How to Check for Bidi Issues: Introduction to The Quality Studio (TQS)

Quality is critical, especially in the language industry, it’s a deal-breaker. Linguistic errors can drastically affect the message behind your content. Thus, linguists need to have a reliable quality assurance process that ensures better results.
“Developed by a language service provider for the language service providers.”
We internally developed a quality tool to help our team guarantee bidi languages' quality. Over time, we added basic features and tested other languages until we came up with “The Quality Studio” to share with others. As much as it helps our team, we believe it will help others!
In the following lines, we'll take you through the benefits and features of TQS and also how to use it.

What is TQS?
TQS or "The Quality Studio" is the first web-based quality tool designed to detect linguistic errors and help linguists enhance translation quality. Like no other quality tool, TQS has the feature of detecting bidirectional issues.

Why Use TQS?
1. Detects bidirectional errors, which are:
- Brackets bidi error.
- Dot bidi error.
- Full stop bidi error.
- Question mark bidi error.
- Percent bidi error.
- Dollar sign bidi error.
- Asterisk bidi error.
- Ampersand bidi error.

2. Cloud-based, accessible anytime, anywhere
TQS is the first quality tool to be cloud-based, so you can access anytime, anywhere.

3. Your data is under your control
You can choose to keep your last results or delete them.

4. Supports different file types
TQS supports the following file types:
- .SDLXLIFF (Trados Bilingual Fie)
- .MQXLZ (MemoQ Bilingual File)
- .XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format)
- .TTX (SDL Trados 2007 Bilingual File)
- .TMX (Translation Memory Exchangable)
- .CSV (Excel File)
- .TXT Mono Files (two text files, one for source and another for target)
It also supports bilingual or mono files.

5. User-friendly
TQS is simply designed to be easily used.

6. And is FREE!
In the beta version stage, we’re launching TQS for FREE.
What makes TQS different? (Unique Features)

1. Bidi:

Like no other tool, TQS helps you detect bidirectional issues.
2. Quick glossary check

You can search a specific translated word in source and target files.
3. Segments filtration by user and export filtered result:

This shows you the translator's name/username and allows you to export the filtration result to excel.
4. Clear History:

Your last results are kept by default when you log out and re-login. You can select the "Clear History" check to clear this data.
5. Sorting result:

Enables you to sort errors result by category.
6. False Positive:

Enables you to make an error as "False Positive" and it will automatically be added to the table in False Positive View.
7. Cloud-based tool:

No other quality tool is cloud-based. This makes it accessible anytime, anywhere and you don't have to reinstall the tool to get the updates.
8. Hot Key:

Find the missing hotkeys in the target file.
9. Result visualization diagram:

This option displays the most common errors you have in a table view and graph view. This would be good statistics for a translator or user.
10. Exporting QA-ed files to excel:

Choose to export the results of your source and target files to excel format.
TQS User Guide

In the following lines, you will find a brief guide on how to use TQS.

Home

The main home page. You will find a slider with three different windows that include TQS story, who can use it, and the benefits of TQS. To show this page click here.

Signing Up

To sign up, you have to provide your personal information, such as:

- Full Name
- Email Address
- Phone
- Title
- Company Name
- Country
- How did you hear about us?

After signing up, you’ll receive an email with your password.


Logging in

To Log In, you need to enter your:

- Email address.
- Password sent earlier to your email.


Password:
If you forgot your password:

- Press “Forgot Password”.
- You will land on the Reset Password page shown below.
- Enter your email.
- A new password will be sent to your email.



Update Profile

To change your profile data:

- Click the drop menu with your email (ie: user@saudisoft.com) on the upper right of the window.
- Choose "Update Profile".
- You will get to a new page as shown below.
- Update your data in the enabled fields.


Reset Password
You can reset your password anytime.

- Enter your old password.
- Enter the new one. It should be more than 8 characters.
- Confirm it.
- Click "Submit".


Upload File

When you press this button on the upper right, a page will open that contains the following uploading window:

TQS Checks Bilingual and Mono Files

- Bilingual Files: A bilingual file is a file that contains both the source and the target files.
- Mono Files: A mono file could be either a source file or a target file.


TQS supports the following file types:

- .SDLXLIFF (Trados Bilingual Fie)
- .MQXLZ (MemoQ Bilingual File)
- .XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format)
- .TTX (SDL Trados 2007 Bilingual File)
- .TMX (Translation Memory Exchangable)
- .CSV (Excel File)
- .TXT Mono Files (two text files, one for source and another for target)


Quick Checks
1. Spelling and Punctuation

- Double Spaces: check for multiple spaces between words.
- Spell-check: check for spelling mistakes.
- Consecutive punctuation: checks for continuously repetitive punctuation marks (ex. ??? or !!!).
- Trademarks: check for the identicality of trademarks for source and target files.
- Different end punctuation: check if there is different punctuation at the end of the segment.
- Leading & trailing spaces: check for spaces at the beginning or at the end of the segment.
- Repeated words: check for repeated words (ex. word word)
- Quotation and brackets mismatch: check if the target file uses the same quotation or brackets and if they are identical in the same segment.


