Forum: XTM Cloud support
Topic: A comprehensive review of XTM by a translator
Poster: XTM Intl
Post title: Your feedback is greatly appreciated
Dear SEA-Words,
Thank you for sharing your feedback on the XTM system and please find our comments below the issues you have described. In fact, most of them have a ready- made solution and are not bugs or limitation of the tool. Have you received the standard XTM training that is always included in the start up package? If not, you are welcome to contact [email removed] and we will arrange for an on-line training session that will help you get up to speed with XTM. Training materials, user manual, tutorial videos are available from [url removed] and what is more, you can refer to the help page from within the XTM Editor (letf-hand tool bar, the icon at the bottom) and read more on the XTM functionality, e.g. the inline tags handling.
1) XTM works with Firefox only. That’s really a major drawback since a cloud CAT should increase the cross-compatibility, instead of limiting it to just one browser. Anyway, no problem in installing Firefox just for working in XTM. (On a side note, there is no Firefox for mobile devices such as iPads, Android tablets, etc.) I am working on a Mac, so I had to change the default keystrokes, but that’s fine.
This is not correct.
XTM supports the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome or Safari for Mac and iPad. XTM v8.0 due for release in November 2013 will also support Firefox on Android.
2) Working with XTM implies you have a solid Internet connection, otherwise you will be thrown out from the server and you will have to login again. Being up and running again usually takes around 10 seconds (log-in + file opening), that’s kind of annoying when this happens every 5 segments or so.
Suggestion for XTM: it would be nice if XTM could keep working and automatically sync the translation once the connection is available again, without interfering with the translator’s job.
This will be easier to do in XTM V8.0 due for release in November. It has a new segment history widow that will allow you to restore the latest version of all the segments on the page very easily.
Also if your internet connection is not stable you may also like to try our XTM offline Editor. This application is based on a heavily customised Microsoft Excel file which is very similar to the XTM online Editor.
3) You can actually work in offline mode, your translation will be saved as a local backup and you can retrieve it by clicking on the clock icon in the right frame. The downside is that once you re-connect to the Internet, you have to manually “restore” the local backup to update the remote translation, line by line.
See reply to point 2
4) You can Zoom In to enlarge the font, but then you will have issues with drop down menus in XTM. Forget about it and buy powerful glasses.
We suggest that you use the settings in XTM Editor to increase the size of the font.
5) The layout in XTM is very neat, however everything is hidden, but the editor. The TM concordance results are shown in a pop-up window, so you have to keep clicking “concordance search” and closing the concordance search window. This is pretty annoying in large projects.
If your administrator/PM has given you access rights to the TM, terminology and concordance windows, you can open them in a separate browser tabs or windows. Right click on the tab at the top
Also you can bring up the concordance pop up for a highlighted word or phrase by using the keyboard short cut which by default is Alt + \
6) No batch support- XTM provides a word count on a per-file basis only, so if you are working on a project which has 20 files, you cannot get your stats for the whole batch. Nor you can finalize them at once.
This is coming early in 2014. We will show metrics and statistics for the part of the project assigned to the user. We will provide check boxes to select all files from project.
TM in XTM
7) You have a remote TM, but you can’t use your own TM. Over the years, translators tend to build their own TM since some sentences tend to recur across jobs, think alone to the list of countries of the world… well, you can’t use your own TM in XTM. Period.
This is coming later in 2014
8) You can’t download the TM to update your own offline TM. Basically, you have nothing left of your work. The only workaround would be downloading the bilingual file once you finish translating, then open it in an offline CAT, and update your TM accordingly. Is it worth the hassle? No.
This is coming early in 2014
9) You can’t edit the remote TM. If you spot an inconsistency or a typo, you will have to live with it. FOREVER. Which is really a pity when the project will have multiple translators over the time.
This is possible if the project manager has given you the correct access permission. When they have done this you can edit the TM from within XTM Editor by simply clicking on the edit icon that appears in the TM meta-data pop up.
Also please bear in mind that the TM is automatically updated when the target text is updated.
10) You can’t set your own fuzzy threshold in XTM.
This feature will be coming later in 2014
11) Very often, the automatic TM lookup doesn’t work. I had to work with big projects (5-10k words) with 100% matches in the remote TM that were not prompted when translating. Basically, I had to manually run a concordance search for each segment. Auto-propagating works only the first time it meets a segment, if you edit it, it won't propagate automatically. Instead, either you use find/replace to amend all of the occurence, or you select each segment and wait to be prompted for a different translation in the lookup pane.
This feature is coming in early 2014
12) If you run a concordance search, you have to select the source/target word, right-click on it, select “Concordance search” from the drop-down menu and then another pop-up opens. To be able to type in the target column, you have to close this pop-up. If you need to look at it again, you have to re-do all the steps. Very time consuming.
