MultiTrans Pro 3.6

 

Rafael Guzmán reviews the latest edition of Multitrans Pro

Originally published in March 2005 issue of Localisation Focus. To learn more about Localisation Focus, click here.

Not so long ago, Madsen and Thomsen (Copenhagen Business School) warned that “It must cost an individual company - and society as a whole - considerable sums of money when technical messages are not understood or, even worse, are misunderstood.” The following article will briefly describe some of the features of MultiTrans Pro that help to address this issue.

Main function

Multitrans is a translation tool that enables translators to create multilingual corpora. With this tool translators can easily identify the context of terms and expressions they may not be familiar with, thus enabling them to translate more accurately. In addition, terms can be extracted, managed and exported from the corpora to a purpose built terminology database. Multitrans can also double as a translation workbench and translation memory tool through its ability to interact with text editors.

The main modules
MultiTrans has five modules: TransCorpora, TermBase, TransTerm, Analysis, and ListBuilder.

From the view menu, the user can activate the TransCorpora module. Its 8-step wizard guides the user through the process of creating a corpus file, selecting any number of translated versions of the original file. Multitrans will then automatically align them. The user is then able to search the corpus files by entering any term or expression. MultiTrans will display the context for each expression or term contained in any of the stored files (Figure 1).

Figure 1: TransCorpora module

However, source and target files do not always have the same number of sentences or bookmarks (e.g. paragraph markers). Therefore the Multitrans alignment might not be perfect. This can be corrected manually if the user finds any misalignment while searching the corpora as Multitrans allows quick readjustment of alignments for required segments.

By creating a new project from the File menu, specific corpora and termbases can be grouped together in a project file (*.WRK). This file contains all the settings for a given project (e.g. dates, statistics, etc.).

The TermBase module lets the user build bilingual terminology databases (also called "TermBases"). Here, the user can find different translations for a given term. Using the Fields Definition dialogue box, the user can customise this module to display different types of information (e.g. definitions). TermBase can also be used when translating documents using the TransTerm module. From the TermBase menu, the user can switch the termbase, indicate where to copy them, and export expressions into different file formats (see Table 1).

The TransTerm module is a facility that allows Multitrans to function in a similar manner to a traditional Translation Memory tool. This text editor add-in allows users to display a drop-down TransTerm menu which creates a translation workbench, that is capable of interacting with corpus files and TermBases previously created by the user.

The Analysis module produces detailed statistics that are useful for project managers, indicating items such as the number of words, number of alignments, fuzzy match available, number of repetitions, expressions found in the termbases, and sentence coverage from existing corpora.

Finally, the ListBuilder module guides the user in pairing up previously translated documents, which can then be used by the TransCorpora module.

 

Table 1

 

Intended target users

Authors, translators, terminologists, and language researchers.

 

Price

MultiTrans Light: USD/$689 (excluding shipping costs) or CAD/$899 (excluding tax and shipping). Pricing information for MultiTrans Professional is available by request from Multicorpora.

 

 

Requirements	Minimum	Recommended
Operating System	Windows 9x, NT 4	Windows 2000 or XP
Processor	Pentium 200 MHz	Pentium III
RAM	128 MB	256 MB
Disk Space	75 MB	-
Monitor	800 x 600	1024 x 768

 

 

Product Rating	Excellent	Very Good	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory
User friendliness		✓
Value for money		✓
Multilingual support (User Interface)					✓
File support			✓
Overall rating		✓

 

 

Verdict

 

Generally speaking, MultiTrans is user friendly enough. However, some drop-down menus in the main tool bar change depending on which module the user activates and this can be confusing. It would be preferable to always display the same menus, allocating one to each module. Also, the user may sometimes have to manually install the TransTerm add-in in the relevant folder, as it is not always done automatically during installation. Leaving aside these minor issues, MultiTrans certainly meets its purpose. It lets the user build and search vast linguistic corpora to find the right context and possible translations when writing and translating content. In addition to this it also has the facility to act as a translation workbench.

 

About Multicorpora

 

A Canadian company, Multicorpora was founded in 1994 by Gerry Gervais and developed MultiTrans, which has been used by organisations as prestigious as the Canadian Government, the Translation Bureau of Canada, UNESCO, and companies such as Michellin and Johnson and Johnson.

 

For further information, contact Multicorpora R&D Inc, Tel: +1 819 778 7070, Fax.: +1 819 778 0801. Email: info@multicorpora.com. URL: www.multicorpora.ca

 

Rafael Guzmán is the former coordinator of the LRC Localisation Technology Laboratory and Showcase (LOTS).