FireballXL8 is a trademark of:Note: We are not associated with SDL International in any way–we simply provide a service for professional translators using their SDL Trados Studio computer-aided translation tool.
Welcome to FireballXL8, a tool for professional linguists and translators who use SDL Trados Studio. This tool takes a glossary file, easily created in Excel or a text editor, and applies it to an SDLXLIFF file. It creates target segments to produce a bilingual file, in which the target segments are copied from the source segments, but with the glossary terms replaced. Some examples are shown below.
Although this is similar in some ways to the batch find and replace plugin in previous Trados versions, it is a web-based service, not a plugin, and it works on only one SDLXLIFF file at a time. However, it does save a lot of time, by automating the find and replace for each term in your glossary, something many professional translators still do by hand as the first task in their translation workflow.
The FireballXL8 system is very easy to understand and use. It can boost the productivity of the translation process considerably, increasing your earnings as a professional translator.
Who is FireballXL8 for?
1. Do you use SDL Trados Studio, or work with SDLXLIFF files?
2. Does your translation work flow include repeated find-and-replace of words from a glossary?
3. After substitution, are you comfortable translating mixed text? For example:
If so, you need FireballXL8. The software takes all the terms in a glossary or termbase and substitutes them into the target segments of your SDLXLIFF file, automatically. Save hours of time, on each and every translation job!
What FireballXL8 does
Fireball XL8 performs an automated find and replace on an SDL Trados sdlxliff file, using your own customizable glossary.
EXAMPLE
Original File
| The present invention relates to a device for tuning pianos. | (Translation target segment blank) |
| A piano comprises a keyboard, hammers, strings, pedals and an action device. | (Translation target segment blank) |
After FireballXL8
| The present invention relates to a device for tuning pianos. | 本発明 relates to a 装置 for tuning ピアノs. |
| A piano comprises a keyboard, hammers, strings, pedals and an action device. | A ピアノ comprises a 鍵盤, hammers, strings, pedals and an action 装置. |
Benefits
- • The system saves you many keystrokes of typing, and many hours of work. This increases translation speed!
- • All occurrences will also be exactly the same, removing any risk of mistyping or inconsistent terminology. This increases translation quality!
- • FireballXL8 is a form of automated pretranslation. Many translators already do this manually, before starting on the actual translation task. FireballXL8 automates this for you, saving you, in some cases, many hours of tedious find-and-replace.
- • Translating using partially translated target segments (basically source-copy, but with glossary terms replaced) means you don’t have to keep manually looking up glossaries, online dictionaries or terminology bases, so translation proceeds very quickly.
- • With FireballXL8, gone are the days when you have to scroll back to see what translation you used for a particular word because you don’t use the terminology base feature, or perhaps you don’t register every word on the fly. Gone also are the days when you look up the same word in a dictionary more than once because you forgot what translation you used.
- • FireballXL8 provides the translation of glossary terms in your text, right where you need it: in the target segment. This saves a significant amount of time!
How to use FireballXL8
- 1. First, sign in as a member. Non-members are restricted to glossaries that are only 500 terms in size, and the first 500 segments of each file, for testing purposes.
- 2. Save your Microsoft Excel glossary (two columns) as a Unicode .txt file, upload it to Google Drive, and download it as a UTF-8 .csv file. Or, make your own glossary in Notepad or TextEdit (comma or space separated, using UTF-8 encoding, with a .csv or .txt filename extension respectively). Here is an example (from US English to Japanese):
TAB-delimited .txt
(not space, TAB! UTF-8)Comma-delimited .csv
(UTF-8 encoding)automobile 車
protein たんぱく質
impossible 無理
automobile,車
protein,たんぱく質
impossible,無理
- 3. Upload your glossary and your sdlxliff (bilingual SDL Trados file) to the system, with the push of a button.
- 4. When processing is finished, usually in a matter of seconds, depending on the size of the files, download the processed sdlxliff file onto your computer. You can then open it in SDL Trados–all the target segments will be copies of the source segments, but substituted with terms from the glossary.