If your administrator/PM has given you access rights to the TM, terminology and concordance windows, you can open them in a separate browser tabs or windows. Right click on the tab at the top
Terminology
13) XTM has the glossary function, the words recognized from the terminology list are shown in bold blue in the source. If you hover on them with your mouse, you can see the translation. However, you have to manually type them in the target column, unless you have the option “copy source to target” my default, in this case you can simply click on the blue words in the target column to insert their translation, but you will have to type over the rest of the sentence in English before and after the blue words. So, what use is such glossary to a translator?
There is a keyboard short cut for inserting the translation of a term. By default this is Ctrl Shift T, but you can set it to whatever you choose.
14) The glossary function is not customizable. You cannot add terms, and it is not flexible enough to spot capitalization/number differences. So if your terminology has all words starting with a capital initial (e.g. Flower = Fiore), be ready to manually change the F to f each time. If your source reads flowers (plural), then you will have to a) change F to f, b) change the last letter to form the plural (fiori). Two edits in a 5-letter words. Too much work!
It is possible to add terms if the project manager has given you the correct access permission to the terminology module. Terms are identified on the root of the word so XTM will highlight plurals etc.
Typing in XTM
15) You can select words, provided you are very accurate in your pointer movement. I have been struggling to select the whole word, the right word, the entire sentence, part of it… It drove me crazy! Once you stray from the little space of the line, the selection gets lost. You have to retry again and again… once you get it right. Then, you can drag the selection to move the words within the segment, or use CTRL+X and CTRL+L to cut and paste it elsewhere. You cannot drag words across different segments.
We will be improving the way we display tags in version 8.0 which is due to be released in Nov 2013
16) You cannot change the capitalization using SHIFT+F3 like in any other Windows program. You have to retype the whole words/sentences with “ALL CAPS” on.
We will be adding this functionality in early 2014
17) The only way to insert an accented capital letter is to use the Char map. If you use a Mac, holding SHIFT+letter won’t prompt you the list of accented variant of that capitalized letter. What a shame!
We will be adding this functionality in early 2014
18) There are TAGS in XTM, just like in any other CAT. But they are very unpleasant to work with since if you double click on a word that sits next to a TAG, the selection will include the TAG as well. How so? I haven’t yet found a keystroke to insert TAGS while I type in the target column. I have to copy (CTRL+C) them from the source and paste them in the target column (CTRL+V).
This issue will be corrected in version 8.0 which is due to be released in Nov 2013 We will be improving the way we display tags, however you should use the Alt + [number] keyboard shortcut to insert the tags into the target segment
19) Find/replace – it often freezes, especially if you try to run one search after another without closing the Find/Replace pop-up window. Plus, it works within the same file only. If you type in the editor, the search starts from Segment 1 all over, even if you are halfway the document. And you cannot use wildcards for your search.
Thanks we will investigate this issue and fix.
Finalizing your job
XTM poses as a CAT tool, but lacks of most of their essential features. One of them is an effective QA. But let’s take one step at time.
20) Spellcheck – XTM comes with a built in spellcheck with a vocabulary wider than Word’s, but you cannot add words to it. So if in your translation there is a recurring term that is not within XTM vocabulary, it will be marked again and again as a mistake. Besides being annoying, this is also fairly dangerous, because in case of brand names, they will be always marked as mistakes, both if they are correct or not. Recently I translated a text where a brand name contained World, a word that doesn’t exist in Italian, and I almost didn’t notice it when it was misspelled (Wordl), since I skipped anything with a capital W and highlighted by the spellcheck.
If you click on a word that is misspelt a pop up menu appears where you can add words to your custom dictionary or you can chose to ignore the word in the entire project.
21) QA – One of the features I appreciate the most in CATs, is the QA functionality. Basically, it’s a feature that automatically checks for some things in the target. XTM’s QA is non existent: it won’t check if you followed the terminology, it won’t tell you if there is no period at the end of the sentence, it won’t tell you if the number in the target doesn’t match the ones in the source, etc.
XTM's QA, which simply detects multiple blank spaces and spaces before punctuation. And it check the TAGS. That’s all.
We will be enhancing the QA module in 2014 to check for more issues and to give users more flexibility on what items are checked.
Apart from checking the spelling and the correct tags, the QA module also checks for:
• Identical source and target text
• Numbers missing in the target text present in the source text
• Missing spaces after punctuation
• Multiple punctuations
• Multiple spaces
• Numbers in words
• A missing space at the end of a sentence
• Spaces before punctuation marks
• The correct translation of terms
• Trailing spaces
• The number of opening brackets equals the number of closing brackets
• The spaces around inline elements is the same in the target and source segments
We hope the above answers your questions and explains the XTM functionality better. Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.
