Slate™ Desktop Starter

Slate™ Desktop Starter is for freelancers and teams working with one language pair. Make custom translation models to and from either language. It’s easy to work with machine translation that delivers quality your way! It’s also a great starting-point for tight-knit teams to share translation models with other resources.

Two Languages

Support for two languages from among the 33 possible languages. Your translation memories and Slate™ Desktop, create engines that translate between the two languages in either direction.

Privacy & Confidentiality

Slate™ Desktop runs on your PC. There’s no the Internet connection. They don’t log your activities like online subscription services. You’re fully in control of confidential work.

Organize Translation Memories

Tools that organize an inventory of translation memories by client, subject matter and project type. More tools prepare translation memories as training corpus to build translation engines.

Build Customized Engines

Tools that build customized machine translation engines.

Evaluate Engines

Tools to evaluate engines and estimate how they will perform as you work.

Deploy Engines

Tools that copy engines to another work environment.

Pre-Translate Files

Tools that pre-translate source segments and save TMX and XLIFF files to include in any CAT tool project.

Plugins Connect to CAT Tools

Plugins connect Slate™ Desktop customized engines to popular CAT tools such as memoQ, Trados Studio, CafeTran and OmegaT.

Forced Terminology

Add global or per engine or per language source-target terminology files that Slate™ Desktop engines use to force translations of known source language terms.

Terminology On-The-Fly

Add new source-target terminology with just a couple of keystrokes while working. The engine adapts and enforces the new pair in the next segment.

Weighted Updates

Tools to update Slate™ Desktop engines with new translation memories and optionally prioritize the influence of some segments over others.

Backup & Restore

Tools that backup and restore both the engines and the translation memories that created them.

Sample Translation Memories

Sample translation memories and other files to help you practice and learn.

You need to provide the following before working with Slate™ Desktop Starter.

Hardware System Requirements

• Intel Core i3 (i7 recommended) or AMD Athlon 64 CPU (4-core x86-64, 2.4 GHz or faster)
• 4 GB of RAM (8 GB recommended)
• 2 GB of free hard-disk space for installation
• 250 GB (or more) of additional free space on a high-performance drive is required after installation

Windows Operating System (Option)

• Windows 7 64-bit Edition with Service Pack 1
• Windows 8 or 8.1 64-bit Edition
• Windows 10 64-bit Edition
• 32-bit Editions not supported

Linux Operating System (Option)

• Ubuntu 16.04 or newer (other Debian-based on request)
• CentOS/RHEL-based (other RPM-based on request)

MacOS Operating System (Option)

• To be determined, currently unsupported

Translation Memories

Personalized engine:

• 70,000 to 150,000 sentence segments
• One full-time translator’s work for 3 to 4 years

Customized engine:

• 200,000 to 500,000 sentence segments
• Support a team of translators
• No upper limit number of segments
• Too many segments risks degrading the engine

File Types

Slate™ Desktop reads and writes these standards-based localization file types:

• Text files with UTF-8 character encoding, Linux or Windows new line separators
• Tab-delimited files are specialized Text file (as above) with one tab per line. Text left of the tab is the source language. Text right of the tab is target language.
• TMX – translation memory exchange up to version 1.4b
• XLIFF – XML Localization Interchange File Format version 1.2 (.xlf, .xliff, .sdlxliff, .mxliff, .mqxliff)
• Gettext .po and .mo files

You can also work with file types supported by your computer-assisted translation (CAT), such as .docx, .xlsx, etc.

Specialization

Work specializations such as financial & regulatory reports, clinical trials & pharmaceuticals, technical manuals and legal contracts generally create consistent and accurate translations captured in the translation memories. These translation memories yield better customized machine translation than specializations such as marketing, creative writing and literature.

The installer provides and manages the following requirements.

GNU Utilities

The GNU Utilities are essential open source utilities that the Slate™ Toolkit needs to create models. The MS Windows package installs and updates them but we do not maintain them.

Perl Scripting Runtime

Perl 64-bit version 5.28 or newer is a free open source scripting runtime environment.

Python Scripting Runtime

Python 64-bit version 3.72 or newer is a free open source scripting runtime environment. Required dependency libraries include: pip, pywin32, six, numpy, nltk, lxml, regex, polib, jieba, PyArabic, tinysegmenter3, hazm, wxPython

End User License Agreement

A perpetual, royalty-free end-user-license agreement (EULA) to use on your machines. No subscriptions or hidden fees.

Multiple Platforms

Install and activate on any supported operating systems. Today’s support includes MS Windows and Linux. MacOS is planned.

Single Activation

Install, activate and work on one machine. Build engines and work on the same computer.

Maintenance Updates

Maintenance updates are published occasionally with new languages, enhanced features and bug fixes.

Technical Support

Access to priority technical support during the period between major version updates via our online support portal, https://support.slate.rocks.

Money-Back Guarantee

Use Slate™ Desktop and learn how your translation memories perform as an engine. Experience our unparalleled technical support. If you’re not fully satisfied, uninstall Slate™ Desktop and request a refund within 60 days of your purchase. We will refund your full purchase price immediately – no questions asked.

Expert Review

We’ll help you understand how your first engine performs. Send us the automated evaluation report. We’ll review the performance with you.

Slate Toolkit

Slate™ Toolkit is a collection of free open source software to generate and use phrase-based statistical machine translation (SMT) models. It is the only MS Windows compatible collection of SMT utilities and serves as the foundation for our commercial Slate™ Desktop products.