Attach files to jobs and other new features

Today’s release brings these new features to standard projects:

• A project manager can now attach files to a document to translate: Screenshots, instructions, edited or post-edited files…
• A supplier can now upload attachments with the translated file such as post-edited or layouted versions
• Final or intermediary deliverables from translator, reviser, DTP… can now be stored in one place and shared within the team.

For all the other freshly released features please check out the list at the upcoming features page.

All the topics discussed below apply to standard projects. We will add the same feature set to Codyt soon.

Attaching files to documents to translate/revise

Look at the following translation job page. As usual, you find the list of documents to translate together with the “Conduct work” buttons to carry out work.

But hey, there is a new icon next to the work status!! Yes, this is the new “attachment icon”:

With this icon a project manager can attach files to a document: Screenshots, instructions, reference material, post edited source files and whatever might be needed by the supplier or simply for reference purposes…

Source file attachments

Click the icon and a popup opens:

In the upper part you would upload source material (in our example English is the source language).

The supplier sees the same attachment icons. Blue color stands for “Click me, there are files for you!”.

Translation attachments / deliverables

The bottom list in the popup is there for the suppliers: A translator can upload an intermediary deliverable, the reviser can store a revised document version, The DTP person uploads DTP work, etc.:

It is a convenient place to keep different versions of a translated document together. And best of all, a document’s attachments are accessible to all the people involved.

When translating online, is this feature needed?

Question reformulated: Shall I now tell translators/revisers to build the final file and upload as an attachment? Or is it still me, the project manager, to build the translated file once the translation/revision job is done?

The latter is still the recommended way to go in most scenarios. But then there are situations where you expect the supplier to post edit or re-layout a translated file.

Somehow, these post-edits or DTP ops need to be delivered  Attachments are your solution…

2. New “offline work” page

We have entirely reworked and “beautified” the offline translation page.

At first glance it seems to offer the same functionality as before: A link to download the source file and a link to upload the translation. That’s it.

However, a major change took place with the addition of the two check boxes to access the aforementioned source and translation attachments.

Where can I see the attachments in the project document library?

If you attach a file to “myfile.doc”, the system creates a subfolder “myfile.doc_” (underscore appended). Navigate to the different languages to see the resoective attachments.

In the screenshot below, I selected English in the left pane and all “English” attachments for “Capture.jpg” are located in “Capture.jpg_“.

To see the files added by the French translator simply select the French folder in the left pane:

You can add, modify or delete attachments from here as well…

Thank you for reading us!

 

Drag & Drop files from your desktop to a project

Adding files to a project requires use of the “much beloved” file selector dialog… We are all used to this dialog since ages, but times change: With the latest browser versions we are now able to offer you a better alternative:

How to drag & drop files

1. Go to a project’s documents page and look for the “Drag & Drop files” link.

2. Click the link and drag your files from your PC/Mac into the highlighted box:

The files are copied to the selected documents folder.

Goodie: This new tool also allows to use the file selector (see Select button). Here you can now select multiple files as well, something the classic upload link does not allow.

Dropping complete folders

You cannot drop complete folders (maybe in future browser versions).

Instead, zip your folder and drop the zip archive. Then, in the library, right click the zip file and choose ‘Extract here’.

Browser support

This feature is available for the latest Firefox, Chrome and Safari browsers.

Internet Explorer is not supported (we have to wait for version 10).

Notes

When an upload fails, you will see an error message. Typical errors are:

• A file exceeds the maximum size of 200 MB
• A file already exists and is marked for online or offline translation

New price list management features. Assign to clients, copy, modify…

We have added a set of features for more efficient price management in Wordbee:

• Assign – Price lists can now be assigned to specific clients. When calculating costs the system will propose assigned price lists only.
• Enable/Disable – Price lists can be disabled/enabled. This is useful when working on a new price list. While disabled, prices are hidden from all costing tools.
• Copy – Price lists can be copied to create new price lists. The copy tool permits to adjust prices by fixed amount or percentage.
• Modify – Selected items in a price list can be modified in one step. Set all amounts to new value or adjust amounts by percentage.

