TM Transit XV, SDL Trados, Wordfast
flyingkiwi
I know we’ve been down this road many times before, but there have been quite a lot of changes over the past year or two. I’d like to hear from happy or unhappy users of these applications. I did a bit of training in Transit, haven’t used Wordfast.
I’m considering new software now that I’m thinking of going back to full-time translation (I’ve been enjoying the frisson of contact with live human beings by teaching a couple of days a week, but a Real Translator can’t be doing with nonsense like social interaction, so I’m about to get back in my translator’s digital cave where I belong!).
Regards
Helen H
asianfg
"You can only work with 10 file pairs in the Freelance Edition of
WinAlign"
This point is (or at least was up until a few months ago) not
documented in either the User or Help Guide.
I found this out after numerous discussions with the SDL help desk
Solution recommended by SDL is to upgrade to Professional Version of
Trados.
Michael Fletcher
Helen:
Welcome back to the world of Translation. I hope it treats you well.
My perspectives:
I primarily use Trados, though I will admit I don’t use a whole lot of its functionality. I primarily only use the basic functions of translation inside Word documents. I find it to be robust, fairly stable, and does what I need. Advantages are that if/when a client requests use of a CAT tool, the majority of the time they request Trados, it is well known in the translation industry – the standard against what others are compared, and the fundamental functions are quite easy to use – for the most part self explanatory.
My partner and I purchased and used Wordfast for awhile and it was not as stable as Trados. It worked ok for Excel sheets – sometimes, only when sentences were in cells in the Excel document, ie not in text boxes and when whole sentences were in single cells. One Quirk is that it messes around with a lot of keyboard shortcuts that I personally wasn’t very happy with. While it is a lot less money than Trados, I went back to Trados because it is easier to use.
Another side note to Trados, I have learned how to translate Excel documents using Trados Tag editor and this makes Excel files, including words in text boxes translate like a breeze. It is stable and generally does a good job transferring back and forth between Tag editor and Excel formats. I have had some problems when there was text in a cell and then text in a text box virtually over the top of the cell with text in it. The issue was with which piece of text came first. The Excel sheets actually come out looking fairly well (I tell my clients from the start that any post translation formatting would be extra – I have yet to be requested to provide this type of formatting).
I have also used and liked TransAssist. The one thing that I haven’t liked is that the key they provide only lasts for one month. I reinstalled my hard drive in March and didn’t get around to requesting a new key from them so while I own a license, I don’t currently have it installed on my main business computer. I do have it installed on my laptop computer and have used it from time to time with it. Another difficulty is that Trados and TransAssist don’t like each other very much, in other words, it kind of creates problems with both sets of software to have them both installed on the same computer (this is another reason why I have forgone reinstallation of TransAssist). What I like about TransAssist is that multiple memories can be opened at the same time while current matches can be stored in a new file and ability to translate directly in PowerPoint (in fact this is where I still use TransAssist). While PowerPoint files can be converted and translated using Trados Tag editor, I find that it is easier to translate when you have the context of the slide available, due the general nature of blurbs/segments (ie not full sentences) usually used in PowerPoint files.
My partner has used Transit and the main thing that I remember discussing is that he wasn’t very impressed with the fuzzy match capability. According to his knowledge, the way it generated fuzzy matches was that it compared the number of characters one at a time used in the current segment to the characters in other segments – one at a time. This means that a lot of segments will generate matches with the longest sentence in the TM, though there may be one that is actually closer, while the matches generated are virtually useless. (Someone with more knowledge of Transit may be able to refute this).
Thanks,
Michael Fletcher
flyingkiwi
Thanks for responses on and off list.
Limitations on freelance versions – yes, there seem to be different problems with each of the big applications.
Michael, thanks for the notes on using TMs with different applications. I will certainly look at TransAssist, as I have PowerPoint jobs which are both large and complex, and need to be carefully aligned with previous expressions and terminology.
My husband works for Star Japan, and confirms that the fuzzy matching function in Transit XV has not been radically changed. He says it was designed that way to provide accurate matching for things like catalog updates, where retrieving near-identical phrases are the top priority.
Transit is obviously a possibility for me, but since I don’t get a “wife-of” discount, I’m free to choose what actually suits me best. I’m interested to hear that Déjà Vu is still popular, as I was wondering why I hadn’t heard much about it recently.
Regards
Helen H, who sadly isn’t exactly “returning” to translation, because she never got far enough away from it to “leave” ! Don’t know about other translators, but I quite enjoyed the combination of “sociable” and “anti-social” work, just sad that it’s so hard to fit in other work with big translation jobs. I’ve never let clients know exactly how fast I can translate when pressed, but I think they are beginning to cotton on…
marc...@gmx.yamaha.com
Although in some ways it is not as fully-featured as trados et al, Omega-T is open source, and thus free, and has come a long, long way over the last couple of days. The interface is simple and easy to work with, and I actually use it in preference to Trados if the project does not require detailed formatting.
www.omegat.org
From memory, Omega-t handles powerpoing files without any problem, so long as you convert them to open office format first using open office's file converter. Since open office is free this is not too much of a hassle. Very rarely, converting the file back to MS-Office format will require some minor changes in format, but since Japanese powerpoints almost always require some reformating when translated to English I've never found it a problem.
Regards,
Marc Ward, Shizuoka
marc...@gmx.yamaha.com
Sorry, " has come a long, long way over the last couple of days."
should read "... last couple of years."
-Marc
Jean-Christophe Helary
days ago, after 1 year and a half of beta and release candidate
versions :)
JC
marc...@gmx.yamaha.com
Er... and the fact that it handles PowerPOINT files, not powerPOING files.
Sorry people, looks like it's not my day.
Anyway, I can highly recommend Omega-T.
S. Patrick Eaton
This topic seems like an ideal one to demonstrate the usefulness of the
Pages feature built into Google Groups (well, the built into the beta
version anyway, but we can assume that this feature will eventually make
its way into the regular group offerings).
Would anyone (or any group of individuals) be interested in maintaining
pages about the pros and cons of the various CAT tools?
Best regards,
Sako Eaton
(regular user of Wordfast, OmegaT, and Trados)