Most common errors related to the installation and use of the LanguageTool Plugin
I’m aware that the LanguageTool Plugin setup can be a bit tricky for some users. I’m working on this and I hope that future versions will have a dedicated installer that will guide you through the setup process.
However, at this point I would like to remind you that Java 8 and LanguageTool for offline use are required for the correct operation of the LanguageTool Plugin.
Detailed description of setup process you can find here:
If you have any problems with the LanguageTool Plugin I kindly encourage you to contact me by e-mail or report problems on SDL Community forum. I will be happy to answer all the questions and try to solve the problems.
Symptom: The system cannot find the file specified
When Server Only is selected on the LanguageTool Server Settings tab.
Cause: Java is not installed on your computer. The LanguageTool Plugin requires Java 8 and LanguageTool for offline use to work properly. See plug-in technical requirements section in SDL App Store.
Solution: Please install Java. Go to the https://www.java.com/pl/download/. Download and install Java 8. Detailed description of installation you can find here:
Symptom: LanguageTool server is not available.
When other option than Server Only is selected on the LanguageTool Server Settings tab.
Cause 1: Java is not installed on your computer. The LanguageTool Plugin requires Java 8 and LanguageTool for offline use to work properly. See plug-in technical requirements section in SDL App Store.
Solution: Please install Java. Go to the https://www.java.com/pl/download/. Download and install Java 8. Detailed description of installation you can find here:
OR
Cause 2: There is no LanguageTool for offline use or path in the LanguageTool Path is incorrect. The LanguageTool Plugin requires Java 8 and LanguageTool for offline use to work properly. See plug-in technical requirements section in SDL App Store.
Solution: Please go to the https://www.languagetool.org. Download and unzip Desktop version for offline use. Then make sure the correct path to the languagetool_server.jar has been entered in the LanguageTool Path field.
One of the amazing features of the LanguageTool Plugin is advanced spell check. Spell-checking is done in batch mode, so it’s faster than a standard Studio spell check. Group ignoring errors is easier and safer. Unnecessarily ignored errors can be quickly restored, which cannot be done with a standard spell check in Studio.
And most importantly, we can detect errors in:
proper names
product names
utranslatables
source UI options when bilingual translated
acronyms
words in capital letters
words in mixed letters
words containing digits
and alphanumeric expressions.
LanguageTool Plugin is smart spell checker for checking acronyms and alphanumeric expressions. This is how it works.
Smart Spellcheck
Error
Error detected by QA-checker
Source
Target
LT Plugin
Number Verifier
Simple Numcheck
ATmega168
ATmeg168
Yes
No
Yes
ATmega328
ATmega228
Yes
Yes
Yes
Arduino
Ardoino
Yes
No
No
Due
Deu
Yes
No
No
SAM3X8e
SAM38Xe
Yes
Yes
Yes
LilyPad
LillyPad
Yes
No
No
Any error detected by the LanguageTool Plugin is clearly indicated in the Message column. Any error detected by the LanguageTool Plugin is clearly highlighted in the Target column. You can be sure that you won’t mistakenly ignore the error returned by a standard spell checker in the Studio.
How to configure the LanguageTool Plugin to detect all such errors.
Spellchecker Settings
Notes in small print: not all errors listed above are detected by the LanguageTool Plugin by default. This depends on the default configuration of the speller of LanguageTool package. LanguageTool spell checker configuration is set in INFO file in dictionary folder:
The first highlighted part is the path to the LanguageTool package, and the next highlighted parts are the given language.