Supplier price lists come with the same improvements with the exception of the first item.

Client price list management – New features

To access your client price lists (i.e. the prices at which you sell your services), click “My Companies” in the top navigation menu and then “Prices”. The changes are highlighted in yellow:

The changes are:

Create a copy

In the top and next to the price list selector, you can see a new “Create a copy” link. Select the price list to copy and then click this link. A dialog opens and asks you for a new name. Optionally, you can add/subtract a percentage or amount at the same time.

Disable/Enable

A price list can be disabled by clicking the “Disable” link. A disabled price list is still visible/editable in the price list management pages but cannot be used for cost calculation.

This feature was added for two purposes: (a) When working on a new price list you will likely want to enable it only once it is finished and approved. (b) When a price list becomes outdated or obsolete, disabling is an alternative to deleting. A deleted price list is simply gone.

Assigning clients

In the screenshot above look for the “Applies to clients” field. It says that the price list is used for two specific clients only. Wordbee enforces this restriction throughout the costing process.

Now, by default, your price lists are available to all clients:

Click the link and the client selection dialog shows up:

In order to assign specific clients, simply click the “Add client” button and choose one or more clients. Then click the “Clients” button. In our example, we have now assigned two clients:

Closing the dialog now shows this indicator in our sample price list:

Creating new price lists – Hide from clients by default?

When you create a new price list (or a copy of an existing one), the price list will be available to all clients by default: The indicator will say “Applies to clients: All clients”. If you prefer that new price lists are, by default, hidden from all clients then you can configure the system accordingly.

Click “Settings” in the top navigation menu then “Invoicing processes”. Then edit the option highlighted below:

Modify multiple prices in one step

You can now modify all, filtered or ticked prices in one step. In the screen below, I intend to change the amounts of three prices. I first tick the concerned rows.

Note: If you do not tick any row then the changes are applied to all filtered rows (use the Search tool to apply a filter).

Next, click the “Change amounts” button and you will see the dialog below. In this example, I reduce amounts by 10% and round them to 3 digits after the comma. You can combine all proposed options or even run the tool multiple times for the same items.

The result is:

Viewing all price lists assigned to a client

We have added a new page to the client record pages. The page lets you see all price lists available for a client and it further lets you set the client default. The latter is not a new feature (you could change the default when editing a client record) but more easily accessible.

Below I navigated to a client record and then clicked the brand new “Prices” tab:

To change the default price list simply click the respective  ”set default” link.

Supplier price list management – New features

The feature set is basically the same as what was described for client price lists in the previous chapter. Of course, you cannot assign a supplier price list to clients (since YOU are the supplier’s client).

Google/Microsoft Document Machine Translation added

We are happy to announce that Wordbee now lets you machine translate complete documents with Google Translate and the Microsoft Translator.

How much does it cost?

Both Google and Microsoft are pay services with Microsoft offering a free plan for small monthly translation volumes. When launching the Wordbee machine translation tools, you will be asked to subscribe to a system if this is not yet done.

Please note: MT is ready to be used in all Wordbee accounts. You will not be charged by Wordbee for any translations. Simply subscribe to Google or Microsoft and you are ready to go!

Machine translate documents, step by step

In a standard project click the “Work & Delivery” tab and you will find a new “Machine translate” button. Click the button to translate either all filtered documents or just the ones you ticked.

The following dialog will show up:

Tick your preferred MT system. If your project has multiple target languages you will be able to make a selection per language. If an MT system does not support a language couple, the option is disabled.

In our example, the Google system is not enabled and you can click the “Enable now!” link to subscribe. I have ticked Microsoft Translator because I have already subscribed earlier. Before you click “OK”, please check out the options in the lower part.

Upon completion, open the translation editor. Machine translated segments show up in brown color and with a special “MT” icon:

Codyt projects

With Codyt projects it works very much the same. Click the “Jobs” tab in the project and then the “Machine Translate” button.

