Logo

 

Dr. Tom's Independent Software Reviews
presents:

CATALYST 6

Introduction:

Alchemy Software Development Limited was founded in Dublin, Ireland by Enda McDonnell and Tony O'Dowd, the original developers and designers of its predecessor Corel CATALYST™ in November 2000. The new company acquired the Software originally owned by Corel Corporation Limited. In return, Corel has acquired a 25% stake in the company. After being available only in English, Alchemy and their partner XLsoft Corporation released a fully localized Japanese version of Alchemy CATALYST 5.0 in April 2004. Other partnerships include Microsoft - who bundled their evaluation version of Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2003 in France with CATALYST - and a OEM Agreement with GlobalSight Corporation on the integration of CATALYST's visual localization tools to enterprise level workflow solutions. CATALYST's success allowed the small company to open new offices in the USA (Salem, Oregon and Silicon Valley), Japan, Germany and soon in China.

Features:

CATALYST 6: Visual HTML Localization

Fig. 1: CATALYST 6 - Visual HTML-Localization:
 This screen shot shows the new graphical user interface (GUI) of CATALYST 6 using the visual editing mode to localize HTML files (center window). You are able to translate directly within a visual editor providing real-time WYSIWYG while you type. The Translator Toolbar below intelligently handles HTML formatting tags to secure the integrity of the HTML file. At the very bottom of the GUI, a translation memory (TM) / terminology window suggests full and fuzzy matches within the associated TMs and glossaries.
Please click on the image for a closer look!

 

Alchemy CATALYST consists of several editors, tools and experts as well as optional plug-ins or components. The Alchemy CATALYST Project Editor is the main interface that translators, engineers and project managers use to localize, test and engineering software applications and digital content files. It is made up of five windows:

  • The Project Navigator displays the content of CATALYST project files (TTKs: Translation Tool Kits) in an organized, hierarchical list.
  • The Project WorkSpace displays Visual Editors for each item selected from the Project Navigator. Every editor can be used in 4 modes, each optimizing certain tasks: strings only, visual (WYSIWYG), split-horizontal and split-vertical (both combining string and visual views). The Visual Dialog Editor is used to localize dialog panels, place and arrange controls, and validate your translated products. It supports Microsoft Win16/Win32s and Win64x dialog boxes and platforms, Microsoft .NET 1.x and .NET 2.0 winforms and platforms, Visual Basic.NET (all versions) and Visual Basic 6.0, and Visual XLIFF 1.0. The visual mode is optimized for testing or arranging of the layout of dialog panels. A dialog toolbar assists in the localization and layout of any dialog object within a TTK project file. The new Visual HTML Editor helps you to localize HTML documents and all derivative formats such as ASP, PHP, ASP+ and JSP. HTML is used predominantly on the Internet and Microsoft .NET based software applications. Again you have the option to edit your tagged hypertext in a WYSIWYG mode, a string mode which displays only source and target text strings and a split mode combining both. You can define a Web Server to view dynamic web pages in Alchemy CATALYST. This is useful if you’re localizing server based scripts embedded in HTML documents such as JSP, ASP and PHP. Finally, the Menu Editor is used to localize menus and test the finished menu for various localization errors. For Microsoft Desktop applications, the Menu Editor recognizes the relationship between long and short prompt strings and these are displayed alongside each other to provide a higher degree of context. Again you have the option of 3 working modes.
  • The Translator Toolbar is designed to centralize all the functions that a Translator needs to carry out their work efficiently and quickly. It shows the source and target language strings, displays all glossary matches (though no fuzzy matches), and the properties of each item selected, such as its co-ordinates, width and height. There are several shortcut buttons at the top of the Translator Toolbar which provide quick access to other translation units, undo and redo, font size modifications and provide flags to assign the translation status of the unit. Suggested translations are continuously displayed in the glossary window - An icon is display adjacent to each suggestion translation that indicates where a suggestion originates from. Currently the translator's toolbar will display translation suggestion from other TTK, TRADOS workbenches and Servers and TMX.
  • Finally, the Project ResultBar is used to display the results of operations performed on the active TTK project file such as search results (find and replace), display of To-Do lists, file comparisons, and bookmarked items. In addition, it records all general TTK file operations such as the insertion of files or exports of sections.
  • In addition, there are several Toolbars which provide fast, icon-based access to important and frequently used functions. The new PowerTranslate™ Toolbar is used to automate the lookup and translation of translation units in your active Project TTK file. It is keystroke compatible with TRADOS Translator’s Workbench and offers a similar set of features and functionality. The PowerTranslate™ Toolbar operates on translation units and helps the translator locate and translate matching terms in active translations memories. The Project Toolbar allows you to open or edit a TTK, insert a file, import/export sections of TTKs and define the source and target languages. Finally, the Experts Toolbar provides quick access to launching Alchemy CATALYST Experts.

