The new release of MadCap Lingo V5 is set to release and I was fortunate enough to receive a beta copy of the software for testing.  After initial testing on a live project I am very pleased with the enhancements.

MadCap Lingo is a tool we use regularly to assist clients in translating the content in their MadCap Flare projects. Lingo allows us to easily translate all the required content in a help system without corrupting the navigation and intended flow of the help system. Before the MadCap suite of products was released, help systems projects were far more difficult to complete.

We are always excited when MadCap releases new versions of Lingo. The folks at MadCap have always been very good at taking feedback from customers and improving their product with each new release. The enhancements to version 5 of Lingo make things even easier for us in dealing with Flare projects for translation.  Here is a list of some of the enhancements I discovered.

Improved Review Workflow – We now have the ability to export to Word and PDF formats. This is great! Often times a linguist, client reviewer or even a project manager would like the ability to look at the output in a single file. This new option allows for the creation of a single PDF or MS Word file. Each topic is clearly marked with the file name at the beginning of each topic. This is a feature we will use quite often.

New Getting Started Wizard – I like the new look of the initial project screen and the getting started wizard.

Show/Hide File List View – In addition to users being able to see all files that require translation, you can now see the folder structure of our project. The file filtering in V4 was effective but the ability to toggle to a folder view is a valuable improvement. Especially since clients will often refer to their files by where they are in the structure. This ability is important if a client wants to look at statistics on a subset of their entire project. You can easily just grab parts of a project by folder if necessary. A simple right click on a folder allows you to create a translation bundle based only on that folder in the structure.

Translation bundle

Enhanced file view

Translation Memory Editor Improvements – Language service providers certainly have multiple ways to edit translation memories but the ability to make changes from within Lingo is another great enhancement. The new layout in the translation memory editor improves performance, especially on large TM’s.

Enhanced Statistical Reports – New statistical reports are included for word count, translated content and content requiring translation. The new report format gives you very granular detail on the entire project or on single files within the project. The levels of fuzzy match are even reported. The data is presented in a way that language service providers should be used to seeing from their translation management systems.

XLIFF support  – continued lossless support of XLIFF (XML Localization Interchange File Format) is a key ability in Lingo. I successfully round-tripped an XLIFF file from Lingo to Across (our translation management system) and back with no problems!

Lingo V5 is a great update and one that we will be looking forward to using with our clients. One improvement I would like to see going forward would be the ability to have a single Lingo project with multiple languages.  Currently we have to build one Lingo project per language.  I hope to see that enhancement in V6!

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