Finally, after almost two months of testing Verifika and comparing it to QA Distiller, I’ve made up my mind. From what I’ve found, Verifika is superior to QA Distiller. There’s a big “Yeah, but,” however. Read on, to learn what it is.
Overall usability
| QA Distiller 8.5 | Verifika 1.6 | Comparison result |
| QAD displays all errors in a single, easy-to-navigate list and provides the keyboard shortcuts for most actions. Loading a glossary is relatively slow, due to conversion to the internal DICT format. | Verifika has a more modern GUI. Because the errors display on different tabs, moving between them takes additional time. Provides fewer keyboard shortcuts than QAD. Supports tab-delimited glossaries and more file formats, including TXML. | Each tool has its own advantages in terms of usability, but overall, I like Verifika more. |
Licensing and pricing
| QA Distiller 8.5 | Verifika 1.6 | Comparison result |
| A floating license is available. The prices are higher. In theory, upgrades are free. | A floating license is available. The initial prices are lower. Upgrades are available for a small fee for one year. | Pretty much head-to-head. |
Error types and options
| QA Distiller 8.5 | Verifika 1.6 | Comparison result |
| QAD includes almost every type of check expected by a translation professional these days. | In addition to what QAD offers, Verifika has a few more options such as checking extra spaces around tags. | I found Verifika to be slightly better in this respect. |
Spell checker
| QA Distiller 8.5 | Verifika 1.6 | Comparison result |
| QAD has none. I have to use a separate program. | Verifika has an easy-to-use, built-in spell checker. | This is a critical advantage that Verifika has over QA Distiller. Being able to run a spell check together with all other checks saves a lot of time. |
Option to skip the untranslated segments for all types of checks
| QA Distiller 8.5 | Verifika 1.6 | Comparison result |
| Not available. For the translation units in a TMX file that have no translation, QAD just displays “Forgotten translation.” | Not available. For the translation units in a TMX file that have no translation, Verifika doesn’t display any errors. | No difference. |
Correcting errors from within the tool
| QA Distiller 8.5 | Verifika 1.6 | Comparison result |
| X-Editor has minor efficiency issues. | Verifika’s editor is easier to use. An auto-correction feature is available. Verifika is able to show context from the translated file in real time. Provides a useful search feature. | I found Verifika to be better in this respect. |
Terminology: Whole words only option
| QA Distiller 8.5 | Verifika 1.6 | Comparison result |
| QAD doesn’t offer any way to manage the Whole words only option for two different glossaries, one requiring this option and the other not. If I’m checking a glossary with the Whole words only option, I also have to enter all the original word forms in this glossary. | Verifika provides an option called Whole words shorter than, which makes it easier to manage the Whole words only option. In theory, it’s possible to simultaneously check against two different glossaries, one requiring the Whole words only option and the other not. The Whole words shorter than option also makes it easier to manage the glossaries, because you only need to add the original word forms for those words that fall below the character limit. | Verifika has a significant advantage. |
Terminology: handling word forms
| QA Distiller 8.5 | Verifika 1.6 | Comparison result |
| QAD resolves the issue by simply looking at the stems of words, rather than at the word forms. As long as the user enters the shortest possible stems in the glossary, no false positives will come up. | Verifika displays an error whenever a term in the translation has a word form other than what is in the glossary. Users can keep adding the word forms into an internal database in the hope that at some point, most word forms will already be in the database and won’t come up in the QA results as errors. Until that point is reached, this process seems to be less efficient than the QAD’s approach. | I think QAD is superior, at least for languages where different word forms are abundant. |
I found Verifika to be superior to QAD in a few respects. The most critical advantage is a built-in spell checker, while other benefits are minor or preferential. Verifika is more modern, offers more checks, and makes QA easier. If the word forms in the target language weren’t an issue for me, I’d choose Verifika. But because I think that stem-based checking is more efficient, I can’t give up on QA Distiller.
I will continue testing Verifika to see whether it’s really possible to increase efficiency by building a larger database of words. In the meantime, if Palex continues improving Verifika and, among other things, makes stem-based checking available as an alternative to adding word forms, Verifika will definitely become a “killer QA tool.” Even at this point, this is a very good tool. Palex deserves praise for the hard work that went into this smart program.
For more information on checking terminology, refer to the article about the general process of collecting and checking terms.
I would like to ask you if any of both tools allows an exception list. I was testing Verifika and it gives false positives as abbreviation periods (like by «ggf.» [eventually in German ] are interpreted as sentences end points. Thank you!
Hello Pablo,
The exception list will be added in the further versions. If you have any recommendations, please drop us a line a leave a comment in our blog http://e-verifika.com
Hello Alex, thank a lot you for your reply.
I would add the file format TXLF from WordFast Pro 5 to the file formats supported by Verifika