All windows and toolbars can be freely arranged, docked or undocked and slid in or out to save space for the translator toolbar.

The Alchemy CATALYST Experts are designed to automate repetitive tasks frequently found within the localization workflow. These are the so-called Experts. Depending on your license type, there are between 4 and 7 experts. All paid editions include the Validate, Pseudo Translate, Comparison and Report Experts. The Localizer Edition adds the Leverage and Update Experts as well as the Runtime Validation Expert, and the Developer/Pro Edition also the Quickship Expert.

  • The Validation Expert is used to automate the detection of common localization errors normally introduced during the translation process such as mismatched empty string, inconsistent hotkey count, incorrect spelling, invalid ampersand (&) position, clipped text, inconsistent hotkey character, duplicate hotkeys, inconsistent format specifiers, overlapping controls, inconsistent lead/trail spaces, duplicate accelerators, glossary consistency check, untranslated text. Some of these tests also check for valid XML localization. The Runtime Validation Expert, a companion tool available in the Localizer and Developer editions, allows you to validate your Win32 applications as they run on the Windows desktop.
  • The Pseudo Translate Expert is used to simulate the effects of translation on your application files. It does this by substituting vowel characters in your source files with diacritical or accented characters.
  • The Comparison Expert is used to compare two application files.  It detects missing, added and modified resources and records these changes in the Results Toolbar and an optional XML report file. This Expert is useful in determining the scope of change between revisions of software.
  • The Report Expert is used to analyze the contents of your Project TTKs and create reports for Project Managers. These reports are XLIFF based and can be viewed and printed using any Internet browser.
  • CATALYST's Leverage Expert included in the Localizer and Developer editions can be run in an automatic or interactive way and supports exact, fuzzy and heuristic matching techniques ensuring that the maximum amount of translation is leveraged. Project statistic reports are automatically generated to identify and track all changes to your new revisions and these can be used by Project Managers to track the translation savings due to the leverage process. Alchemy CATALYST's own Translation Memory technology called ezMatch™ allows you to re-use previous translations leveraged from multiple file formats. Besides other CATALYST TTKs, this can be a TRADOS TM Server and all versions of TRADOS Workbenches (including version 7), as well as XLIFF, TMX and bilingual text. The Leverage Expert is enhanced by the addition of the
  • Update Expert which is used to replace an application file with a new revision while also performing translation leverage. This is useful when you want to replace a small number of application files within an already created TTK project file with newer revisions of these files.
  • Finally, the QuickShip Expert provides a convenient mechanism to distribute your TTK project files to your translators. It does this by creating a self-expanding executable that can contain several project TTK files, glossary files and other project information. These are referred to as QuickShip Bundles. Within these transfer files, the QuickShip Expert also performs a few tricks that make life much easier for the translator. Firstly it extracts all the constituent files and displays any instructions attached, next it attaches any glossary files to the translator's version of Alchemy CATALYST Translator/Lite and finally it launches CATALYST Translator/Lite if present on the user's system, if not, it will attempt to launch a browser pointing to the Alchemy Web site., where it can be downloaded.

