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  Translution Pro, Translution Business and Translution Corporate

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2.1.   Translution Products

2.1.1  How does Translution work?

Translution Pro, Translution Business and Translution Corporate work by automatically re-directing email, attachments, web pages and electronic documents to Translution Central - our state-of-the-art fully resilient internet-hosted translation facility - where they are translated and either sent to the recipient (for emails) or sent back to the user.

Translution Central is based in London in a state of the art data centre and is completely resilient, secure and scalable. It is backed up to an off-site data centre in the North of England and is monitored on a 24/7 basis by a team of engineers. No customer documents or other confidential material other than dictionaries and Translation Memory (what is this?)is stored by Translution.

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2.1.2  I am struggling in getting to grips with "the product". What is unique about Translution?

Translution is the only company in the World which provides parented software which enables individuals and businesses to communicate and collaborate completely automatically by email without language barriers. The software is fully integrated with Microsoft Outlook; the world's best selling email system, although with the release of version 2.0 it will also work with any email system. Communicating immediately and accurately with people who do not speak your language requires no language skills and is now a reality.

Translution products' also enable you to translate documents, attachments and web pages at the click of a button. Included with all Translution products is a set of tools which, when used properly, will dramatically improve the quality of the translation.

To support its customers, Translution provide a range of specialist services which, when combined with our award winning software products, provide a complete cost effective solution for all your organisations' language and translation needs.

Previously, because of its high costs, quality machine translation was only available to the world's largest organisations. Today, with Translution, cost effective high quality instant translation and communication without language barriers is a cost effective reality for individuals, small companies and large organisations alike.

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2.1.3  Are there competitive products available?

No. Other than Translution Pro, Translution Business and Translution Corporate there are no automatic email translation products available from other software companies. However Translution Pro, Translution Business and Translution Corporate does compete very effectively with the products and services that have been available to date: free web based translations services, desktop translation products and server based translation products.

There are several websites which will allow you to translate text free of charge (usually imposing a maximum number of characters). However, these require the user to cut and paste the translated text into the email for sending (also losing all the formatting). These services also do not enable you to improve the quality of translation by, for instance, marking proper nouns such as contact information and names as "Do Not Translate" and using dictionaries to correctly translate technical and company/ industry terms. At best they simply produce a "gist" and are not suitable for serious communication purposes. Using these websites is much more laborious and less efficient than Translution.

There are also many desktop language translation programs available either from computer retailers or from internet software marketing companies. Whilst many of these include tools to improve translation quality, these programs also do not handle the automatic translation of emails with threads, such as those created when you forward or reply to an email. They are, therefore, not much use for true collaborations between individuals having different languages. Neither do they allow users to share dictionaries and other linguistic information such as Translation Memory (What's this?) - an essential requirement for any organisation of more than 2 people who are serious about actively expanding in countries that do not have English as their first language.

Finally there are server based MT engines. However these are very expensive and complicated to implement, and do not handle the automatic translation of emails. For a more detailed analysis of the differences between Translution Pro, Translution Business and Translution Corporate and other translation products and services, please click here.

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2.1.4  What programs come with Translution Pro, Translution Business and Translution Corporate?

Translution Pro and Translution Business provide add-ins for Microsoft Outlook, Word and Internet Explorer. They also features two standalone applications, Translution Control Centre (TCC) and Translution Dictionary Manager (TDM).

Translution Corporate adds Translution Corporate Manager (TCM), which provides the enterprise class software required for installations supporting many users.

With the release of version 2.0, Translution Pro, Translution Business and Translution Corporate do not require Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Word to be installed enabling you to install the products wherever Microsoft Windows XP and above is installed.

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2.1.5  Can you explain the differences between Translution Pro, Translution Business, and Translution Corporate?

Translution Pro has been designed for individuals and people working from home who require professional and high quality machine translation. It offers an unrestricted service (although there are limits on the number of words translated per annum) for outgoing and incoming email plus attachment translation, web translation and document translation.

Translution Business is designed for SME's (Small Medium Enterprises) and when purchased with our dictionary services and training provides a high and consistent quality of automatic translation for all users in your organization. Its main advantages over Translution Pro are that it enables all users to share common dictionaries, lists of terms such as contact details and addresses that should not be translated, and translation memory (What’s this?) to further improve translation quality.

Translution Corporate is designed for larger SME's and Enterprises, and provides enterprise class software. It adds corporate wide web enabled terminology management (enabling corporate users to develop their own departmental and company web enabled terminology). It also integrates with Microsoft Active Directory enabling systems administrators to install Translution’s desktop application software across the internal network, to set individual or group users preferences and to set language preferences in Global Address lists.

