Introduction

The project analysis is a complex process in which multiple actions are consecutively happening in the background. In order to learn about it, get familiar with the following article: A step-by-step description of project analysis.

Many a time you might be wondering why the analysis of your newly-created project is prolonging. You ought to keep in mind that there are quite a few factors directly contributing to the overall length of the analysis process. Please, see all of them listed in the next section.

Project analysis factors

Number of source files

It might seem quite obvious, but the more source files are put into a single project, the more time it takes to process them, which leads to the significant increase of the project analysis time.

In situations when you deal with a multitude of source files (hundreds or even thousands of files) what we always recommend is to break them up into smaller chunks and create separate projects. This will not only contribute to quicker project analysis completions but it will also prevent individual jobs from getting piled up in the project workflow of one project, which may ultimately lead to freezing the entire project editor in XTM UI.

Large source files

As much as the number of source files determine the overall size of the content that needs to be processed, the size of an individual file can also be enormous and it affects the project analysis time the same way a huge number of files do.

Following the same steps as in the case of multiple source files, the best course of action here is to minimize the number of such files in a single project simply by keeping them in separate projects. Alternatively, such a file can be split into smaller parts and uploaded separably to a project.

Use of machine translation engines (MT)

Many clients are unaware of the fact that the use of machine translation at the project creation stage can also prolong its analysis time. This is due to the fact that after extracting the file’s translatable content by the analysis filter each segment is additionally sent off to an external provider for MT matching, which only adds to the overall analysis time.

There is even an informatory message in the project workflow in XTM UI at that time:

There is no a particular way to speed things up other than just to wait patiently until the whole process is finished. You might also want to utilize solutions suggested in the above cases, i.e. splitting up numerous source files into smaller projects.

Large translation memory (TM)

Similarly to the case of sending segments off for MT matching, they are also matched internally against the client’s TM, and this adds yet another action performed during the analysis stage. The more extensive translation memory is (i.e. the more TM entries exist in a database of the customers whose resources are applied to a project), the more time it takes to actually match all the segments against TM entries.

A good practice is to minimize the number of TM entries that would take part in the matching process during the project analysis stage by skillfully specifying the match types that are to take effect on segments on the global or project level.

Another solution is to diminish the number of customers' TM and terminology resources during the project creation stage:

Adobe InDesign files

While the majority of files is converted into an XML format on the spot in XTM, for IDML & INDD files the process is a bit different. Generally speaking, their conversion takes place on an InDesign server. InDesign server is a standalone, dedicated and up to date server on Windows. The majority of clients use InDesign that is connected to the XTM Cloud.

That being said, due to the fact that many clients might be translating InDesign files at the same time, those are queued, and the server resources might not be able to process all of them as seamlessly as it might be expected, which, in turn, is manifested in the prolonged analysis in XTM UI.

Number of target languages

The number of target languages rises the project analysis time exponentially. Please, keep in mind that with each and every new target language added to a single project, the number of source files to be analyzed increases proportionately to the number of target languages present in that project. For instance, if there is a project with two source files as well as two target languages, the total number of files to be analyzed is four (two files for each target language).

In the case of a project with multiple source files and target languages, the solution is to create multiple smaller projects instead, each with only one target language.

XTM server variant

The project analysis time also depends on the server type in which a given client resides (please, click here for more information).

For example, if you happen to be a Cloud-based client, you may need to have extra patience since the XTM Cloud server is a multi-tenant system where resources are shared across all clients. This may lead to a variation in performance, and by the same token - project analysis, at peak times. The XTM system administration team constantly monitor and optimize the performance of the servers.

PVC clients, on the other hand, are granted with faster analysis completion due to exclusive system resources.