CATALYST's Developer/Pro edition also includes the Alchemy CATALYST SDK (Software Development Kit) allowing developers to extend the capabilities of CATALYST by writing custom editors for non-standard custom resources. Non-standard resources within 32bit executables are normally only visible in binary format. As Catalyst is an open system it allows developers to create editors that allow any information to be edited in a default string editor or a custom built WYSIWYG editor. Users may avail of additional cost savings by connecting their custom editor to CATALYST's Leverage Expert, enabling the same use of translation memories associated with standard resource types. CATALYST SDK comes with its own Code Wizard, which prompts the developer through all stages of developing custom editors. The developer can then register these editors within CATALYST, allowing full editing, translating & updating of custom controls.

Visual XML Configuration in CATALYST 6

Fig. 2: Visual Configuration of XML-Processing in CATALYST 6:
 Creating XML rules using ezParse have been significantly enhanced with a new visual environment that allows you to see the effect of your ezParse XML rules simultaneously as you are creating them.
Please click on the image for a closer look

 

Alchemy CATALYST 6.0 provides more than 120 enhancements over Alchemy CATALYST 5.0 and provides a truly visual environment for the localization and engineering of digital content and Microsoft desktop, internet and mobile applications:

  1. Project files are now automatically filtered based on the status of translation units. This provides fast access to new or partially translated text.
  2. CATALYST's four view modes: strings only, WYSIWYG, split-horizontal and split-vertical are now available for all supported file types.
  3. Now all strings within a project TTK can be displayed together in an ordered list on the screen. This provides a powerful mechanism for reviewers and editors to check translation consistency and context.
  4. All experts are now available through an easy to use Quick Launch Experts toolbar.
  5. Power-Translate™ is a collection of enhancements for professional translators. Using Auto-Translate, software applications can be fuzzy translated using many popular translation memories (TM) and glossary formats including Alchemy CATALYST TTKs, TRADOS TM Server, TRADOS Translator Workbench, and TMX. In addition, this novelty provides a built-in consistency checker to ensure that a translator’s work is in accordance with the glossaries currently active. It thirdly provides an interface to all linguistic tools via toolbars and keyboard maps that are identical to TRADOS Translator Workbench. Finally, a concordance search feature allows a translator to research terms and phases from a wide diversity of TM sources. All linguistic tools can be centralized into one single Power-Translate™ toolbar which is also key-stroke compatible with TRADOS Translators Workbench.
  6. A Duplicates View lists all repeating occurrences of a word or phase throughout an entire project TTK. It also comes with powerful feature that automatically replicates translations as you work. Another visual preview presents each string in it’s correct context for the translator.
  7. CATALYST now works with any language that is supported by Microsoft Windows. This includes bi-directional languages such as Arabic and Hebrew, as well as Asian and Eastern European languages.
  8. Display of many terminology / glossary formats in real-time within the Translators glossary window, ensuring the highest possible translation consistency and accuracy.
  9. Visual HTML Solution: CATALYST 6.0 provides a fully visual solution (true WYSIWYG) for the translation, engineering and testing of HTML documents (and all derivatives). You can also work on ASP pages that supports both client and server side code modules.
  10. Alchemy CATALYST 6.0 now supports all Microsoft .NET platform technologies, including Microsoft Framework 1.x/2.0 and ASP  derivative content files. The new dialog panel editor supports full visualization of fonts, graphical images and 3rd Party controls.
  11. You can now work seamlessly with all past and present versions of TRADOS desktop and enterprise technologies such as TRADOS TM Server, TRADOS Translator’s Workbench (3.x, 5.x, 6.x and 7.x) and MultiTerm iX Server.
  12. Alchemy Concordance Manager™ provides a powerful and easy to use mechanism for researching a term or phrase. It works with both Alchemy CATALYST TTKs and all versions of TRADOS Translators Workbench and SDL TM Server products.
  13. XML files are displayed in a more logical and visual way which makes large XML files easier to manage and translate. Additionally, creating XML rules using ezParse has been enhanced with a new visual environment that allows to see the effect of ezParse XML rules simultaneously as they are created. You can now create ezParse rules not only from DTDs, but also from both XML schemas and stand-alone XML files. XML documents are now intelligently displayed in a hierarchical list of elements and attributes. This ensures a more orderly display of complex documents and makes working on large and complex XML documents easier.
  14. The Alchemy Layout Manager ™ is a new product and is not part of Alchemy CATALYST. It is a productivity application for localization engineers. It creates localized layouts of translated applications using a patented and advanced mathematical analysis of the original
    application user interface. It will be sold separately as an Add-On to Alchemy CATALYST and handles the automatic layout and orientation of dialog panels by using heuristics and Artificial Intelligence constructs to minimize layout engineering. In internal trials conducted by the Alchemy development department, it took approx. 400 seconds to layout 1000 dialog boxes. Only in 3% of the panels a warning was generated, which was added to the report panel and linked to the corresponding dialog for manual inspection.

