Frequently Asked Questions

Please click here for instructions.

We have been in business since 1997. Originally, Western Standard was solely a publishing company that provided original source content to companies such as World Book Encyclopedia and Encyclopædia Britannica. In 2006, we began expanding our product offerings in translation, originally in the government sector.

Fluency was designed as an in-house translation tool between 2006 and 2009 and was built from the ground up, with design specifications coming from translators. Because of this unique background, Fluency has many innovations in the area of translation technology and is particularly user-friendly. Since Fluency was commercialized in 2010, it has won over many previous Trados users with its abundant resources and intuitive, customizable interface.

Trados supports a wide variety of project, terminolgy, and translation memory files. Fluency currently supports all mainstream Trados files including: *Pre-segmented Tageditor (.ttx), SDLXliff (.xliff and .sdlxliff), TWBExport (.txt), SDL TMs (.mdb), and SDL MultiTerm (.xml) files. Fluency also fully supports Bilingual MS Word (dirty) files for creation, import, translation and export. Fluency does not support Trados .itd project files. *Pre-segmented files are project files first created and segmented (sentences defined) in Tageditor which can then be translated in Fluency.

Fluency supports the translation of *pre-segmented WordFast project files (txml). Fluency also supports the import and export of WordFast TM and Terminology files. *Pre-segmented files are projects first created by the client in WordFast and then translated in Fluency.

When clients require translators to use a specific product, it is usually to ensure compatibility with their own systems or processes. The fact is, there are many files that can be used interchangeably with any of the mainstream CAT tools, including .tmx files for translation memories, .tbx for terminology, and xliff for projects. Many times, when a client asks for a specific tool, they just want to make sure you send them back the correct files so that they don't have to do any additional conversion work. Fluency allows the translator to translate and return a compatible file for all the mainstream CAT tools. If you have specific questions, please Contact Us.

Fluency is a tool for the human translator, not a machine translation engine. However, Fluency does provide access to Google Translate, Microsoft Translate, and APIs for other machine translation engines (e.g., Systran) in an effort to aide the human translator. Machine translation capabilities can be switched off in preferences. Fluency also includes large bilingual dictionaries in over 40 languages and automatically researches each source term/word in the dictionary as a reference for the translator.

Fluency is the most cost-effective tool on the market by including language resources most tools do not. Western Standard also provides excellent support and training for the first year. Please visit our store to find pricing for specific versions of Fluency.

Between the years of 2006 and 2009, Western Standard provided some translation work for the U.S. government. Since 2010, the translation division has focused solely on translation technology and does not currently offer translation services.