Systems and Technology

IT systems have an important impact on the quality and speed of the localization process. Their use improves the consistency of translation by means of translation memories and the speed and overall success of the project by improving the communication between clients and suppliers.

At fraber-consulting we take advantage of all available means to provide more value to you, the customer. Our current IT software and hardware includes:

• Computer Assisted Translation (tools, why?, benefits)
• Desktop Publishing Software (tools, why?, benefits)
• Terminology Management (tools, why?, benefits)
• Localization Tools (tools, why?, benefits)
• Internet Communication (tools, why?, benefits)

Also, we pay close attention to security. Please don't hesitate to ask us about details.

• Security policy, firewall and a backup strategy (tools, why?, benefit)

The following sections explain explains more details about these concepts.

Computer Assisted Translation

• TRADOS Solution 5
• IBM Translation Manager v. 2.5

We use by default the Trados translation memory for all or of our translation work. These tools basically record all translation activity and store source and target language sentences in such a way, that a single sentence is never translated twice.

The benefit for the translator is that the translation speed is increased. The benefit for the user is consistency and quality: The same sentences and words are translated always the same way, reducing the error rate by a factor of 2-5. Also, the maximum project size per translator increases, leading to fewer errors due to communication between groups of translators.

Desk Top Publishing

• Adobe FrameMaker v.6
• Adobe PageMaker v.6.5

We are maintaining a set of current DTP programs together with a group of skilled translators to provide our clients with high quality translations independent of the environment in which they create their documents.

The knowledge about these tools allows us to translate these documents in-place, avoiding costly and error-prone conversation of document formats.

Terminology Management

• TRADOS MultiTerm’95 Plus v.1.52

Terminology management allows us to coordinate the work of several translators both in the case of large projects and over time when working on similar projects.

MultiTerm allows us to maintain a single terminology even within large projects.

Localization Tools

• Corel CATALYST Enterprise v.3.0
• Pass Engineering Passolo
• Accent Locale v.2.0
• Jargon v. 4.1.2
• Microsoft RLTools v.1.88
• RC-Win Trans v.5.6

Localization tools allow us to localize software that was not designed to be multilingual. These tools take finished .EXE and .DLL files and identify and extract all resources that might need to be localized (strings, logos, ...). This is particularly convenient if a software product needs to be localized as fast as possible (time-to-market).

However, on the long run it is advisable to change the software design to include a multilingual architecture because of issues such as date, time and currency formats. Also, software releases can be made much faster and cheaper if the software is designed to be multilingual. Ask us for advice if you are interested to hear more about internationalization issues.

Internet Communication

• 24/7 Internet Connection
• Email
• Microsoft Instant Messenger
• Netmeeting

Internet communication is faster, cheaper and more convenient compared with traditional communication means. We take full advantage of Email, instant messengers and video conferencing to connect to both our clients and our freelance translators.

This allows us to be more efficient when managing large projects and to maintain a closer relationship to our clients. Also, the management of projects across various time zones becomes much easier.

Security and Backup

• Linux Firewall
• Intrusion Detection
• Centralized file management
• Backup using DAT-Streamer

Information technology improves the efficiency of the translation process. However, the extensive use of IT also introduces a series of challenges both to our internal organization and to the confidential data of our clients. For these reasons we have set up a state-of-the-art security infrastructure including a Firewall with intrusion detection to defend against external intruders and a centralized file server with daily tape backups to limit the worst-case risks of data loss.

Using Contingency and Business Continuity plans based on these tools we can guarantee our clients the security of their data and the timely completion of projects even in the presence of an hostile IT environment.