For a full product comparison please click here.

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2.1.6  Surely the main problem with this sort of technology is that it is not very accurate. We have used web based translation sites like Babelfish and the results are not very good.?

We agree that free web-based translation aids are not very good. This is because they lack any of the tools built into Translution which dramatically improve translation quality. Good Machine Translation can produce results which are understandable and accurate and certainly good enough for internal documentation and emails. What they will not do is provide a completely fluent translation every time. Please click here for a further explanation of the differences between Translution and web based translation sites like Babelfish.

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2.1.7  Is Translution secure?

Translution is as secure as any form of Email communication. In addition for Translution Corporate users, email transmitted over the internet will be encrypted using industry best practice. We also ensure that nobody has access to your communication and documents through "best of breed" technology and processes.

We take security and confidentiality of your data very seriously and are happy to discuss your requirements with you. Please contact us for further clarification.

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2.1.8  Do Translution personnel have access to any of my documents or emails?

Translution personnel do not have access to any documents or emails that are sent for Translation. All translation requests are handled automatically by Translution's servers which are located in a secure state of the art data hosting facility. Customer documents and emails are never stored on our servers, they simply "pass through" the translation engine.

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2.1.9  What languages do you support by product?

For a complete list of languages supported by product please click here.

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2.1.10  Can Translution be used by people who don't speak English?

Yes. Translution currently works in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Chinese (Simplified and Traditional).

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2.1.11  What versions of Microsoft Office do your products work with?

Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Office 2003 and Microsoft Office 2007.

However there are some limitations on the support of Outlook for certain languages, and currently a user will need to upgrade to Outlook 2003 to support all languages. This is because certain languages use a non-Latin alphabet. These languages are Arabic, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Greek, Japanese, Korean and Russian. These languages are not supported by Translution when using Microsoft Outlook XP, although these languages are supported in Microsoft Word XP and above and Internet Explorer 5.5 and above. This is due to limitations currently imposed by Microsoft in its object code for Outlook XP

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2.1.12  What versions of Windows Operating Systems (desktop and server) do you support?

All Translution's desktop programs work with Windows XP (Home and Pro version) and Windows Vista.

Translution Corporate requires Windows Server 2003.

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2.1.13  Why doesn't your product work with Microsoft Outlook Express?

Microsoft Outlook Express is the free email program shipped by Microsoft with every version of Microsoft's operating systems and should not be confused with Microsoft Outlook which is shipped with Microsoft Office and hence is paid for. Because Outlook Express is free, Microsoft do not provide an environment which enables Independent Software Vendors to provide add-ins for it. Therefore we cannot develop an add-in to Microsoft Outlook Express.

However Outlook Express users (and other non Microsoft Outlook users) can still take advantage of document and web page translation using the Translution Word and Internet Explorer add-ins and with the release of version 2.0 the simple email translation capability built into Translution Control Centre.

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2.1.14  What is the minimum configurations required to run Translution?

Translution requires no special system to run.

Normally if you are running Windows XP Translution will install successfully.

For the record the required minimum hardware configuration for Translution Pro and Translution Business is:
  • Processor: Pentium III 350 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system); Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended.
  • Memory: 512 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (256 MB minimum supported)
  • Disk Space: 25 Megabytes (MB) of available hard disk space

    To take full advantage of the Translution product please check that the following software is installed on your system.
  • MS Outlook XP or later version
  • MS Word XP or later version
  • MS Internet Explorer 5.5 ,6.0 or 7.0.
  • .NET framework version 2.0 (.NET framework can be downloaded free from Translution's website)

    The minimum configuration for Translution Corporate is the same as for Translution Pro and Translution Business. However you will also need to install Translution Corporate Manager on a server.

    The minimum configuration for up to 1500 users is as follows:

  • 2Ghz or faster processor required
  • 1Gb of RAM
  • 5Mb of available hard disk space
  • The minimum configuration for over 1500 users is as follows:

  • Quad processor
  • 4Gb of RAM
  • 5mb of available hard disk space
  • Before installing Translution Corporate, ensure that following software is installed:

  • Windows Server 2003
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    2.1.15  Has Translution been tested?

    Translution software has been rigorously tested. We undertake a thorough test programme before releasing any version of our software. However, as with any software package that has to be installed on many different environments, and coexist with many other vendors' software, previously unseen bugs do inevitably occur. We have over 15,000 registered users of the Translution software, as a company we respond quickly to our customer's feedback and release regular updates to our software.

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    2.1.16  Do I need any linguistic skills to use Translution?

    No, Translution can be used by non linguists and linguists alike. To see how simple it is to use Translution please click here

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