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What's new in this release? |
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What's new in this release? |
With Alchemy CATALYST 12, the innovation accelerates!
Already recognized for supporting the broadest range of software formats in the industry, Alchemy CATALYST 12 pushes even further ahead. With the addition of more software formats, development teams know they have internationalization and translation covered on any development platform.
With usability a core design goal for this release, Alchemy CATALYST 12 includes a faster string list rendering, new customizable filters, enhanced Find & Replace features and Results window improvements.
Optimization doesn't stop there with a new Leverage Expert engine providing faster performance and improved fuzzy match results. Analysis Expert also made faster with customizable bands to suit your organization's needs.
Adding on to the support for documentation files Catalyst version 12.0 adds the FrameMaker format to ezParse™, bringing its superior approach to process automation and translation quality to the domain of documentation formats such as Word and Power Point.
In this release, we have focused on all the feedback from our users and incorporated many enhancements sought after. Alchemy CATALYST 12 greatly increases productivity as a result.
All the following new features have been implemented as a result of the feedback collected from our users. Listening to what you (our users) wanted the most in your favorite localization tool, these are the most sought after elements.
FrameMaker: Alchemy CATALYST 12 adds the ability to parse FrameMaker documents. From within FrameMaker, documents can be saved to the MIF interchange format. Localize this exchange format in CATALYST along with its software related product files to increase translation consistency and quality. Translated MIF files can be further edited in Adobe FrameMaker for any post-translation layout modification that may be required.
SVG: Scalable Vector Graphics are XML based files which are now added to the XML File group in the ezParse rules. Used widely in the web environment for its scalability, include this format to your localization projects and use the Visual View mode to review in your translations in context.
The Validation Expert is a time and money saving tool detecting numerous localization issues often introduced during the translation steps. It works by identifying issues before the translated files are integrated into a QA environment. As a result, the detected and corrected errors do not require to be reported by the QA team for each language in the project, or worse to be missed in the localized product.
It also insures consistency in the translations improving the quality of the translated text.
2 new Validation Tests have been introduced directly influenced by the feedback from our users:
ezScript™ is a Command Line Language that is used to automate repetitive tasks. It is a stateless programming language that is easy to learn and ideally suited for Engineers that want to automate many of the manual tasks associated with the localization process. Using ezScript it is possible to integrate Alchemy CATALYST in your project's build automation.
The following commands have been added to CATALYST 12:
JSON: Java Script Object Notation is a software resource format containing name-value pairs, sometimes in a hierarchical format. The ezParse technology in Alchemy CATALYST 11 has been extended to offer a rules based approach to identifying the parts of JSON that need translation (similar user interface to xml and text parsing).
Ribbon Controls: The best way to do achieve a right-first-time translation is to have as much information about a segment as possible at translation time. In the case of a Ribbon UI, this requires seeing the segment in full context. Continuing its tradition of visual localization, Alchemy CATALYST 11 presents Microsoft Ribbon Controls with a full visual display as well as the standard string list of segments.
Microsoft Word: Just like software files, Microsoft Word documents can now be simply dropped onto the Catalyst environment to start translating. Alternatively, include them in your scripts and automatically create translation kits with your doc(x) files.
Adobe PDF: The Portable Document Format (PDF) is a widely used format for presenting documents in a way that is independent of hardware and software. Its global adoption means it must often be localized for new markets. Alchemy CATALYST 11 now supports this process and extracts segments from PDF for translation and localization. The translated output is a doc file which can then be converted to PDF if needed.
InDesign: Alchemy CATALYST 11 also adds the ability to read and write InDesign documents. From within InDesign, documents can be saved to the IDML interchange format. IDML is the format supported in Catalyst. The IDML can be further edited in Adobe InDesign for any post-translation layout modification that may be required.
Microsoft Power Point:: Presentation files ppt(x) are parsed in Alchemy CATALYST 11 with segments presented for translation and localization in the same way as any other format.
XLIFF Export/Import: Alchemy CATALYST 11 adds the very exciting ability to export content from a Catalyst project to the industry interchange format - xliff. The Developer Pro edition boasts the new feature that exports Catalyst source and target segments as well as additional information such as locks, memos, context-links and translation states to xliff. The modified xliff document can then be re-imported back into the Catalyst project meaning the translation of Catalyst projects can now happen in Catalyst or any xliff editor.
TM Machine Translated & Fuzzy Status: When leveraging from translation memories, Alchemy CATALYST 11 maintains more detail about the TM segment's status. For Review and Signed Off states were always maintained during a leverage, but Alchemy CATALYST 12 goes further and maintains the Machine Translated and Fuzzy Matched states of segments that have them. This is important in an agile process where linguistic review may not happen at every cycle.
TM Details: Our linguists requested more information about the source of translation memory hit. During the translation process when translation memory hits are offered as suggestions, Alchemy CATALYST 11 gives detailed information about the TM segment. New information such as where the TM hit came from and it's translation status are displayed prominently in the Reference tab of the Translator Toolbar.
