Iulia Tufiº, Attila Feher, Radu Magda * Considerations on the Localization of Software Products for Management Information Systems

2. In the case of phrases, there is a correspondence between groups of words from the two languages and the phrases translation is done by means of the words dictionary. If the phrase to be translated is not found in the phrase dictionary in order to be directly replaced, the words dictionary is used to assist the translation of that phrase. The words found in the word-dictionary are replaced as such and the translation result can then be corrected and new words added to the dictionary. Alternative translations for the same phrase are also allowed. Phrase dictionaries developed by different translators can also be unified and the solving of translation conflicts is then possible.
3. The validation values for the input/output fields in the dialog screens (ex. Yes/No - Da/Nu) are automatically translated and replaced in the program condition tests.

TTT is mainly dedicated to the localization of the software products running on an IBM AS/400 computer, the translation being done on a PC workstation.

If the source of the texts to be translated is not represented by AS/400 programs and files, the translation can also be done, but the texts have to be directly inserted in the TTT files on the PC.

TTT has two components: TTT/400 and TTT/PC.

• TTT/400 assures the extraction of texts from program sources, data files, message files on the AS/400, which are transferred to the PC in text files, in order to be translated.
• TTT/PC assures the translation of the transferred texts and the creation of the words and phrases dictionaries.

The translated text is sent back to the AS/400 and the corresponding files are updated and optionally compiled by TTT/400.

The translation procedure on the PC assumes the repetitive application of the following steps:

• Translation and storing of new words in the dictionary.
• Automated translation of the new texts by means of the words dictionary and the phrase dictionary.
• Correction of the proposed translation if it is not entirely correct (the translation procedure doesn't have grammatical and morphological rules) by means of the specialized editing facilities.
• Saving of the translated text with the automated updating of the phrase dictionary.
• Passing to the next text to be translated.

As the translation process goes on, more and more words can be found in the dictionary and can be automatically translated. Also entire phrases that appear repetitively in the text can also be automatically translated.

For the translation of a specialized software product, the words domain is relatively small and even entire phrases can be repetitively found in the dialog screens, reports, etc. The automated translation of phrases and texts becomes more and more used as the translation process goes further.

The words and phrases dictionaries and all the other information concerning the translation of a software product are kept by TTT/400 in order to allow for their later application for the translation of a new version of the product.

After applying the automated translation procedure, the texts that could not be translated using the existing information can be easily identified and translated in the usual way. The dictionaries can be constructed by providing the results of a formerly manual translation (the texts to be translated and the corresponding translated texts).

The words and phrases dictionaries can be imported/exported from/to usual ASCII text files. This allows to get the dictionaries developed by means of other translation tools in order to be used and developed in TTT and also to use the TTT dictionaries in a different environment.

130