Fig. 3: Visual dotNet Localization using CATALYST 6:
 CATALYST 6.0 support all modes of visual Inheritance by tracking all inherited objects. This ensures that you only translate an object once and and that they are automatically replicated throughout your .NET application. In this example, only the marked string in the lower right corner of the dialog needs to be localized. All other resources are inherited from other dialogs.
Please click on the image for a closer look!

Editions & Prices:

  • Alchemy CATALYST Translator/Pro Edition: is designed for professional freelance translators and comes with a series of WYSIWYG editors to localize Microsoft desktop, internet and mobile applications ( DLL, EXE, INI, MS .NET, CNT, CPP, HPP, etc.), all XML/XHTML based documents and provides comprehensive support for Database formats such as Oracle, IBM DB 2 and Microsoft SQL. Works seamlessly with TRADOS desktop and enterprise technologies. Includes a Auto-Translate technology to re-use your translations from any industry TM format. The award winning Validate Expert scans your translations, identifies inconsistency and other software errors, such as duplicate hotkeys and clipped texts and overlapping controls. Translations are stored, distributed and translated in a single translation database called TTK (Translation Took Kit). The precision and accuracy of your translations are further increased using Alchemy’s glossary manager and translation memory technology as well as total TRADOS integration and the new PowerTranslate technology. EUR 999.
  • Alchemy CATALYST Localizer Edition is the visual solution of choice for over 80% of the world’s largest software development companies. It comes with a five additional Experts: The Leverage Expert reduces the engineering and testing impact during a product update or revision. You can take translations from previous product revisions and automatically update these into new revisions. With its unique ability to reuse not only text but co-ordinates from previous translation projects, it reduces not only your translation costs, but also your engineering and testing cycles. The Update Expert allows you the inline replacement and leveraging of individual files within a TTK. The Pseudo Expert simulates the effects of translation of your software applications or Internet files helping the development of locale neutral applications. The Validate Expert is also enhanced by a Runtime Validation utility, enabling the detection of common localization bugs while your software application is running. The Visual Comparison Expert enables the localizer to accurately and visually determine the scope of change between software revisions in a matter of seconds. EUR 3999.
  • Alchemy CATALYST Developer/Pro Edition is designed for larger localization providers or large localization departments. It includes the additional QuickShip Expert which allows the developer or localizer to bundle all necessary TTK's, glossary files, along with users instructions into a compressed, self extracting, executable file. This file may then be sent to a translator, who can then translate these QuickShip TTKs using Alchemy’s free companion tool, Alchemy CATALYST: Translator/Lite Edition. The Developer/Pro Edition also comes with the Alchemy CATALYST SDK (Software Development Kit) allowing developers to extend the capabilities of CATALYST by writing custom editors for non-standard custom resources. EUR 6499.
  • Alchemy CATALYST Translator/Lite Edition allows translators to accept projects created by the Alchemy CATALYST Developer/Pro Edition without the need to first buy a software. It provides them with visual editors and interactive validators to ensure that the translation process is fast, smooth, consistent and error free. The Alchemy CATALYST Translator/Lite Edition can be downloaded from Alchemy's website at www.alchemysoftware.ie/translite.html. It requires no dongle or hardware key but cannot be used to establish independent localization projects.
  • In the moment, you receive the Visual .NET Localization component (v. 3.0) and Alchemy Database component (v. 1.5) for free when ordering any of the paid CATALYST licenses. This is an extra value of 499 EURO each.