2. Tags and Special

- Special characters: such as #, $, %, &,*,@, etc.
- Tag mismatch: when a translator chooses a tag that does not match the one used in the source text. For example, you have two tags in a segment, 202 and 203, and you used 202 instead of 203 with some words/phrases.


3. Untranslated Text

- Partially translated segment: check for target segments that include source words.
- Target identical to source: check if the target and the source files are the same.


4. Consistency

- Consistency check: check for both source consistency and target consistency.
- Source Inconsistency: check if the source file has two different segments that have the same translation.
- Target Inconsistency: check if the target file has two different segments that have the same source.


5. Length

- Length: check for the length of both words and segments.
- Max character length: check for the length of the words only (maximum character count in one word).


6. Advanced features

- Bidi: find the bidirectional issues that occur with languages written both from RTL and LTR, like punctuation issues, neutral characters, etc. Bidirectional languages supported in this version are Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian (Farsi). More languages will be added in the upcoming versions.
- Numeric mismatch: check if the numeral system is in Hindi digits or Arabic digits. Also, if the numbers are written in digits in the source file, but as words in the target file.
- URL mismatch: check if the URL in the target file is not the same as in the source file (URLs are not translated).


7. Terminology Check:
Glossary check: in the "Upload File" page, you can upload a CSV file that contains words you don’t want to translate (ex. SAP, will be the same in the source and target files).

(Exact Match/Case Sensitive)

- T/ T: Check if the word in source and glossary is the same and the letter case is the same.
- T/ F: Check if the word in source and glossary is the same but do not check the letter case.
- F/ T: Check if the word in the glossary is the same or part of the word in source and check if the letter case is the same.
- F/ F: Check if the word in the glossary is the same or part of the word in the source, but not to check if the letter is the same.


Quick glossary check: insert one word to stay the same in both the source and the target files.

Settings

1. Length Settings

- Max no. of words: customize your target file to fit a certain number of words.
- Min no of words: define the minimum segment length.
- Min no of character: define the minimum word length.


2. Missing Translation Settings

- Max no. of words: you may want to keep some words untranslated. In this case, you decide the maximum number of words that TQS can ignore if seen untranslated in your file.
- Max length: decide the maximum percentage in which you allow untranslated words in a target segment.
- Min length: decide the minimum percentage in which you allow untranslated words in a target segment.
- Max Length Characters: decide the maximum number of characters in which you allow to be untranslated in a target file.


3. Segments Filtration by Translator

- Translator Name: you can choose to filter part of the target file by translator name.


4. Consistency Check Settings
Source Target check

- Exclude tags from source and target
- Exclude capitalization from source and target


Source check

- Exclude tags from source
- Exclude capitalization from source


Target check

- Exclude tags from target
- Exclude capitalization from target


5. Glossary Setting
Exact match/Case sensitive

- T/T: Check if the word in source and glossary is the same and the letter case is the same.
- T/ F: Check if the word in source and glossary is the same but do not check the letter case.
- F/ T: Check if the word in the glossary is the same or part of the word in the source and check if the letter case is the same.
- F/ F: Check if the word in the glossary is the same or part of the word in the source, but not to check if the letter case is the same.


Exact match: if you want to filter a certain word as is (ex. Choose the word “Part” to get all matching words, but “Partial” will not be one of the results. If you don’t check on “Exact Match”, you will get both “Part” and “Partial”).

Case Sensitive: if you check on this filter, it will detect the words you choose with the same initial’s case (ex. choosing the word “one”, “One” with a capital “O” will not be one of your results).

6. Segments to be excluded
Exclude context match


7. Sorting
Choose between sorting by:

- ID: Each segment has an ID. You can sort the results by ID order.
- Category: you can sort the results by category (ex. Untranslated words, bidi, length, etc.)


CSV Separator Settings
Like in Microsoft Excel files, you need to choose between the columns separators ( , or ; ).

8. Check Percentage
Allow Users to Check a specific Percentage of files (0 - 100)%.

9. Clear History
When you log out, your latest results are kept by default for the next time you log in. If you don't like to use this option, you can check "Enable Clear History" so your results will be deleted.

False Positive View

After you get the checker results, you will get your mistakes or faults as customized. If there's a source line you want to consider as "False Positive" you can click on "FP" in the table and it will be moved automatically to the false-positive view and be saved for every time you upload a file later.

Result

Exporting Options

- Export Result to Excel: Get the results downloaded as a Microsoft Excel file.
- Export Files to Excel: Get the source and target files downloaded as Microsoft Excel files.
- Export Files to Excel without Tags: Get the source and target files downloaded as Microsoft Excel files excluding Tags.



Result Visualization

- Shows your issues on a graph with the number of repetitions of every issue or fault.
- Shows the source language word count and the target language word count.


If you work on projects that include bidirectional languages, you'd need such a tool to do the QA process. Get started now, and let us know your feedback!