| Developer(s) | SDL International |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 1998 |
| Website | passolo.com |
SDL Passolo is an award-winning specialised visual software localisation tool developed to enable the translation of user interfaces. They currently have a newly released 2009 version.
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The company PASS Engineering GmbH was founded as a medical analysis system provider in Bonn, Germany, in 1990 and it proved crucial to provide localised medical software. Due to the lack of appropriate tools for doing this, they began to develop their own localisation tool which they called Passolo. After first being used internally within their own company, Passolo became available as an independent localisation tool in 1998.[1]
In June, 2007, SDL acquired PASS Engineering.[2]
SDL Passolo is a software localisation tool that is customisable to the users' needs; requiring no programming experience. It allows users to concentrate on the translation by accelerating the many technical aspects of software localisation, and it is possible to work in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) mode. Should the length of a text string change as a result of the translation (i.e. become longer or shorter), any necessary layout modifications to dialogs and forms can be made directly within the application.
The application offers the tools required to localise all the elements contained in the software, including strings, menus, dialogs, bitmaps, and icons, without requiring access to the source text files or the development environment used for developing the software, as well as providing automatic test functions, interfaces to the major translation memories, and the option of working with all the major Windows formats as well as text files and tagged formats such as XML and HTML.[3]
SDL Passolo allows the user to:
The Translator Edition is a free editor that can be downloaded from the company website. It allows translators to edit the bundles created with the Team or Collaboration Edition. It offers all functions except parse source files or generate target files.
SDL Passolo Essential is included as an application within the latest version of SDL Trados. This edition allows users to create and translate projects, as well as generate localised target files.
The Professional Edition is a stand-alone solution which is particularly suited for localisation projects of a medium to large size. It supports operations covering compound modules. As the edition is integrated with SDL Trados and SDL MultiTerm, translation data can be exported in order to use while translating relevant manuals and online help. It can also be used for data exchange with other systems. The integrated script development environment also makes it possible to change or add functions to SDL Passolo.
The Team Edition offers the same functions as the Professional. In addition, it can be used to create and administer a certain number of licensed translation bundles. These translation bundles can be processed using the free Translator Edition. The Team Edition has three different options, depending on the number of translation bundles used in a particular project, with the option of 5, 10 or unlimited bundles.[5]
The Collaboration edition offers the same functions as the Team Edition. In addition it can create translation bundles that can be synchronized with the original project via a network folder or FTP server. When the "Synchronize Exorts" function is called all source file changes are sent to the translation bundle and all current translations are send back to the project. There is no need to import and re-export the bundles to have the project and the bundle up-to-date.
SDL Passolo 2009 is a Unicode application and can therefore be used only on Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7. It is also able to localise software for Windows 9x.[6]