Open Source Language Translation Tools

This article aim is to take a quick glance at the growing array of user-friendly open source tools for English – Spanish translators and for translation of any language pair. We will focus on what we consider the top open source translation tools: Gtranslator, KBabel, and last but not least, poEdit.

Gtranslator - Gtranslator is an improved gettext po file editor for the GNOME desktop environment. It can handle all types of gettext po files and it includes really handy features like find and replace, translation memory, different translator profiles, messages table (overview of the translations/messages in the po file), and easy navigation and editing of translation messages and comments of the translation. It is also extendable through a plugin system. Plugins include but are not limited to: Alternate Language, Insert Tags, Open Tran, Integration with Subversion, and Source Code Viewer.

For more on Gtranslator search for it at SourceForge .net

KBabel - KBabel is a group of tools that allow translators to edit and manage gettext PO files. It is a very capable and easy-to-use PO file editor that features full navigation, full editing functionality, integrated search for translations in different dictionaries, spell and syntax checking, and differences spotting, to name just a few. KBabel also features a Catalog Manager, in other words, a file manager that facilitates an overview of PO files. Another feature worth mentioning is the standalone dictionary application which allows translators to access KBabel's dictionaries.

For more on KBabel please visit KDE .org

Poedit - Poedit is a gettext catalogs editor which works on all platforms. It can run on any platform that supports the wxWidgets. Basically, its aim is to provide a convenient approach to editing .po files when launching vi and editing the file by hand.

To know more about Poedit just visit their site at Poedit .net

If you are interested in open source translation tools and what the open source community is doing to improve the life of translators, it is highly recommended that you pay a visit to Translate.SourceForge. net, where you will find information on Pootle, Virtaal, and Translate Toolkit, among many other projects.

Pootle – It is a web portal which aims to make the translation process a simpler one. It features online translation, work assignment, statistics and volunteer contribution. Pootle can be run as an Internet Server or on an Intranet. Pootle uses the Translate Toolkit API.

Virtaal – A powerful yet user-friendly graphical translation tool. Initially developed with software translation in mind, the intention of the developers is to make this tool useful for other types of translation. Also built on the powerful Translate Toolkit API.

Translate Toolkit - A set of tools for localization, and an API for programmers of localization tools. Developed to improve the quality of localizations while making the job easier.

The Toolkit helps translators to stay in one format across all the localization. It converts between several translation formats (Gettext PO, XLIFF, OpenOffice, and Mozilla). This allows translators to master a single translation editor instead of one per project. The Toolkit also includes tools to check, validate, merge and extract messages from localizations.

Well, this is just a quick overview of most popular open source translation tools, please visit each project’s website in order to get more information and even get involved in the development of these projects.

Translate and Save is a Spanish translation company which has been serving all kinds of clients for almost 4 years. Please visit their site at http://translateandsave.com/ and find out more about their English to Spanish and Spanish to English translation services.