Modified content of the INFO file
For pl-PL:
# Dictionary properties. fsa.dict.separator=+ fsa.dict.encoding=UTF-8 fsa.dict.encoder=none fsa.dict.frequency-included=true fsa.dict.speller.locale=pl_PL fsa.dict.speller.ignore-diacritics=true fsa.dict.speller.ignore-all-uppercase=false fsa.dict.speller.ignore-camel-case=false fsa.dict.speller.ignore-numbers=false fsa.dict.speller.ignore-punctuation=true fsa.dict.speller.equivalent-chars=x ź, l ł, u ó, ó u, u y, i j, u ł, d t, v w, - —, - –, 0 O fsa.dict.speller.replacement-pairs=ć dź, ć dz, c dz, ch h, dź ć, dz ć, ę em, ę en, em ę, en ę, h ch, osc ość, loz łos, ą oł, oł ą, ą om, om ą, ą on, on ą, ż rz, rz ż, rz sz, scia ścią, sić ść, sz ż, sz rz, tro rot, x ks, z rz, nei nie, trzcionk czcionk
For en-US:
# Dictionary properties. fsa.dict.separator=+ fsa.dict.encoding=iso-8859-2 fsa.dict.encoder=SUFFIX fsa.dict.speller.locale=en_US fsa.dict.speller.ignore-diacritics=true fsa.dict.speller.ignore-all-uppercase=false fsa.dict.speller.ignore-camel-case=false fsa.dict.speller.ignore-numbers=false fsa.dict.speller.replacement-pairs=ninties 1990s, a ei, ei a, a ey, ey a, ai ie, ie ai, are air, are ear, are eir, air are, air ere, ere air, ere ear, ere eir, ear are, ear air, ear ere, eir are, eir ere, f ph, ph f, gh f, f gh, kw qu, Bordo Bordeaux, bato bateau, bocoup beaucoup, buro bureau, bo beau, oo ew, ew oo, ew ui, ui ew, oo ui, ui oo, uff ough, oo ieu, ieu oo, ier ear, ear ier, air ear, shun tion, shun sion, shun cion, yersa years, phoby phobia fsa.dict.frequency-included=true fsa.dict.speller.ignore-all-uppercase=false
For the Ignore words with UPPER CASE…, Ignore words with miXED CASE… and Ignore words with numbers… to work, there must be 3 highlighted lines in the language configuration file. If there are no lines or they are set to “true”, they must be changed accordingly.
Unfortunately, this will not work for all languages. Below is a table with the default settings of the LanguageTool spell checker module, which will help you easily check if you can change your settings. The FSAignore params supported column indicates whether it is possible to change them in the INFO file. You can see that among the languages tested by me, it is not possible to set all three parameters only for Danish, German, Portuguese and Ukrainian. Nothing needs to be changed for Catalan, Dutch, Swedish, French. For other languages you can edit FSA parameters in INFO file.
In version 2.0, several important improvements were added and the known minor bugs were
fixed:
– You no longer need to set the language in the LanguageTool Plugin. The language is automatically taken from translated file.
– Segment locked content is not checked (not sent to the server) — less false positive errors.
– The name of the spell-checking rule is set automatically for all languages. You don’t need to enter it manually.
– Improved PerfectMatch segment exclusion from checking. It was possible that some ContextMatch segments were not checked.
– Improved saving of LanguageTool Plugin settings in the project after clicking OK.
– Fixed an error caused by several consecutive special characters used in regular expressions, e.g. “**” during spell-checking. The problem occurred, among others, in Spanish.
– The server console window now starts up immediately in the minimized version.
– Improved Ignore All function for spelling errors. Now only the same type of errors are ignored, not all spelling errors.
– Improved Ignore words … only if the same word occurs in source feature. Now only whole words in the source segment are taken into account for the comparison.
New LanguageTool Plugin for SDL Trados Studio available!
LanguageTool Plugin is an application for SDL Trados Studio. It is a verification module, which is used to check the translated text for grammar and language errors. The plug-in connects to LangugeTool server via RestAPI and generates a list of all errors detected by LanguageTool server.
LanguageTool is an open-source proof-reading software, which detects a lot of grammatical, stylistic, spelling, typographical or punctuation errors in more than 25 languages. On the example of Polish, we can safely say this tool can also be useful for professionals, proofreaders, editors or translators due to the range of detected errors. LanguageTool is entirely free for everyone.
LanguageTool is available as a stand-alone desktop application or as an extension for LibreOffice/OpenOffice, Chrome, Firefox, and Google Docs. Moreover, it can now be used in SDL Trados Studio with this plug-in. LanguageTool finds errors based on the morphological analysis of text and special rules.
