SDL Passolo is a specialised visual
software localization
In computing, internationalization and localization ( American) or internationalisation and localisation (British English), often abbreviated i18n and L10n, are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional peculiarities an ...
tool developed to enable the translation of
user interfaces
In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...
.
History
The company PASS Engineering GmbH was founded as a medical analysis system provider in
Bonn
The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...
,
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...
, in 1990 and it proved crucial to provide localized medical
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
...
. Due to the lack of appropriate tools for doing this, they began to develop their own localization tool which they called Passolo. After first being used internally within their own company, Passolo became available as an independent localization tool in 1998.
In June, 2007, SDL acquired PASS Engineering. In 2012 the original development team was released and development and support were transferred to
Cluj
; hu, kincses város)
, official_name=Cluj-Napoca
, native_name=
, image_skyline=
, subdivision_type1 = County
, subdivision_name1 = Cluj County
, subdivision_type2 = Status
, subdivision_name2 = County seat
, settlement_type = City
, le ...
,
Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, a ...
.
About SDL Passolo
SDL Passolo is a software localization tool, developed by
SDL plc
SDL plc was a multinational professional services company headquartered in Maidenhead, United Kingdom. SDL specialized in language translation software and services (including interpretation services). SDL is an abbreviation
An abbreviatio ...
, that is customisable to the users' needs; requiring no
programming experience. It allows users to concentrate on the translation by accelerating the many technical aspects of software localization, and it is possible to work in a
WYSIWYG
In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...
(What You See Is What You Get) mode. Should the length of a text string change as a result of the translation (i.e. become longer or shorter), any necessary layout modifications to dialogs and forms can be made directly within the application.
The application offers the tools required to localize all the elements contained in the software, including strings, menus, dialogs, bitmaps, and icons, without requiring access to the source text files or the development environment used for developing the software, as well as providing automatic test functions, interfaces to the major
translation memories A translation memory (TM) is a database that stores "segments", which can be sentences, paragraphs or sentence-like units (headings, titles or elements in a list) that have previously been translated, in order to aid human translators. The translati ...
, and the option of working with all the major
Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
formats as well as text files and tagged formats such as
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. ...
and
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
.
Purpose
SDL Passolo allows the user to:
*Use the visual localization environment to see which translation is best when no context is available
*View the translation of dialog boxes and menus in real-time (WYSIWYG) and adjust them accordingly
*Fully customise SDL Passolo to meet their needs with an integrated development environment
*Integrate SDL Passolo into their workflow management systems or development environment
Editions
*''SDL Passolo Translator Edition''
The Translator Edition is a free editor that can be downloaded from the company website. It allows translators to edit the bundles created with the Team or Collaboration Edition. It offers all functions except parse source files or generate target files.
*''SDL Passolo Essential''
SDL Passolo Essential is included as an application within the latest version of SDL Trados. This edition allows users to create and translate projects, as well as generate localized target files.
*''Professional Edition''
The Professional Edition is a
stand-alone Standalone or Stand-alone may refer to:
*Stand-alone DSL, a digital subscriber line without analog telephone service; also known as ''naked DSL''
*Stand-alone expansion pack, an expansion pack which does not require the original game in order to us ...
solution which is particularly suited for localization projects of a medium to large size. It supports operations covering compound modules. As the edition is integrated with SDL Trados and SDL MultiTerm, translation data can be exported in order to use while translating relevant manuals and online help. It can also be used for data exchange with other systems. The integrated script development environment also makes it possible to change or add functions to SDL Passolo.
*''Team Edition''
The Team Edition offers the same functions as the Professional. In addition, it can be used to create and administer a certain number of licensed translation bundles. These translation bundles can be processed using the free Translator Edition.
The Team Edition has three different options, depending on the number of translation bundles used in a particular project, with the option of 5, 10 or unlimited bundles.
*''Collaboration Edition''
The Collaboration edition offers the same functions as the Team Edition. In addition it can create translation bundles that can be synchronized with the original project via a network folder or FTP server. When the "Synchronize Exports" function is called all source file changes are sent to the translation bundle and all current translations are sent back to the project. There is no need to import and re-export the bundles to have the project and the bundle up-to-date.
System requirements
SDL Passolo runs on
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
,
Windows 7
Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearl ...
or
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...
. It is also able to localize software for Windows 9x.
References
External links
http://www.translationzone.com/passolo- SDL Passolo
http://www.sdl.com/solution/language/software-localization/passolo- SDL Passolo
https://community.sdl.com/solutions/language/translationproductivity/sdl_passolo/- SDL Community
{{DEFAULTSORT:SDL Passolo
User interfaces
Software-localization tools