TRADOS?
joe
Brazilian Portuguese, providing I use the translating tool TRADOS.
I'm fairly new to translating. I was told by at language school not to
consider buying this software unless I was either well established or unless
the client offered to provide it (and training ) free.
I'm suspicious that the job offer is just to get to me buy the software.
I would appreciate any thoughts on this matter from more established
colleagues in the field.
Regards Joe
Thor Kottelin
news:JfFNm.1072$rp6...@newsfe11.ams2...
> I've been offered a small IT job (900 words) translating English to
> Brazilian Portuguese, providing I use the translating tool TRADOS.
>
> I'm fairly new to translating. I was told by at language school not to
> consider buying this software unless I was either well established or
> unless the client offered to provide it (and training ) free.
>
> I'm suspicious that the job offer is just to get to me buy the software.
SDL Trados is quite widely used; as an example, I purchased it as soon as
I began to offer translation services. I am satisfied with the product,
particularly because of its extensive repertoire of file formats.
Does your client-in-spe require you to purchase Trados from him or her or
from a reseller with whom they have some kind of partnership? In other
words, do they have a motive to mislead you in the way you suspect?
In either case, what I would like to warn you about is that some
translation agencies use Trados as a pretext to reduce their translators'
fees. They argue that since Trados can analyze the source text for
segments that contain translation memory "matches" or that are
"repetitions" of previous segments, translators should offer discounted
fees for such segments.
For example, if you have quoted EUR 0.20 per word for a 1,000-word
translation, and the translation contains 200 "matches" and 100
"repetitions", the agency may nevertheless take the view that they are
only obliged to pay you e.g. (EUR 0.20 * 700) + (EUR 0.20 * 0.5 * 200) +
(EUR 0.20 * 0.1 * 100) rather than (EUR 0.20 * 1 000). This calculation
assumes a 50% deduction for "matches" and a 90% deduction for
"repetitions".
If you are unable to formally escape this method (e.g. because the project
manager insists that he or she is not allowed to deviate from corporate
policy), but you nevertheless want to accept the agency as your client,
you can de facto compensate for the deductions by quoting a nominal
per-word rate that is high enough for you to arrive, after the deductions,
at your normal fee.
Welcome, and good luck!
--
Thor Kottelin
http://www.anta.net/
Afoklala
> I've been offered a small IT job (900 words) translating English to
> Brazilian Portuguese, providing I use the translating tool TRADOS.
>
> I'm fairly new to translating. I was told by at language school not to
> consider buying this software unless I was either well established or unless
> the client offered to provide it (and training ) free.
>
Unless the agency in question wants you to buy Trados from themselves or an
affiliate party, there is nothing wrong with this. Trados is market leader
on the TM market. There are several other tools on the market that have
Trados import and export capabilities though, so you might be able to use a
different tool and still offer Trados services.
You can buy Trados directly from SDL, the company that manufactures it,
from their website.
A major consideration whether or not to buy such a tool is the kind of
translation you expect to do. Will it be mainly technical texts with a lot
of repetition? Then by al means, buy a TM tool. It'll save you huge amounts
of time and effort. And even if your clients charge you discounts for
matches, then you will still make more money than without it, if only
because you can guarantee shorter turnaround and better consistency.
Will you be translating literature, where each sentence is a new world in
itself? Then TM tools are useless for you. The advantages of TM lie in
repetition and consistency.
For the record, I'm a satisfied Trados user.
--
Jan Willem from Odijk, Netherlands
e-mail in From-field is wrong, real e-mail is:
jw point van point dormolen on xs4all point nl
(change point into dot, on into at)
And then there's this:
Don't take life too seriously, you won't get out alive.
joe
Joe
Peter Twydell
<jo...@nospamblueyonder.co.uk> writes
TRADOS is comparatively expensive. We (my wife is also a translator)
have been using Wordfast for many years now. It is a lot cheaper than
Trados, and AFAIK has the same facilities. It can import TRADOS TM
(Translation Memory) files and export them. One major advantage where
these files is concerned is that the Wordfast TMs and glossaries are in
plain .txt format, which means you can edit them yourself if necessary.
We've only used the Classic version so far.
As far as productivity is concerned, as other posters have said it is
invaluable. It enables you to keep terminology consistent, especially if
you use the Glossary facility, and generally makes life easier. I
recently worked on three documents concerning the same technical
subject, with a total of 35 000 words, and Wordfast helped enormously.
As far as being paid less for repetitions is concerned, why not? It
seems fair to me. If I "translate", for example, an entire sentence of a
couple of dozen words with a single keystroke, why shouldn't I be paid
less? Especially if the agency has provided me with a TM containing
someone else's work.
HTH
--
Peter
Ying tong iddle-i po!
Pablito
> I've been offered a small IT job (900 words) translating English to
> Brazilian Portuguese, providing I use the translating tool TRADOS.
Have a glance at this: http://www.omegat.org/en/omegat.html
I think it works with Trados TMs. I use it, but not extensively.
They have a mailing list for support: <http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/
OmegaT/>
By the way, it's free.
Paul.
Joachim Peter
> I've been offered a small IT job (900 words) translating English to
> Brazilian Portuguese, providing I use the translating tool TRADOS.
>
> I'm fairly new to translating. I was told by at language school not to
> consider buying this software unless I was either well established or unless
> the client offered to provide it (and training ) free.
The question is: What are you?
Are you self employed? So your "provider" is your client, you are an
enterprise. You use your own means of labour, you decide yourself, what
is worth to buy, and you pay for it. When you buy a bread from a bakery,
you will not pay extra for a better baking oven or his training to bake
a bread. It´s included in the price, you baker has to calculate it himself.
Are you employed at a regular base?
So your "provider" is an employer, of course he has to pay for your
computer, software, etc. but he decides, what he will buy.
