Why use Xbench 3.0 to review your translations?

What is Xbench?

ApSIC Xbench is a terminology management and translation quality control tool. It is great for organizing glossaries, creating customized checklists, and performing final quality checks on your translation project to ensure it has no terminology inconsistencies or issues with formatting, style, spelling, among others.

Xbench has 2 versions: 2.9 (free) and 3.0 (paid). Though version 2.9 is a good starting point for you to familiarize yourself with the tool, we recommend investing in Xbench 3.0, since this version offers a more robust tool, compatible with more resources and settings, besides having technical support from ApSIC. Version 2.9 had its development frozen since the launch of version 3.0 and will soon stop receiving technical support. Check here the main differences between both versions of ApSIC Xbench.

Why use Xbench in your review

After installing any version of Xbench on your computer, you will need to create an account to access the tool. Having done that, you can already use Xbench to incorporate termbases, create customized checklists and glossaries and generate a full report to assess the quality of your translation.

In Xbench 3.0, you will find several resources to ensure quality in your translation during your work and before delivering it to your client. Check out what you can do with the tool:

During translation:

• Check terms in a glossary, quickly switching from the CAT tool environment to your Xbench glossary by using keyboard shortcuts;
• Automatically insert glossary terms to your translation in the CAT tool by using keyboard shortcuts;
• Check glossary terms both in the source and target languages.

After translation:

• Check spelling in the translated files;
• Check linguistic inconsistencies between source and target texts (missing words, different punctuation, etc);
• Check formatting inconsistencies between source and target texts (tags, links, spacing, symbols, etc);
• Check alphanumerical and numerical (dates, values, hours) inconsistencies;
• Check terminological inconsistencies (if the glossary shows “casa” as the translation for “house” but it was translated as “moradia”, the tool reports it as an issue to be fixed);
• Create customized checklists for each project (for instance, you can highlight terms that should not be used or translated and even include style instructions).

Did you like this tip? Read our next articles on the series to learn how to create glossaries and checklists, generate QA reports, and more.