How do I subscribe?

Click the “Settings” button in the top navigation menu, then click “Machine translation”. In my sample page below you see that I am subscribed to Microsoft but did not do so with Google.

If I want to add Google, I simply click the “Upgrade to unlimited use” link to view instructions. Upon successful subscription with Google I obtain from them an “API key”. Paste this key into the field shown below:

Subscribing to Microsoft in Wordbee works very much the same. If you have any troubles please contact Wordbee support.

IMPORTANT: Google lets you delimit the amount of characters you can translate per second. Please put this limit as high as possible (e.g. 10.000 chars/sec/user) or Wordbee will not be able to send all your texts to Google fast enough.

Access rights

Wordbee lets you restrict the users who can use this new functionality. Look for the “Machine Translation” section in the “Access Rights” page. By default, the Administrator, the Managers and the Team Leaders are authorised. Please keep in mind that you are charged by Microsoft/Google for each translation!

What do I do if an MT translation fails?

If you receive an error message, make sure that:

• Your subscriptions with Google or Microsoft did not expire.
• You double checked the Google or Microsoft API keys you have pasted into Wordbee
• Google: You set translation quotas for characters/second/user  sufficiently high (at least 10.000 per second)
• Google: You authorised the Wordbee server to use your API key (Google has such an option)

What about word counts and costing?

If you run a word count after running a machine translation, all the translated segments will be counted (and costed) as “100% pre-translations”.

In an upcoming release we will link MT directly into the word count workflow step. MT counts will then show up  as a separate column in the word count and price lists (clients/suppliers) will permit indication of a dedicated discount.

Stay tuned!

Custom fields: Add meta data or attributes to your terminology and TM contents

Wordbee now allows adding user defined attributes (meta-data) to your terminology databases and TMs. Sample attributes are:

• Term category
• Term description or context
• A status
• A hyperlink
• Usage rules
• QA: An error category for QA purposes
• …

Before you can view, edit or filter your fields, you first need to tell the system the ones you require. This is described at the bottom of this page. But before that let us give you a quick idea of how segment attributes can be viewed and edited:

Viewing and editing segment attributes

To edit a segment’s properties, click the “pencil” icon in the editor:

Or, use the pencil icon for search results in the “Translation Finder”:

Finally, to quickly view all properties, use the “info” icon:

Finally, the “Filter” button in the editor let’s you search segments by attributes.

Setup – Define the fields you need

Please click on “Settings”, scroll down the page and select “Custom fields”. From this page add all attributes you need for your terminology and TM  records:

Each field can be configured:

In the screen above, the Acronym field is a pick list with a Yes/No option. It is marked as mandatory which means that whenever a user edits a segment’s properties the user must choose either Yes or No.

Special attention should be given to access rights:

• You can define, individually per field, whether internal and external users can see the field or edit the field.
• In addition, accessibility can be set for individual users. For example you might have a group of internal users who cannot edit custom fields and others who can. To customise user specific rights please go to “Settings” and then “Access rights”. Choose a user profile and tick/untick the boxes related to custom fields.

Import/Export

When importing or exporting a term base or TM, the custom fields will be included.

New page notifying upcoming features

Dear Wordbee users!

We have added a new page which lists upcoming features 3 to 14 days prior to release:

http://wordbeeblog.wordpress.com/upcoming-features/

Please subscribe to this page if you would like to receive any updates by email.

Thank you!

Your Wordbee Team

Better dashboard, Translate document updates, Email translation comments and more

Today we released quite a large number of new product features:

1. The dashboard is now customisable and shows work status
2. Translating document updates a breeze. This week’s magic pill!
3. Notify team by email when adding comments in translation editor 
4. Download all translated documents as a zip in Work & Delivery page 
5. Send suggestions from the Global Search tool
6. View list of recent email notifications sent from your platform

Let’s look at all this in detail:

Dashboard

The dashboard now lets you add, remove and re-arrange the different “widgets” or “panels”. Click the title bar of a widget and drag it into a new position. To add a widget click the customise dashboard link in the top right corner.