Best regards,
XTM International
Topic: A comprehensive review of XTM by a translator
Poster: XTM Intl
Post title: Your feedback is greatly appreciated
Dear SEA-Words,
Thank you for sharing your feedback on the XTM system and please find our comments below the issues you have described. In fact, most of them have a ready- made solution and are not bugs or limitation of the tool. Have you received the standard XTM training that is always included in the start up package? If not, you are welcome to contact [email removed] and we will arrange for an on-line training session that will help you get up to speed with XTM. Training materials, user manual, tutorial videos are available from [url removed] and what is more, you can refer to the help page from within the XTM Editor (letf-hand tool bar, the icon at the bottom) and read more on the XTM functionality, e.g. the inline tags handling.
1) XTM works with Firefox only. That’s really a major drawback since a cloud CAT should increase the cross-compatibility, instead of limiting it to just one browser. Anyway, no problem in installing Firefox just for working in XTM. (On a side note, there is no Firefox for mobile devices such as iPads, Android tablets, etc.) I am working on a Mac, so I had to change the default keystrokes, but that’s fine.
This is not correct.
XTM supports the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome or Safari for Mac and iPad. XTM v8.0 due for release in November 2013 will also support Firefox on Android.
2) Working with XTM implies you have a solid Internet connection, otherwise you will be thrown out from the server and you will have to login again. Being up and running again usually takes around 10 seconds (log-in + file opening), that’s kind of annoying when this happens every 5 segments or so.
Suggestion for XTM: it would be nice if XTM could keep working and automatically sync the translation once the connection is available again, without interfering with the translator’s job.
This will be easier to do in XTM V8.0 due for release in November. It has a new segment history widow that will allow you to restore the latest version of all the segments on the page very easily.
Also if your internet connection is not stable you may also like to try our XTM offline Editor. This application is based on a heavily customised Microsoft Excel file which is very similar to the XTM online Editor.
3) You can actually work in offline mode, your translation will be saved as a local backup and you can retrieve it by clicking on the clock icon in the right frame. The downside is that once you re-connect to the Internet, you have to manually “restore” the local backup to update the remote translation, line by line.
See reply to point 2
4) You can Zoom In to enlarge the font, but then you will have issues with drop down menus in XTM. Forget about it and buy powerful glasses.
We suggest that you use the settings in XTM Editor to increase the size of the font.
5) The layout in XTM is very neat, however everything is hidden, but the editor. The TM concordance results are shown in a pop-up window, so you have to keep clicking “concordance search” and closing the concordance search window. This is pretty annoying in large projects.
If your administrator/PM has given you access rights to the TM, terminology and concordance windows, you can open them in a separate browser tabs or windows. Right click on the tab at the top
Also you can bring up the concordance pop up for a highlighted word or phrase by using the keyboard short cut which by default is Alt + \
6) No batch support- XTM provides a word count on a per-file basis only, so if you are working on a project which has 20 files, you cannot get your stats for the whole batch. Nor you can finalize them at once.
This is coming early in 2014. We will show metrics and statistics for the part of the project assigned to the user. We will provide check boxes to select all files from project.
TM in XTM
7) You have a remote TM, but you can’t use your own TM. Over the years, translators tend to build their own TM since some sentences tend to recur across jobs, think alone to the list of countries of the world… well, you can’t use your own TM in XTM. Period.
This is coming later in 2014
8) You can’t download the TM to update your own offline TM. Basically, you have nothing left of your work. The only workaround would be downloading the bilingual file once you finish translating, then open it in an offline CAT, and update your TM accordingly. Is it worth the hassle? No.
This is coming early in 2014
9) You can’t edit the remote TM. If you spot an inconsistency or a typo, you will have to live with it. FOREVER. Which is really a pity when the project will have multiple translators over the time.
This is possible if the project manager has given you the correct access permission. When they have done this you can edit the TM from within XTM Editor by simply clicking on the edit icon that appears in the TM meta-data pop up.
Also please bear in mind that the TM is automatically updated when the target text is updated.
10) You can’t set your own fuzzy threshold in XTM.
This feature will be coming later in 2014
11) Very often, the automatic TM lookup doesn’t work. I had to work with big projects (5-10k words) with 100% matches in the remote TM that were not prompted when translating. Basically, I had to manually run a concordance search for each segment. Auto-propagating works only the first time it meets a segment, if you edit it, it won't propagate automatically. Instead, either you use find/replace to amend all of the occurence, or you select each segment and wait to be prompted for a different translation in the lookup pane.
This feature is coming in early 2014
12) If you run a concordance search, you have to select the source/target word, right-click on it, select “Concordance search” from the drop-down menu and then another pop-up opens. To be able to type in the target column, you have to close this pop-up. If you need to look at it again, you have to re-do all the steps. Very time consuming.