And of course: If you are selfemployed, you should demand more money
from the client than a regular employee from his employer.
Our business became much better after buying Trados 10 years ago,
because it´s a standard for professional translators.
We would loose 80% of our clients without that.
Joachim
Peter Twydell
<Pe...@twydell.demon.co.uk> writes
I forgot to say that the Word files produced by Wordfast and TRADOS are
identical, so files from one can be processed by the other.
The format is {0>source text<0}nnn{0>target text<0}
where nnn is a count of the percentage match to the TM.
Afoklala
Another consideration is, that Trados changed its format in the newest
version (2009). So there might be compatibility
issues with other software - at least until the others have caught up.
OTOH, Trados itself doesn't seem too confident about the new format
catching on fast, as you get the previous version (2007) free with every
purchase of the new version.
--
Jan Willem from Odijk, Netherlands
e-mail in From-field is wrong, real e-mail is:
jw point van point dormolen on xs4all point nl
(change point into dot, on into at)
And then there's this:
Documentation; The worst part of programming.
Peter Twydell
<afok...@afoklala.invalid> writes
Oh bugger. Do you know what the new format is? If it's very different
then there will probably be scope for a conversion program if it can't
be done with find and replace.
Afoklala
> In message <b1xnwygqxhlo$.1big6s8254sx7$.d...@40tude.net>, Afoklala
> <afok...@afoklala.invalid> writes
>>Op Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:35:09 +0000 schreef Peter Twydell:
>>Another consideration is, that Trados changed its format in the newest
>>version (2009). So there might be compatibility
>>issues with other software - at least until the others have caught up.
>>OTOH, Trados itself doesn't seem too confident about the new format
>>catching on fast, as you get the previous version (2007) free with every
>>purchase of the new version.
>>
>
> Oh bugger. Do you know what the new format is? If it's very different
> then there will probably be scope for a conversion program if it can't
> be done with find and replace.
I don't know the technical details. But Trados 2009 contains a conversion
module for older TM's, so it probably IS rather different. And as SDL
recently published a patch for this conversion program (because of bugs in
the original), it's probably not a trivial conversion.
--
Jan Willem from Odijk, Netherlands
e-mail in From-field is wrong, real e-mail is:
jw point van point dormolen on xs4all point nl
(change point into dot, on into at)
And then there's this:
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
[Lnz]
<joachi...@online.de> wrote:
>
>Our business became much better after buying Trados 10 years ago,
>because it�s a standard for professional translators.
Which is regrettable. It has become a "standard" only because of good
marketing, rather than usability and features.
Although I have a Trados licence, I use Atril's DejaVu, a competing
CAT tool even with "trados" jobs because I can do them at least 30%
faster.
>We would loose 80% of our clients without that.
Well, my clients who ask for Trados files, get Trados files. I just
use something else to make them :-)) We are all happy. They are happy
because they get what they asked for, I am happy because I translate
them much faster.
I'm also happy because should my computer fritz out, I can simply
switch DVX's hardware dongle to my laptop and continue working
seamlessly without bothering with Trados' (SDL) reportedly unreliable,
byzantine, cumbersome online activation procedure.
Anyways, answering the OP question, he or she can just accept the job
(providing the original file format is Word) and ask their client to
"presegment" the file "segmenting unknown sentences".
Then, he or she can just reveal hidden text and translate the non
hidden part of the text, leaving absolutely untouched the hidden part.
Done.
If the original file was not Word, presegmenting will produce an XML
text, which can also be easily translated without Trados and without
any CAT tool, but requires some more understanding of the format and
an XML editor.
An interesting Open Source CAT tool is OmegaT
http://www.omegat.org/en/omegat.html
which might be of help to just start and which is able to open
If an investment is possible, testing DVX and MemoQ (google for pages)
might provide interesting insights.
More info and advice can be found on the relevant yahoogroup mailing
lists (google for "[cat tool name] mailing list yahoo groups" for
address)
HIH
L
UC
> On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:27:36 +0100, Joachim Peter
>
>
> which might be of help to just start and which is able to open
>
> If an investment is possible, testing DVX and MemoQ (google for pages)
> might provide interesting insights.
>
> More info and advice can be found on the relevant yahoogroup mailing
> lists (google for "[cat tool name] mailing list yahoo groups" for
> address)
>
> HIH
>
> L
Would there be any sort of software that might help in doing a
translation of an author such as Nietzsche?
Thanks
[Lnz]
<uraniumc...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Would there be any sort of software that might help in doing a
>translation of an author such as Nietzsche?
>
>Thanks
Any word processing software would help quite a bit.
L
UC
> >Would there be any sort of software that might help in doing a
> >translation of an author such as Nietzsche?
>
> >Thanks
>
> Any word processing software would help quite a bit.
>
> L
I mean something beyond Word, etc.
Afoklala
As you specifically ask about Trados, here's what I think.
TM software like Trados has two major advantages:
First, it remembers all the sentences you translate, so when you encounter
a sentence that is similar to something you've encountered before, it will
present you with that. In this respect, TM software won't be very useful
for Nietsche, as such a text won't be very repetitive (contrary to, e.g.,
technical manuals).
Second, you can use TM software to look up how you translated a certain
term earlier. In this respect, it CAN be of help for you project. Whether
the investment is worth it (after all, you could simply draw up a list of
terminology yourself while you work), is a matter you should look into.
Note that there is at least one free TM program available, OmegaT. That
might very well do the trick for you.
--
Jan Willem from Odijk, Netherlands
e-mail in From-field is wrong, real e-mail is:
jw point van point dormolen on xs4all point nl
(change point into dot, on into at)
And then there's this:
A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
UC
Thanks! Yeah, Nietzsche is not particularly repetitive...though themes
recur...