Usage & Evaluation

Alchemy CATALYST 6 features many major and minor novelties and enhancements. I especially like the new, clearly arranged, good looking and highly effective GUI. All windows can be hidden, rolled out or closed and brought back by a click of your mouse. The actual editing window can easily be enlarged to allow an effective translation process, especially if tagged elements are displayed, but can also be shrunk in order to show all associated data and larger context. CATALYST's main claim to "enhance visual localization" is consequently extended into the field of visual HTML translation featuring real-time WYSIWYG editing In addition, Alchemy CATALYST also re-formats the HTML pages to accommodate your translations. However, this approach has naturally its limits, if pages are designed using tables in absolute dimensions as the dynamic resizing to your localized content will not work. Besides this limitation, supporting visual HTML translation is a clever extension of CATALYST's features as these formats do not only play a major role in the online documentation of software products but are increasingly used as highly customizable dialogs in software design itself, especially within dotNET applications.
In my review of CATALYST 5, I recommended a more visual way to configure XML processing and localization. I am very pleased with the now implemented handling of this important file type, which uses an additive visual way to add required tag elements to the list of localizable resources by simply clicking on them and specify whether they should be hidden or locked to avoid accidental alterations. You can now immediately see the results of your configuration by clicking on the preview button. There are only two minor suggestions to further enhance this already great file file handling: It would be even better, if you could (further) configure your file handling rules by modifying your rules right from within the editor instead of the ezParse dialog and secondly, to synchronize the raw and parsed views of the XML file within ezParse (or the string/visual views of the editor). Furthermore, the ezParse window should be easier (and faster) accessible than to go through: Tools-Options-ezParse and finally, the appropriate file type could be pre-selected if you originate from a certain file opened in the editor. The only drawback was, that I was not shown, how the use of a local DTD (or Schema) can help to streamline the manual configuration process. In addition, remotely located DTDs (and Schemas?) linked within the doctype declaration of XML files are not supported.
CATALYST 6 also shows a highly improved handling of all dotNET formats using framework 1.0 and 1.1 and already offers non-visual support for framework 2.0 (if it is installed on your machine - full visual support is scheduled for later this month - the end of November 2005). As in other areas, CATALYST 6 features a complete visual approach to dotNET by producing the original dialogs within CATALYST rather than imitating them. This allows you to visualize any dotNET dialog in all of its complexity including all types of visual inheritance but needs, on the downside, the inclusion or full caching of all resources into the TTK. While the visualization worked exceptionally in any of the tested examples (besides a framework 2.0 dialog due to its current beta-state), I found a few occasions where CATALYST failed to extract the containing strings (e.g. ListView and TreeView controls), did not report missing fonts or was not able to readjust LinkAreas. Due to the open and complex nature of dotNET resources, the correct handling of all possibilities is, however, not only a problem of CATALYST but of all other software localization tools which do, in the majority, not offer the degree of visualness provided by CATALYST. Besides these minor shortcomings, Alchemy CATALYST is clearly one of the best if not currently the best tool to handle dotNET.
The integration of TRADOS was also redesigned and enhanced and allows you to use the same familiar key strokes as in TRADOS itself. In addition, the new PowerTranslate bar provides point-and-click access to all functions of the associated local or remote TRADOS resources (all versions including version 7). SDLX is not yet directly supported as there are currently no APIs available to do the trick. However, as both products are fully complying to the TMX standard and CATALYST integrates TMX as tight as TRADOS, you can also use your SDLX TMs in CATALYST. Besides TM, you can also associate a variety of terminology data bases with your CATALYST TTKs. Again, the TRADOS integration is fabulous and includes MultiTerm 6 and 7 but lacks direct support of version 5 and below due to licensing problems and the lack of APIs. Due to the same reason, there is no direct support of SDLX's Termbases but as this format will become obsolete soon and will be replaced by MultiTerm or a descendant of it, this is not really a huge draw back. Other TM and dictionary / terminology / glossary formats are supported via TXT export files.
With the new, relatively low-priced Translator Pro edition, CATALYST 6 becomes more affordable for freelance translators. This edition offers a lot of CATALYST's power but unfortunately still lacks the important Leverage Expert, which is designed to enable the re-use of previously translated material and earlier versions of localized software. However, this low-price edition now features CATALYST's full TM memory interface with all versions of TRADOS and SDL (by means of TMX) and you can re-use translations and resources from previously translated TTK files. Productivity is further enhanced by the inclusion of the Power-Translate™ technology featuring concordance search and glossary consistency checks.
Finally, a small but nifty detail is a memory of previously opened file extensions and their belonging to a certain file type which automatically applies previously configured file handling processes.
Alchemy's Layout Manager™ is a great CATALYST Add-On for software engineers, designed to save more than 90% of the time normally needed to resize dialogs. However, it will be most interesting for larger software companies wanting to streamline their productivity.

