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Luis Fernandez

Code & Syntax

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Lfernandez@codesyntax.com

(+34)652750362

2004/1/19

Tumatxa, software tool to manage translation memories on a web environment

Tumatxa is a web application that handles Translation Memories. It has been created by CodeSyntax(http://www.codesyntax.com/en ), a Basque company working with free software and language technologies. The application can be tested on our website http://www.tumatxa.com where two online demos are also available.

What are translation memories?

Translation Memory or TM is a technology widely used in professional translation and localization (unlike machine translation). The idea is simpe, units or sentences from the original text and its translation are stored aligned into a database. When the system happens to find the same sentence (or a similar one), it would propose the previous translation.

These are some of the most popular TM software programmes: Trados, Déjàvu, Wordfast, Transit, edo Translat. The standard for mempory exchange among those applications is called TMX.

Tumatxa handles TMX, and also the .po files of GNU Gettext (used in l10n of free software). It has been tested specifically with the TMX versions handled by Wordfast and Trados. Memories stored at Tumatxa can be consulted (to clear terminology doubts, for instance) without specific TM software, just making online searches. Several memories can be packed to download as a file, also.

Tumatxa is free software. Downloadable from that site. It is not a desktop application. This is a Zope product, a web application that runs on the Zope web application server on machines with Linux as its OS. Zope expertise is needed in order to install it on a WWW site or an Intranet.

We have thought of several usage scenarios where it can be useful for translator(http://www.tumatxa.com/tmx/usage ). So, the "target market" for Tumatxa is probably the organisation, company, public administration or an association of translators, that may install it on a server (locally or on the web).