User Guide

SYSTRAN 7 Application Packs User Guide 144
Using SYSTRAN Translation Project Manager
(STPM)
An integral Expert Tools application, SYSTRAN Translation Project Manager (STPM) is a
“translation workbench” which authors, linguists, and translators can use to create, manage,
and refine localization projects. Authors use STPM to prepare source documents for
translation, while linguists build translation resources and review text analyses, and
translators benefit from post-editing and Translation Memory features.
With STPM you can perform side-by-side comparisons between original and translated
documents and affect changes to both. This results in both greater dictionary customization
and highest-possible-quality translations.
You can greatly enhance the value of your translations with STPM, using it to add terms to
User Dictionaries (UDs), and to process dictionary updates. In addition, the software offers a
selection of powerful built-in review tools, including terminology review, analysis of the
original document, full sentence review, use of alternative meanings, and other advanced
features.
How Does STPM Work?
An STPM Project is defined by its indicated language pair, its related document files (source,
target), and by a number of STPM-specific elements. It can consist of just a single file, or
multiple files within a large Project comprised of hundreds of files and elements. In addition,
any accessible file of a supported file format can be included in an STPM Project, as can
Web documents obtained via an input Web address (URL).
In STPM, the files that comprise a Project are not actually source and target files, but are
instead non-WYSIWYG simplified mirrored versions of those files. This attribute frees you
from document-related concerns (such as file formats), enabling you to concentrate on the
translation tasks at hand. Then, once work on the files is completed, these simplified files are
transformed back to their native file format when they are exported. Another key benefit of
this methodology is that all actions taken on files within STPM are separate from the original
source files, which thus remain intact.
The functionality of STPM rests on XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format,
developed by OASIS Consortium), an XML-based format that separates localizable text from
formatting, enables multiple tools to work on source strings and add to the string data, and
stores information that is helpful in supporting a localization process.
SYSTRAN Practices for Improving Translation Quality
As a “translation workbench”, the primary purpose of the SYSTRAN Translation Project
Manager is to help you to improve the quality of your translations. To this end, STPM
provides a number of resources and tools designed to meet this goal.
Refer also to:
• Linguistic Resources