Collaborative tools for translators at the EP

Pedro García DiéguezHead of the CAT and collaborative tools service

08/04/2015

(DAS) Applications & IT Systems Development Unit

Information technology has grown to be an important part of translation business. Among other things IT helps to automate repetitive tasks and

to decrease the workload.

DAS deals with the management of IT developments for DG TRAD. This means that once an opportunity to improve the way we work is identified

and detailed at necessary level, the technological implementation is carried out by DAS in cooperation with the Requestor, ITS, DG ITEC and

other stakeholders.

•Currently we run 50 projects (45 people+TMA).•Our main areas are the workflow tools and the CAT tools•Organization: project-oriented and transversal activities (testing, architecture, methodology)•We do new projects; evolutive maintenance and technical migrations•Mainly we work in Oracle/Java and .NET for SDL Studio and Sharepoint

Challenges

• 2,3 million pages translated in the European Parliament in 2013

• Complex documents: 2 columns, embedded objects.

• Multilingual originals

• Tight deadlines

• High availability, good performance is a must

• Particularly during the peaks of high demand of the systems (pre-session and session weeks) – up to 12.000 projects/day

• Externalization process – Access from external translators

Lynx

• Local component of the new Elise

• Collaborative tool, based in Sharepoint

• Allows the exchange of notes regarding interinstitutional legislative procedures (but will be used by the Parliament and maybe other institutions also for non-legislative documents)

• Will comunicate/synchronize interinstitutional notes with the central repository hosted at the European Commission

• Translators will acess Lynx from their translation tools (Studio plugin and CAT4TRAD access)

• Prototype will be ready at the end of April 2015

4

Lynx – notes encoded in the EC central module

5

Elise 2 (EC)

Lynx (Parliament)

com

Note

Key (procedure #)MetadataNote

=

Lynx (Other institutions)

com

appWorkflow tools

Lynx – notes encoded in the local modules

6

Elise 2 (EC)

Lynx (Parliament)

com

Note

Key (procedure #)MetadataNote

=

Lynx (Other institutions)

com

appWorkflow tools

Fullcat

• Central server-based memory for our two CAT tools, CAT4TRAD and SDL Studio. SDL offers a similar product, but only for Studio.

• Overcomes the limitations of file-based memories in size and number of simultaneous users.

• Complements Euramis for segments not yet uploaded but already translated.

• Translators have access to the segments translated into other languages.

• The next foreseen development are thematic indexes (for instance, for budget documents).

7

FullCAT as a Shared service

In this example two documents are being translated at the same

time:a Draft INI Report

authored in Word / DocEPand

the corresponding Amendmentsauthored in XML / AT4AM.

Studio shares with CAT4TRADthrough FullCAT

the elements of the PR that are needed to pretranslate

the left hand column of the amendments. This happens also on the direction CAT4TRAD to

FullCAT.

New Fullcat plugin details: read and display results

• When the user moves from one segment to another, the fullcat plugin retrieves the results from the fullcat shared index and inserts them in the fullcat file-based memory. They are displayed in Studio.

• Results are displayed without any noticeable delay

9

Fullcat shared

Fullcat plugin FullcatTM.sdltm

SDL Studio

Segment lookup

Get fullcat matches

Write results to local memory

Display results

New Fullcat plugin details: write confirmed segments

• As soon as you confirm a segment in Studio (ctrl+Enter), it´s saved in Fullcat shared (Status «Translated») .

• The segment is immediately available for other users of Fullcat and Language versions.

10

Fullcat shared

Fullcat plugin FullcatTM.sdltm

SDL Studio

Confirm segment

Write the segment in Fullcat shared

Other translations

• The “Language versions” plugin allows the translator to verify the translation of a segment done by a colleague into another language, from the SDL Studio editor.

• It is based in Fullcat, therefore it’s available for consultation immediately after the first translator confirms the segment.

 

11

Collaborative tools for translators at the EP

Questions?

12

Collaborative tools for translators at the EP

Thank you very much for your attention!

13