused not so much on finding expressions of certain types, but on detecting specific errors, taking into account the characteristics of various languages. At the same time, QA Distiller partly has the first advantage of XBench – at least the editor can reload the interactive report and continue to make corrections to the translation with it. A serious drawback of this program is the inability to check spelling.
The creators of the free version of Verifika sacrificed the ability to save projects and settings in favor of a rich set of functions necessary for verification. In the paid version, these features are not only present, but even improved by saving the settings separately. Expression search capabilities are also provided and improved. In addition, the interface of this program is arranged in the most logical way, so it is not difficult to work with it.
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