Something that used to be a tedious procedure with seemingly disconnected data has suddenly become a lot easier. And in the process, the TEnT market has become just a little more open, since it almost doesn't matter which TEnT sits at the end of this production chain -- as long as it can process the HTML/XML/text data from the CMS.

Another interesting partnership announced just this week at Localization World here in Berlin is between MetaTexis and TinyTM. A few weeks ago I mentioned TinyTM as a promising open-source translation memory server solution in early beta. The same developer who is behind the partially open-source management product ]project-open[ developed TinyTM in response to the German translation industry association FOLT's (Forum Open Language Tools) support of open-source and non-proprietary software, technologies, and exchange formats in the translation sector. With the link to the relatively unknown but powerful TEnT MetaTexis, TinyTM has made an additional step toward a greater likelihood of becoming a viable possibility for using open source in the LSP realm.

I gave a little presentation at LocWorld on tools and the path that our industry needs to take (or already is taking) to be more user- and data-centric (rather than tool-centric and at the mercy of tool vendors). I am more convinced than ever that open source is one of the core strategies toward achieving that goal. (Others include greater data accessibility, a more consistent support of and demand for standards, and a willingness to invest in the technological future.)

And the other tool-related news from LocWorld? One tidbit is Alchemy's new tool (see below), and the other was SDL's striking absence. There was a stand manned by the nice folks from SDL Passolo, and a corner of that stand was reserved for the rest of SDL, but this was usually either unoccupied or otherwise left vacant.

And here's another piece of tool news from the collaborative side of things, though it was not announced at LocWorld but in separate news releases. Beetext, the makers of the workflow product Flow, and Terminotix, the developers of LogiTerm, have announced that they have entered into a strategic partnership which will make it possible for Flow and LogiTermWeb to communicate with each other through web services. The products will remain separate, but if they are used together users of Flow can automate word counts and file analysis, and they can pretranslate sentences and terminology based on the bitext that originates from LogiTerm. I am really pleased to see this budding partnership. The Canadian tool market has produced some outstanding tools -- these two as well as MultiTrans are good examples of this -- and I have always wished the vendors an even greater presence on the worldwide tool market. This could be one step toward that goal.

Alchemy, the makers of Catalyst, the leading localization tool and a recent trophy purchase of translations.com, have released a TEnT based on the expertise they gained in developing Catalyst and their online translation memory server solution Language Exchange. Publisher is a little different from most other tools in how it extracts text from the originating documents, in particular when it comes to FrameMaker and Word files. Rather than converting the files into an interim format (RTF in the case of Word and .mif in the case of FrameMaker), it communicates directly with the application and extracts text on an object basis. This means that even within the Publisher interface (which looks very similar to the Catalyst interface), it is apparent where a specific piece of text originated -- whether from a text box, a heading, an index maker, etc. The translation memory and terminology solutions are also similar to Catalyst -- translation memory data is accessed through former projects and terminology data is contained in simple text files -- but direct access to Trados TMs and termbases is also possible as well as online access to Alchemy's own Language Exchange solution.

Aside from FrameMaker and Word and the to-be-expected text-based HTML, XML, and software-related development files, InDesign and Quark are supported; however, unlike FrameMaker and Word, this is only possible after a conversion through the third-party plug-in CopyFlow.

You'll notice when you go to Alchemy's website that there is no mention of Publisher yet. This may be because it's new and not quite ready -- I asked for a trial license and did not get one -- but the price point for the single standalone edition is supposed to be something like 550 Euro (don't quote me on that) and for the enterprise edition it apparently has not been fixed. I had heard a lot about Publisher in the last few months and, to be honest, I was a little disappointed when I saw it. I failed to see the real break-through technology behind it, and I also could not quite see why this was billed as a "visual" solution. Still, I may have more things to say when I can actually play with a copy.

*I know that Publisher is supposed to be written in all-caps, but since I have always resisted Trados' obnoxious all-caps spelling, I will try very hard to do the same with this tool.

The Institute of Localisation Professionals (TILP) is offering the first certification level (of three) for localization professionals (CLP). There are a number of things that are interesting about this. For one, the prices for participation vary radically according to the country where you live (in Africa and South America it's 200 Euro, in Western Europe and North America 800 Euro, and in Eastern Europe 500 Euro). Considering that the admission fee includes free freelance/translator editions of SDL Trados and Alchemy Catalyst (worth about 1300 Euro on their own!) along with the 10 online localization modules, a four-day onsite class, and SDL Trados certification, it's something that you might want to consider. It's especially tailored to those who are "beginners and those who are interested in learning about the work, the processes and the tools and technologies used in this fast paced and innovative industry" (quote from their website) and who live in or close to one of the countries where the onsite classes take place, i.e., Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Egypt, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Spain, or the United States.

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I was going to start this article with: "The most annoying thing in Windows must be . . .". But then I stopped in my tracks, thinking, "How stupid of me -- there are plenty of annoying things in Windows! Who am I to name the MOST annoying thing?" It is annoying, however, that there is no straight way within Windows Explorer to create a new folder. The command is only accessible through the New command in the File menu, or as a subcommand under the New right-click command -- an obscure placement that stands in breathtaking disproportion to the usefulness of the command. Of course, there are plenty of juiced-up Windows Explorers (such as Total Commander), but if you don't want to make that jump you might want to try a little free application by the handy name of bxNewFolder to take care of the problem. This will give you a (not very handsome) toolbar button that allows you to create a new folder and activate F12 as a shortcut key to open the Create New Folder dialog within Windows Explorer -- nice and sweet.

Disclaimer: I have not tried it out on Vista, and since there is no official support for Vista listed, I would be careful.

I would also be careful with the following application that I found mentioned in the same newsletter where I found the preceding one: QTTabBar. QTTabBar provides what has become a matter of course for us after Opera and then Firefox and eventually IE made it into a useful feature for web browsers: tabbed browsing. If you think about it, there really is no reason not to have this feature in a file browser (i.e., Windows Explorer). QTTabBar allows you to have multiple tabs open in Windows Explorer, which certainly makes more sense than having tons of instances of Windows Explorer open. It officially supports Windows Vista, but I had an ugly crash after I installed it yesterday that may or may not have been related. I'm going to watch it for a little while longer and I'll let you know whether it's a good idea or not.

• Working with an agency as an intermediary, it may happen that you get paid full price for repetitions, fuzzy matches, etc., either because the agency or the client doesn't use a TEnT, or doesn't bother to leverage that material.
• The TM that you have developed is a hugely effective resource for recycling text (either whole sentences or fragments/phrases), as well as maintaining terminological purity or quirks of a particular client.
• I use my TEnT for every single electronic source text that I translate as a freelancer, even though in my domain (commercial/legal) there is relatively little repetition (except in financial reports). This way, the research that I do to discover some obscure (or Austrian or Swiss) legal term is stored in my TM as an equivalence with my name on it -- and you know whom you can trust!

I could not have said it better.