The application automatically starts LanguageTool server when needed. There are three preset options for server start-up (including starting only LanguageTool server or stand-alone LanguageTool plus server), which can be easily customized by the user.
Server Settings
Spell checking support
LanguageTool has its spellchecker (it is not MS Word or Hunspell spellchecker). The built-in Studio spell checking feature does not check the words split with tags. However, LanguageTool Plugin does so efficiently by ignoring the tags.
Spelling
New version of the application has all the spell checking settings necessary to limit the number of false positives.
Spellcheck Settings
Support for three user setting profiles
You have a choice of 3 setting profiles where you can save your settings, e.g. one for different language pairs.
Improved design of the application windows and dialog boxes
Verification details message window was thoroughly revised. The fields are now well arranged and stretch seamlessly as you resize the window. Long segments display is no longer a problem.
User Profile Settings
New, detailed user manual
Application operation, description of all settings, and troubleshooting tips can all be found in the user manual. English user manual PDF is embedded into the plug-in.
LanguageTool Plugin for SDL Trados Studio finds grammar errors in translation
Even the best translator makes mistakes. Short deadlines, machine translations, and other factors constitute to making mistakes. Probably, you happened to overlook an error, which normally you would not commit because you are well aware of such mistake.
For example, grammar error in a sentence:
The manager wants to speak to every employees in his office.
Or the lack of a comma:
By default this setting is enabled.
Think of the usefulness of a helpful watcher which notifies us of such mistakes immediately we make them. I have good news — there is something like this called LanguageTool.
LanguageTool is open-source proof-reading software, which detects a lot of grammatical, stylistic, spelling, typographical or punctuation errors in more than 25 languages. On the example of Polish, we can safely say this tool can also be useful for professionals, proofreaders, editors or translators due to the range of detected errors. LanguageTool is entirely free for everyone..
LanguageTool is available as a stand-alone desktop application or as an extension in LibreOffice/OpenOffice, Chrome, and Firefox. Moreover, it can now be used in SDL Trados Studio thanks to my plug-in.
LanguageTool Plugin for Studio — Settings
LanguageTool Plugin for Studio — Error Messages
LanguageTool finds errors based on the morphological analysis of text and special rules. The capabilities of LanguageTool are virtually unlimited but depend on the existence of rules and their number for a given language. The more rules for a particular language, the greater the strength of LanguageTool. That is great news for all LanguageTool users, as they can easily improve it, by creating new rules, both for themselves and for the LanguageTool community.
Most rules exist for the following languages: French and Catalan (more than 2500), German (more than 2000), Polish and English (almost 1500), as well as the Chinese, Danish, Japanese, Breton, and Russian (more than 500)..
For translators, an attractive option may be the fact that the rules do not need to apply only to the errors, but also to stylistic guidelines. Such rules can be created for a particular project. Examples of such rule categories are Plain English and Misused terms in EU publications, which exist in English.
I have followed the development of LanguageTool project for many years. I then thought it would be good to have it all in the SDL Trados Studio, which I use on a daily basis as a translator. That is why I developed a plug-in for SDL Trados Studio. This plug-in connects to LangugeTool Web-server via RestAPI and shows all errors detected by LanguageTool in a file being translated. LanguageTool Plugin works with Studio 2014, 2015 and should also work with Studio 2017.
This plug-in is beta, but it is signed and safe. I would like to get the feedback of the wider group of users on its functionality before I publish it in the SDL App Store.
An interesting feature offered by LanguageTool and my plug-in is the ability to check the spelling of words with tags ignored. The Studio built-in spellchecker always reports such words as mistakes.
One of the amazing features of the LanguageTool Plugin is advanced spell check. Spell-checking is done in batch mode, so it’s faster than a standard Studio spell check. Group ignoring errors is easier and safer. Unnecessarily ignored errors can be quickly restored, which cannot be done with a standard spell check in Studio.
A new version of the LanguageTool Plugin for Studio 2017 and 2019 is available in the SDL AppStore.
