Attention fellow translators!
Did you despair because you could no longer access the Microsoft Language Portal? Did you think that Microsoft pulled the plug? Did you feel like your world was coming to an end? Well…
Despair not!
Apparently Microsoft simply changed the Language Portal’s URL. It would be great if they had left a message at the old address, or at least to redirect you automatically to the new page. BUT, at least we now know that this useful resource is not gone and we can continue to enjoy the online resources for styleguides, terminology and UI translation downloads (for those with an MSDN subscription). But then you would ask me, what exactly happened and they changed? I think they wanted to have a separate hub page but also, surprise!, you can now download language-specific glossaries in TBX format!
A big thank you to Jeromobot (aka Jost Zetzsche, of the famed Tool Kit newsletter) who, as always, was the first to know of these changes and reported it on Twitter. Thank you, oh holy saint of translators!
Now remember the following (advise forwarded from Jeromobot/Jost):
“TEnTs that directly support TBX: Swordfish, Heartsome, Trados Studio, Across, Star Transit, Wordfast Pro, Alchemy Publisher”,
“Good tool to process and convert TBX: Xbench”
“Microsoft Language Portal TBX download file misses first line: ?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″? Paste into file with the “greater than” in the beginning and the “less than” at the end and then you can import”, (I wrote the signs in letters as my editor seems to “clean up” the code and they vanished during the last update)
“For IntelliWebSearch w/ MS glossaries enter http://www.microsoft.com/language/en-US/Search.aspx?sString= as start + &langID=xx-xx as finish”
Make sure you follow Jost on Twitter and of course his newsletter. His advise is always to the point and invaluable!{jcomments on}