I have mentioned
before that Star, the maker of one of the veteran TEnTs -- Star Transit -- has been
working on a completely updated version of their tool, Star Transit NXT. I
had seen it demonstrated a number of times, and based on that I mentioned that
the user interface has been completely revamped. Now that I've had a chance to
look more closely, I've found that a good number of other things have changed
as well.
The UI looks
ultramodern: it's the no-menu, ribbon-style interface that we have already seen
in Office 2007, complemented by a "resource bar" at the bottom
of the windows with quick access to often-used features and settings and
toolbars on the sides that give you access to so-called "floating windows"
-- windows that briefly pop up and then disappear unless you make them stay by
clicking on a thumbtack icon. When Office 2007 was released the ribbon
feature drew quite a bit of criticism because it was so different from before,
but I suspect that Transit will not experience the same backlash. Many
folks are now accustomed to the look of Office 2007, and for Transit,
a tool that is full of features you would never know about unless you spent time
going through the menus, the more proactive way of displaying features in the
ribbon bar makes a lot of sense. Plus, it puts an end to the very old-fashioned
look and feel that the previous versions of Transit had.
By the way, the same
new look has not been achieved with the help system, which is in a terrible
state. To say that it's retro would put way too much of a positive spin on it:
I was not even able to launch it from within Transit itself! Fortunately
there are a number of online video-based tutorials that are quite helpful, though they are hard to use
because of their immense size. I hope that Star will make those
available to (potential) customers on a CD.
Here are some of the
new, behind-the-UI concepts that are introduced with this new version of Transit:
·
"Dual Fuzzy" search
·
Terminology database based on markup information
·
User role-based system
·
Preview in HTML/PDF/XML
·
Localization formats
·
TBX and XLIFF support
·
Editable keyboard shortcuts
Let's go through
this list from the bottom to the top:
·
One of my major gripes about the old version of Transit was that
you were not able to customize keyboard shortcuts. Well, now you can. Under Transit
button> User preferences> Customize, you can select the Customize
button to change keyboard shortcuts. While the feature does not seem to be
completely ready (for instance, it does not show the current key combination),
it works fine. This feature is very helpful because it allows you to customize Transit
to the keyboard combinations of another TEnT, in case you use it only as a
secondary tool.
·
TBX support is very nice. Most of you know that TBX is the terminology
exchange format (comparable to TMX for TMs). So far Transit had only
supported MARTIF, which is the precursor to TBX. It looks as though TBX might
have finally "made" it with this recruitment of another of the major
tools, especially one like Transit's TermStar with its large
terminology component. Congratulations.
XLIFF is also supported at the same level than Transit's own
"packaged" project files.
· The localization formats that are now supported (well, actually not
"now" -- the version that I have does not support this feature yet)
include EXE and DLL files, RC files, and WinHelp RTF and Word files. I
am not sure that the localization tool vendors should be terribly afraid of
competition from Transit. While Transit offers some features like
resizing available, it obviously does not have the breadth of features for
these formats that tools like Passolo and Catalyst have. Plus I
am not sure how relevant EXE and DLL files still are (and especially WinHelp Word
and RTF), when so much localization is now happening in completely different
formats. Still, it will be a nice feature once it works.
·
The preview feature also will be nice -- but I could not get it to work
on my machine. I have seen it work in demos, though, and it is essentially a
feature that allows you to pull up one of those floating windows mentioned
above and see the real-time result of your translation in correct formatting
and context in PDF, HTML or -- if you have the appropriate stylesheet -- XML.
Quite helpful. What I will be interested in once it works is how resource-heavy
this feature is -- particularly when it comes to PDFs.
These have been the
"nice-that-they-have-that-too" features. Now on to the big ones:
·
There is much emphasis on a roles-based system in Transit. When
you open the program, it asks you what role you would like to take on. It comes
with about 12 different pre-configured ones (such as Project Manager,
Translator, Reviewer, Alignment Specialist, or Terminologist), but you can configure
as many as you like yourself. Each user role gives you access to the set of
features that that kind of user needs while graying out the undesired features.
It's easy to switch your role (if your role does indeed allow for that) by
selecting the User Roles button on the resource bar. I could imagine
that this feature will be quite welcome and helpful in corporate settings.
·
It took me forever to understand what's so new and different about Transit's
new way of handling markup -- i.e., numeric codes that store information about
the formatting or other internal coding within a segment. While it's different
and more user-friendly than in earlier versions of Transit, it did not
seem so different from the way Déjà Vu, MemoQ, or SDLX
handle markup. Finally I realized that Transit is using the markup
system to also build up a project-internal terminology database. If you have a
very markup-intensive text, this might come in really handy because it will
make sure that you always use the same term for any word or phrase that
contains markup. The matches are displayed alongside the "normal"
terminology matches.
·
The dual fuzzy system also took me awhile to understand, but now that
I've gotten it I REALLY like it. I think that it's real progress in the way
TEnTs process translation memory data. Of course, strictly speaking Transit
does not have any "translation memory" since it only refers to
reference material that consists of earlier projects without having the language
material sitting in an external database. Still, the concept is similar to
accessing previous translation by "normal" database-based TMs. What
is really different about the dual fuzzy system is that it not only looks in
the source portion of the reference material but also in the target. Here is
how it works: Let's say you don't have a perfect or a fuzzy match for a segment
and you start to type the translation. As soon as you do that, Transit
looks for matches in all target segments that contain the same translation data
you are currently entering -- even if it is just two or three words -- and
displays the sentences that contain them in a "bubble window" (which
is essentially an overlaid window with the matches that you can now complete
and enter as your final translation.) As soon as you have done that, the bubble
window disappears (you can also make it go away by pressing Esc). This really is a new paradigm
since it gives you on-the-fly access to data that was always there but not
really used.
Very cool. I've played with this new version for a couple of hours but I
haven't worked on it with very large projects. Once I do that, I'll report on what
kind of resources are needed to do that kind of processing. I would suspect not
too much, though, since previously reference searches in Transit were extremely
fast and used few resources -- one of the benefits of the "other
kind" of TM processing.
As far as pricing,
there seem to be three different version -- Freelance Pro, Professional,
and Workstation. The price list I was sent did not contain update prices
for the "Smart" edition of Transit XV that I had been using --
I certainly hope that this was an oversight and it's still available. Also, as
previously for any "special" filter -- such as for InDesign, FrameMaker,
PageMaker, QuickSilver, AutoCAD, or the localization formats
-- it has to be bought separately. Transit was never known for easy
pricing structures and/or trial versions -- I had to sign a contract just for a
silly trial version -- but we do what we need to do to get to the software we
like, I guess.
Oh, and I will
continue and deepen this review with Michael Benis in the form of a video
conversation on TranslatorsTraining.
Stay tuned.