The new “Activity” widget shows work status information such as: How many projects open? Deadlines overrun or due today? etc.

To see the number of currently connected/working users you need to login as administrator (available with Team Editions only).

Recommendation: Please include only the widgets you really need in your dashboard. The more widget you put the slower the page will load in your browser!

Efficiently Translate New Document Versions (with Standard Projects)

Imagine: Three months ago you had translated version 1 of a user manual. This morning you receive an updated version. The document has some 200 pages. Mmmm… Comparing the documents to find differences? Tedious! Pre-translating with a translation memory? TMs will just add context related errors! And we have to work into 5 languages…

Please Wordbee, give me the magic pill !!!!

This is how you do it: In the project library below you can see the version 1 of our document which I had fully translated into two languages two weeks ago. I am now uploading the new version 2 to the project:

As usual, you right click the file and choose “Mark for online translation”. In the popup that opens, you will find the new magic option (see yellow marker):

Tick the “Pre-translate” option and then pick the previous file version. Upon confirmation of this screen, the system will pre-translate all portions of version 2 texts that did not change with respect to version 1. The remainder, added or modified segments, are left blank.

This operation is highly reliable: It analyses location and context of each piece of text. This is much more reliable than even context sensitive translation memories – contact me (Stephan at sbohmig at wordbee.com) if you would like to learn more.

In the translation editor version 2 now looks like this:

The first three segments are pre-translated. The green arrow icons to the left tell you that the source text and its context (text before and after) is identical and therefore translations can be trusted fully. The blue icon means that the translation was copied over but the text before or after is different. This means that the context changed and a verification is required. The fourth segment in the example is new in version 2. It must be translated…

A final word: If your document is for multiple languages, the system will pre-translate all of them. Our example is for a web page but you can use this feature for any type of document, including multi-lingual formats such as Excel, Xml or Xliff.

This feature works with Standard projects. In Codyt you do it a bit differently: Right click the old version and choose the “Manage” option. Then click the “Upload new version” tab.

Notify Team by Email when Adding Comments in Translation Editor

As you know, translators, revisers, managers or even clients may attach comments and notes to all or individual segments. A corner stone for efficient collaboration and tractability. What was somewhat missing was the possibility to notify the team by email whenever important comments were added. This is now possible.

Below I am adding a new comment and I am ticking the new “Notify by email” box. You then simply select the people to notify by email and a message is sent out.

The drop down proposes the project manager and everyone involved with the the current language couple and document. When adding a comment to a translation memory or glossary, the system will propose the project manager and the people who have worked on this very specific segment.

Try it out and let your team know!

Download all Translations as Zip in Work & Delivery page

A new button was added to the Work & Delivery page toolbar.

One click to download all filtered or selected documents as a zip archive:

Send Suggestions from the Global Search Tool

If a team member sees a translation in the Global Search page that may require improvement, he/she can now send a suggestion to the manager. We have added an email icon next to each search result:

Click the icon and fill in your suggestions and comments. The manager of the platform instantly receives an email.

Initial setup: You need to specify the email to which suggestions are sent. Go to “Settings” and then “Global Search”. If no email is specified, the email icons do not show up.

About Global Search: This tool is an optional module in Wordbee. It permits to full text search all your projects, documents and translation memories. It works much like a web search engine.

View Recent Email Notifications

With the Team Editions of Wordbee, you know that jobs, orders, etc. are accompanied by email notifications. We have added a new page that lets you review recently sent emails.

Log in as administrator, move mouse over the “Settings” and choose “Current Activity”. In the opening page choose “Email notification”.