TM Penalty: It is sometimes desirable to apply a penalty to segments coming from a particular TM. This could be if trying to distinguish between multiple TM sources, or if a particular TM is deemed to be of poorer quality. Alchemy CATALYST 11 makes this a simple matter by offering the option of applying a percentage based penalty at the TM level.
The Pseudo Translate Expert in Catalyst has aided countless development teams to better internationalization processes. It is a very flexible engine that covers language definition, text expansion, substitution, replacement as well as pre- and post-segment characters. Though extremely thorough, there was one enhancement that was frequently requested - users wanted more control over the level of text expansion. Alchemy CATALYST 11 delivers on this request by offering the ability to define different expansion rates based on the length of the source segment. It means short strings such as 'Ok' or 'Save' can be expanded by up to 300%, while longer sentences may only need 30% expansion. Not only that, but this latest edition also facilitates text reduction too.
The initial release of Term Harvest saw the feature expertly tuned for identifying terms in software content. The new document formats supported in this edition of Catalyst required a change to how terms are identified. Term Harvest needed to become much more intelligent and much more language aware. It is now a full natural language processor that identifies terms in your content comparing usage statistics in your content with general usage. It scores and ranks the most likely terms. It comes with a new editing environment for honing the term list and facilitates this process to be done over a number of sessions by saving the list to continue at a later stage.
Ribbon UI: Catalyst is known for being easy to use. The three core windows of Navigator, Workspace & Translator Toolbar form a logical paradigm that facilitate selection, viewing and modification of content with in a project. This model is maintained in the latest release, but Alchemy CATALYST 11 adopts a Ribbon user interface to bring more of the features to the attention of users. The features are presented in logical groups and are easier to access.
Layout: the arrangement of windows is updated to use screen real estate more efficiently. With access to the Experts via the ribbon, more space is devoted to the Translator Toolbar with larger areas for key aspects such as source, target and TM areas. Memos and segment properties are more logically presented and permanently visible.
MadCap Flare: Alchemy CATALYST 10 brings its renowned feature set to the world of MadCap Flare Projects. Just drop in your *.flprj file to securely translate, visually engineer and confidently validate your MadCap Flare projects.
Google Android APK Parsing: While source localization still remains powerful, this radical innovation brings binary localization to Android Packages (*.apk). Multilingual processing and visual display as standard for Android activity screens.
MS Visual Studio 2010: Launch the localization of your Visual Studio projects by simply dropping the project file into Alchemy CATALYST. The application reads your standard and .NET project files (*.csproj, *.vcproj or *.vbproj) creating TTKs with all the localizable content.
Terminology Harvest Expert: CATALYST has intimate statistical knowledge of terminology. With a sophisticated identification algorithm and an Expert for automatically removing the noise terms, Alchemy CATALYST 10 creates accurate terminology databases in minutes. Use for pre-flight with source only content or for generating approved terminology post-translation.
Project Division Expert: Efficiently manage large projects by dividing segments equally between team members – with no loss of context! Optimize for duplicates to ensure repeated segments are translated only once. Merge sub-projects back into master project.
Update Expert: Be agile! The Update Expert ensures your parallel development and localization paths remain in synch. Available through the user interface, or via automation, this Expert instantly incorporates updates from your development cycle into your localization projects.
Adaptable Validation Expert: This clever innovation turbo boosts CATALYST’s trusted Validation Expert. New customizable tests revolutionize Software Localization validation. Use these CATALYST 10 tests to check for consistency of user defined patterns, define your own invalid or ‘black-listed’ terms and verify the correct translation for precise patterns.
Automated Segment Locking: Keyword or sub-segment locking significantly improved the linguistic quality of projects localized in Alchemy CATALYST 9.0. The latest release gives this feature wings. In addition to sub-segments, users can now lock entire segments by ID or by content patterns using regular expressions. Engineer your projects once only and store the locking information in a separate file for use across all projects and by anyone on your team.
Machine Translation: Machine Translation sources are an integral part of Alchemy CATALYST 10. Assuming users have selected to allow MT on their projects, the new ‘MT’ status distinguishes between human and machine translated content. The MT functionality dovetails with Translation Memory (TM) lookup such that any segments with no TM match are automatically machine translated.
Search: Search by ID, search memo content, Find and Replace by regular expression, search only last results. Significant user requested productivity features that have become part of Alchemy CATALYST.
Cloud Hosting: Build and Share with your industry colleagues! View online or download available ezParse rules, Validation tests and Pseudo Translation Languages.
Context Links: External context information, such as images are now stored on a segment by segment basis. These links can be local file paths or online URLs. They can be set in the Properties area of the Translator Toolbar or in batch by inserting xliff files containing x-references.
Reference Browser: In-context translation increases quality and time-to-market as the translation is right first time avoiding the need for iterative review. The Reference Browser is used to provide context by displaying Context Link images.
Memo Field: Alchemy CATALYST 10 places the memo field directly into the workspace area giving visual notification of a memo’s presence and content. Accelerators: Save time and enhance quality by using external references within Alchemy CATALYST 10. External reference sites such as currency/measurement convertors are now invoked using the in-app reference browser.
