Alternative to Felix

[Geoffrey Trousselot]

Using Felix by clicking on sentences in Word to get instant access to memories has been a core part of my work process for the last 13 years.

My company is switching to virtual PCs and wants an alternative to Felix.

Is there a CAT tool that enables select and search from Word feature?

No recording of memory is being used.

I am simply using existing memories. I just need a software that is supported and that enables simple searching from Word.

At the last resort would be a cat tool that supports simple copy and paste.

Geoffrey Trousselot

[John Stroman]

Geoff,

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by virtual PCs, but Felix memories can be saved in various formats that can be uploaded into other TM software. My primary agency customer's end user has switched to Trados Studio, so I have been forced into using Studio rather than my trustworthy Felix. On my own PC, however, I was able to export my Felix memories into a desktop version of Trados Studio so all was not lost. I hate the Trados interface, but at least I managed to salvage about 20 years of Felix memories. 

Since you are so comfortable with Felix, I strongly suggest that your company should choose one of the CAT applications that enables translators to work directly within the MS Office applications windows (Word, Excel, etc.) rather than in a dedicated CAT application window. I have lost a lot of productivity by having to work inside Trados' clunky interface that is unsuited for efficient translating since I cannot see my inadvertent typos and misspellings in the target segments, and I cannot use my dedicated, field-specific desktop dictionaries and spell check apps that I have added to Word. Felix was specifically designed to be used with Japanese, but Trados is based on a hodgepodge of European languages. Although it does work with Japanese, I cannot recommend it in terms of productivity and accuracy.

Good luck,

John Stroman

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[Geoffrey Trousselot]

 I didn't express myself that well. Currently my company is using Trados and Memsource. A lot of the translation is done using those CATs, but sometimes it is simply more convenient to work directly with the Word document. My industry might be rare in that 100s of companies want the same sentences translated, so it is of great advantage to make large combined memories. 

The tech manager said that when we go from individual computers to a server-based system, only those who specially request it will get Felix installed. As there is no current support, it might become impossible to use it at some unknown time in the future. 

The functionality that I use is really simple, and I am perplexed that there aren't multiple apps out there, but all the CAT tools seem to be evolving into cloud-based translation management system suites, that suck up a file for editing and then spit it out once finished. 

When working with Word, I just want a separate look-up software like Felix that compares the sentence with the memory or does a concordance search simply by selecting the text and clicking a couple of keys on the keyboard.

Incidentally, Felix can manage a large file of close to 500,000 segments, and when it reaches maximum, it is possible to open a few large files at a time, providing the largest file is opened first. 

I think it is about time for a new software that can handle say 2,000,000 segments. 

Geoffrey Trousselot

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[John Stroman]

Geoff,

Thanks for the clarification. I think that WordFast still works directly inside Word, and you should be able to export Felix memories into WordFast. My only problems with WordFast in the past were the intricate settings menu (again mostly of interest to translators of European languages) and the lack of technical support.

John

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