 

Updates: Multilingual XML translation and UI enhancements

We are happy to write about the latest changes to Wordbee Translator:

Translating multilingual XML files

Multilingual xml files contain text in multiple languages. Example:

<myxml>
     <paragraph id="1">
            <text lang="en">English text</text>
            <text lang="fr">Texte francais</text>
            <text lang="de">Deutscher Text</text> 
     </paragraph>
     <paragraph id="2">
            <text lang="en">English text</text>
     </paragraph>
    ....
</myxml>

With Wordbee you can now translate such multilingual files. If your files already contains translations then these are simply imported as pre-translations. Once imported, use the translation editor to complete translations in all languages.

As it is the case with mono-lingual xml, you first need to tell the system which nodes are translatable and how it can identify the languages. Go to “Settings” > “Xml files” for setup:

The configuration options are vast and I will write a separate blog for this. If you need help, please send us an sample file!

Keep search forms always open – pin & unpin

Client, project, supplier, job etc. search forms are closed by default. If you are filtering lists very frequently you might have wished that the search criteria are visible by default. This is now possible:

Click the blue “pin” to keep the search form always open. Each search form can be pinned or unpinned individually.

Excel glossary import – Remember settings

Wordbee permits to import glossaries/terminology from Excel sheets, Open Office sheets or CSV files. The tedious part is that you need to specify the columns containing the different languages or comments. If you are importing similar files over and over again, this may quickly become tedious.

We added a link to save your settings with a name and recall them for future imports. The screenshot below shows the Excel import settings. Click the “Load / Save form” link to remember or recall all settings shown:

That’s the news for today! Next week you will see these additions: A customisable dashboard,  email notification of comments added in the translation editor, an improved export functionality in the global search and more.

Translate PDFs with Wordbee

Wordbee now lets you translate PDF documents! This is how it goes:

1. Upload and convert your PDFs to Microsoft Word
2. Translate
3. Deliver…

Easy said… and easy done:

How to translate PDFs

In the screenshot below you see a project to which I uploaded two PDF files. Select the two files and then I click the Convert Pdf  link.

The system converts the files to Microsoft Word and saves the result to the library. Look for the two Word files that have been added:

Double click the files to review the conversion. You will be positively surprised!

All that remains to be done is the translation of the two Word files. Proceed as usual!

Technical stuff: Text vs. Images

Please note that any text contained in images is NOT extracted. The converter does not do optical character recognition (OCR). 

With text based pdf files you will likely be surprised with the superior quality of our converter. It goes beyond what the typical desktop tools are capable of. Formatting, styles and graphical elements are preserved to a max.

Conversions may be more or less speedy depending on size and contents. Conversion times of 30 seconds or more are normal for bigger PDFs. Please also note that the conversion service is time shared with other users.

Please note: Password protected files cannot be converted.

The other way round: Converting Word to Pdf

Download any of the many free pdf printer plugins for MS Word (if not already included in your MS Word version). Simply print your translated Word files to Pdf.

Trial and Pricing

You can try out the converter at no charge for a limited period of time. If your trial is not enabled please contact us.

If you would like to use the tool beyond the trial period, we charge a small annual fee. Please contact us for pricing.

Project & Order management extends to Localization, Subtitling, Dubbing, DTP and more

Wordbee now lets you explicitly create projects and jobs for work such as:

• Translation, Revision, Proofreading
• Certified translation
• Layouting, DTP
• Localisation, Games localisation, Graphics localisation
• Dubbing, Voice over, Subtitling
• Language identification
• more upon request

You can now create a “Subtitling” jobs and define prices for that service both on client and supplier side.

With this new feature, the order form adds a task selector:

• Let clients choose tasks, such as [ ] Translation [ ]Proofreading…

To add new tasks to your platform or order form, please read on:

Enable new tasks

Click the “Settings” link in the top navigation menu and then “Translation tasks”. The configuration shows up:

The top box shows tasks available in projects and jobs.

The bottom box shows up if you are using the client portal module (if enabled). Enable tasks and your public and non public order forms may look like this:

Please note: The new tasks are not available with Codyt projects but Standard projects and jobs only.