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The Era of Open Standards is here

June 30, 2009
By Deb Kramasz
Category: Global Technical Communication

Everyone is done talking about it and is now doing it. The era of open standards has arrived. A range of open standard formats for several data types exists: .tmx, .tbx, .srx, xml:tm, .XLIFF, DITA, and the list goes on.

Open standards are software that produces outputs that are interchangeable across all applications of its type. For example, terminology software outputs a file type that is interchangeable with any other open standard terminology software or application with a terminology component.

SDL has just launched Trados Studio 2009, an open platform for a translation management system. LISA has its open standards for file formats .tmx, .tbx, .srx, xml:tm among others.

The carrot is consistent word counts, interchangeability, and same treatment of translatable text. The word counts are the same across different vendors and software programs when software developers use the same rules. Users are no longer locked into one vendor or software program when the output can be taken to another company or used in a different application. Leveraging is maximized when translatable text is recognized by any open standard tool.

The only thing left to do is use the open standards and reap the benefits.

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