Quality is a key element in translation. It plays an important role in establishing market position and enhancing competition advantage. It can also affect the satisfaction and loyalty of the clients. Thus, we need to make every effort to ensure delivery quality.

There many measures can be taken to ensure delivery quality. But now, I just want to mention one tool – Xbench. Xbench is a checking tool, can generate a quality report quickly, helping localization practitioners to guarantee unitarity.

To use Xbench, first click to open it.

Click Project – New, shows the following

Then click Add…, choose the corresponding file type, and then click Next.

Tageditor file please choose Trados Tageditor File; Word file please choose Trados Word File.

Then, Click Ok to run the selected file(s).

When finished, choose QA tab, and then click Check Ongoing Translation. Xbench will show the potential errors in details.

Error Description

List the error type and file name. Common error types are:

Inconsistency in Target: Same source with different translations. Such as “A-scope display” has two translations, one is “A-scope 显示” the other is “A 型显示”. You need to choose the right one and correct the other.

Inconsistency in Source: Different sources with the same translation. What you should note is that not all listed items are mistakes. For example, “Alarm” and “Alarms” are different source, but translated into the same target “报警”. This is not mistake and should not to be correct. Another example, both “turn the power off and on” and “turn off and on the power” are translated into “关闭然后开启电源”. This is neither mistake.

Tag Mismatch: Tags in target is not the same with tags in source, including more tags than source, less tags than source, different orders. You need to judge whether it is a real error or you really want to treat it that way.

For example:

If you try to customize this display, the message Can’t customize this display. appears.
如果您尝试自定义此显示,将显示消息 无法自定义此显示。

This is not an error, “’” here means a superscript “’”, which is not necessary in Chinese translation. Thus, it can be deleted.

Numeric Mismatch: Numbers in target is not the same with numbers in source. The same as tag mismatch, you need to judge whether this is a real error.

For example:

January 1 – December 31, 2013

2013 年 1 月 1 日 - 12 月 31 日

This is not an error, and do not need to correct.

Double Blank: Just as its name implies, there are two consecutive blanks, and need to delete one.