There are not many shortcomings of CATALYST 6; most of them present only minor weak points. First, there are a little bit too many dialogs popping up when starting and closing a TTK or launching and shutting down CATALYST. It asked me every time again, which source and target languages I want to use in an associated TMX and notified me that the TTK file's internal status information was updated when opening a file and asked me whether I want to save the changes to my TTK before closing it, even without having done anything with that file. Secondly, there are issues of the CATALYST component licensing when you use a software based personal firewall, even after allowing all CATALYST application full network access. I always got several components deactivated if I did not start CATALYST with a disabled firewall. However, this should not be an issue on company networks being protected by a hardware firewall, and consequently, the Alchemy support team never came upon such problems before. Thirdly, you should not move TRADOS components, especially MultiTerm dictionaries to other folders as this will provoke almost constant string indexing error dialogs, even if you move the resources back to their original location. However, this is not an error caused by CATALYST but an inconvenient design detail of MultiTerm storing the original location of dictionary files as absolute file paths and not referencing any moving of those resources.
Due to CATALYST's visual approach, its project files (TTKs) tend to get rather large, especially if many resources are included. However, TTKs can be easily archived to only 10% of their size using various compression tools such as ZIP or RAR. QuickShip archives sent to external translators are zipped archives. Large XML files (> 5 MBs) are loaded and parsed very slow. However, this is a problem of many visual tools which try to render and parse XML files. For example, I took about 8 minutes to load a 8 MB file into CATALYST and about the same to parse it. When trying to load the same file into Visual Studio, it failed after about 10 minutes; MS Word 2003 took 12 minutes and did not allow any editing as it was too slow and cumbersome. On the other side, Altova's XML Spy needed considerably less as it first reads XML files as simple text. It is therefore highly recommended to use the modularity of XML to break content down into small manageable chunks which are later combined using a publishing system. This way you can use the flexibility of XML and are able to handle your information.

In conclusion, version 6 really deserves to be called: "The most important upgrade in the history of Alchemy CATALYST". It clearly underlies the tool's position and importance in the first line of software localization tools and makes it also for the first time more attractive to freelance translators.

System Requirements:
Pentium 300 MHz, at least 32 MB of RAM, 55 MB hard disk space for the application and related files, Microsoft Windows ME, XP, 200x, Win64x, or NT 4.0 (with Service Pack 3 or later).

Company Information:
European Corporate Headquarters: Alchemy Software Development Ltd., Block 2, Harcourt Business Centre , Harcourt Street, Dublin 2, Ireland; Phone: +353-1-7082800, Fax: +353-1-7082801; email: info@alchemysoftware.ie; URL: http://www.alchemysoftware.ie.
North American Office: Alchemy Software Development, 4438 High Ridge Court S. Salem, Oregon 97302
USA, Phone/Fax: +1-503-362-9372.

Alternatives:
 
© 2004 by Dr. Thomas Wassmer, fax: +49 (6204) 9868263, e-mail: tom at infotom.com
 

Who is Dr. Tom?
 
Software Reviews
 

Translation & Localization
Alchemy CATALYST

CATALYST 6

 Top of the Page