If your administrator/PM has given you access rights to the TM, terminology and concordance windows, you can open them in a separate browser tabs or windows. Right click on the tab at the top
Terminology
13) XTM has the glossary function, the words recognized from the terminology list are shown in bold blue in the source. If you hover on them with your mouse, you can see the translation. However, you have to manually type them in the target column, unless you have the option “copy source to target” my default, in this case you can simply click on the blue words in the target column to insert their translation, but you will have to type over the rest of the sentence in English before and after the blue words. So, what use is such glossary to a translator?
There is a keyboard short cut for inserting the translation of a term. By default this is Ctrl Shift T, but you can set it to whatever you choose.
14) The glossary function is not customizable. You cannot add terms, and it is not flexible enough to spot capitalization/number differences. So if your terminology has all words starting with a capital initial (e.g. Flower = Fiore), be ready to manually change the F to f each time. If your source reads flowers (plural), then you will have to a) change F to f, b) change the last letter to form the plural (fiori). Two edits in a 5-letter words. Too much work!
It is possible to add terms if the project manager has given you the correct access permission to the terminology module. Terms are identified on the root of the word so XTM will highlight plurals etc.
Typing in XTM
15) You can select words, provided you are very accurate in your pointer movement. I have been struggling to select the whole word, the right word, the entire sentence, part of it… It drove me crazy! Once you stray from the little space of the line, the selection gets lost. You have to retry again and again… once you get it right. Then, you can drag the selection to move the words within the segment, or use CTRL+X and CTRL+L to cut and paste it elsewhere. You cannot drag words across different segments.
We will be improving the way we display tags in version 8.0 which is due to be released in Nov 2013
16) You cannot change the capitalization using SHIFT+F3 like in any other Windows program. You have to retype the whole words/sentences with “ALL CAPS” on.
We will be adding this functionality in early 2014
17) The only way to insert an accented capital letter is to use the Char map. If you use a Mac, holding SHIFT+letter won’t prompt you the list of accented variant of that capitalized letter. What a shame!
We will be adding this functionality in early 2014
18) There are TAGS in XTM, just like in any other CAT. But they are very unpleasant to work with since if you double click on a word that sits next to a TAG, the selection will include the TAG as well. How so? I haven’t yet found a keystroke to insert TAGS while I type in the target column. I have to copy (CTRL+C) them from the source and paste them in the target column (CTRL+V).
This issue will be corrected in version 8.0 which is due to be released in Nov 2013 We will be improving the way we display tags, however you should use the Alt + [number] keyboard shortcut to insert the tags into the target segment
19) Find/replace – it often freezes, especially if you try to run one search after another without closing the Find/Replace pop-up window. Plus, it works within the same file only. If you type in the editor, the search starts from Segment 1 all over, even if you are halfway the document. And you cannot use wildcards for your search.
Thanks we will investigate this issue and fix.
Finalizing your job
XTM poses as a CAT tool, but lacks of most of their essential features. One of them is an effective QA. But let’s take one step at time.
20) Spellcheck – XTM comes with a built in spellcheck with a vocabulary wider than Word’s, but you cannot add words to it. So if in your translation there is a recurring term that is not within XTM vocabulary, it will be marked again and again as a mistake. Besides being annoying, this is also fairly dangerous, because in case of brand names, they will be always marked as mistakes, both if they are correct or not. Recently I translated a text where a brand name contained World, a word that doesn’t exist in Italian, and I almost didn’t notice it when it was misspelled (Wordl), since I skipped anything with a capital W and highlighted by the spellcheck.
If you click on a word that is misspelt a pop up menu appears where you can add words to your custom dictionary or you can chose to ignore the word in the entire project.
21) QA – One of the features I appreciate the most in CATs, is the QA functionality. Basically, it’s a feature that automatically checks for some things in the target. XTM’s QA is non existent: it won’t check if you followed the terminology, it won’t tell you if there is no period at the end of the sentence, it won’t tell you if the number in the target doesn’t match the ones in the source, etc.
XTM's QA, which simply detects multiple blank spaces and spaces before punctuation. And it check the TAGS. That’s all.
We will be enhancing the QA module in 2014 to check for more issues and to give users more flexibility on what items are checked.
Apart from checking the spelling and the correct tags, the QA module also checks for:
• Identical source and target text
• Numbers missing in the target text present in the source text
• Missing spaces after punctuation
• Multiple punctuations
• Multiple spaces
• Numbers in words
• A missing space at the end of a sentence
• Spaces before punctuation marks
• The correct translation of terms
• Trailing spaces
• The number of opening brackets equals the number of closing brackets
• The spaces around inline elements is the same in the target and source segments
We hope the above answers your questions and explains the XTM functionality better. Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.
Best regards,
XTM International