Key Features

A multilingual project is a Lingo project that includes more than one target language. Lingo allows you to add as many languages as you like to your projects, and you can add or remove them at any time. A great benefit to multilingual projects is that you can add all the languages you need to translate to a single project. This makes it easier for a translator to translate content in multiple languages, and it makes it easier for a content developer to send files for translation or review. See About Multilingual Projects.

Lingo is fully Unicode capable, making it possible to handle the entire world’s Unicode language characters. This includes English, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, double-byte languages, and more.

You can bundle your Lingo project, exporting it to a ZIP or LIPRJZIP (Lingo Project Bundle) file. This feature allows content developers to work with translators who must use a tool other than Lingo (e.g., Trados, memoQ) to perform the actual translation work. With this process, Lingo helps to prepare your files before you send them to the translator. See About Bundles.

You can compute statistics for your Lingo project, displaying information about the translation work. This is a way to compare the project files against the translation memory database in order to see how much translation work has been completed and how much still needs to be done. This report can be useful if you are a translator and need to provide estimates to a client, or if you are a content developer who is using Lingo to manage the translation process. See Computing Statistics.

Let's say you have already created a Lingo project for an earlier version of a particular project or document. You have already translated it, exported it to a new project or file, and given it to the author. Sometime after this, the author makes many changes to the project or file (in the source language). Now the author needs you to translate those changes into the target language. When this occurs, choose File>Update Project and select the newest version of the source project or file that you are translating. Lingo scans the source files that have changed and updates the current project accordingly. A progress dialog displays temporarily and the Lingo project is reloaded. If the changed source file has segments that exactly match those in TM, the segments automatically receive those translations. If there are changes where matches do not occur in TM, those changes are reflected in the Lingo project in a couple of ways. First, the Difference column in the File List window pane indicates whether a file has changed. Also, if you switch to Preview mode in the Translation Editor (for files such as Word documents, PowerPoint files, and Flare topics, which can be displayed in that mode), icons are displayed next to segments that have been changed. See Updating Projects.

A translation memory (TM) system is a database that consists of content in a source language next to the translated content in one or more target languages. The great benefit of a TM system is that it remembers what you have already translated in previous projects and uses it to provide suggestions for future translation work. You can connect your Lingo project to one or more TM databases. See About Translation Memory and Applying TM Suggestions to Segments.

Machine translation (MT) is translation of text by a computer or translation program, such as Google Translate. A great benefit of MT is that it allows translators to translate a large amount of content quickly using an automated translation system, and then make any necessary updates to the translation on a case-by-case basis (e.g., using a termbase to replace certain words, fixing translations that are not accurate in context). Then, the translator can add the target segments to an installed translation memory (TM), improving the speed for future translations as well. See About Machine Translation and Translating Projects with Machine Translation.

Sometimes you may have segments in the Translation Editor that you need to join together or split apart. You can do this in a couple of ways in Lingo—automatically by using segmentation rules or manually by using the split and join features. See About Segmentation Rules and About Split/Join.

You can leverage translation work previously completed outside of Lingo by using the alignment feature. See About Alignment.

example

Let's say your company has some legacy content that was created in English using MadCap Flare (or even another tool such as Microsoft Word). Subsequently, that content was translated into German using a tool other than Lingo. Now your company has purchased Lingo and wants to use it to translate future updates to that same documentation. The problem is that you do not want to lose all of that previous translation work. The solution is to launch the MadCap Align utility from Lingo and create an alignment project.

From MadCap Align, you use the Start Alignment Wizard to create the new alignment project. In the process of doing this, you select the English version of the original Flare project (or other type of project/file), as well as the German translation of that project or file. In addition, you make sure the option is selected in the wizard to automatically upload the translated segments to your translation memory. Therefore, when you translate content in future Lingo projects, that previously translated content can be used via the suggestions feature in Lingo.

Lingo lets you use a concordance to perform advanced searches in one or more translation memory (TM) databases. You can also search suggestions from machine translation (MT) providers. This means you can search for words you've already translated to maintain consistency. The concordance searches across the entire TM and any suggestions from MT. In contrast, the search filter in the Translation Editor looks only in the current file. See About the Concordance.

You can see which dictionaries are installed on your computer by opening the Options dialog and selecting the Dictionaries tab. You can also use the Options dialog to import more dictionaries that you have downloaded. See Importing Dictionaries.

In Lingo you can use concept-oriented terminology databases to make your translation work easier and quicker. Termbases allow you to create, manage, and reuse multilingual terminology from a single storage area. This system automatically displays previously translated words from your termbase during the translation process, thus improving the reliability of translations. A termbase is more powerful than a dictionary. The idea behind a termbase is to create a database of words and phrases that you never need to translate again. See About Termbases.

You can quickly open a list of all files in the project that need to be translated. For source files such as Flare projects—which contain many unique types of files—this helps take the guessing out of localization work. All files requiring translation are displayed in the File List window pane.

A filter feature in the File List window pane allows you to list files by type (e.g., topics, snippets, images, master pages, movies, movie project data) when you are using the grid view. Even better, the Translation Candidates filter option shows only the files that may need to be translated (as opposed to files that do not require translation, such as condition tag set files). If you are translating a Flare project, you can also filter by Flare target (e.g., HTML5, PDF, mobile) to show only the files that are part of that target. See File List Window Pane.

You can run quality assurance (QA) reports to review your translated projects for discrepancies between the source and target segments. This is a way to check the quality of your translations before sending your project for review, returning a translation to a client, or exporting the final, translated project. These reports can be useful because they can help find errors that you might not have otherwise noticed, such as formatting inaccuracies, repeated segments, or termbase errors. By running a QA report, you can locate errors and correct them early in the translation process, preventing unnecessary rework later. See Running Quality Assurance Reports.

You can send translated content to individuals for review. For example, you might use this feature if you are an author who has received files back from a translator and you want to send them to a third party (who does not have access to Lingo) to ensure the translations are correct. When you use this feature, you can export translations as a MadCap Contributor review package. See Sending Translated Content for Review.

Before you send a Contributor review package to a reviewer, be sure the reviewer has the latest version of Contributor installed. Reviewers do not need to purchase a license to use Contributor review Lingo files; instead, they can use Contributor's free review mode to review Lingo files.