What are these programs? Thread poster: dmoamin
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dmoamin 
United States
Local time: 12:18
Arabic to English
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Greetings,
What do these programs do? what kind of services do they provide?
Wordfast
Trados
SDL
CAT tools
do they provide just error corrections ? or are there any other type of services you can obtain that Microsoft Word doesn’t offer ?
Are those programs worth their prices?
| | | | Steven Capsuto
United States
Local time: 15:18
Member (2004)
Spanish to English
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| Look at their web sites | Feb 2, 2008 |
Wordfast, Trados, and SDLX (as well as Deja Vu, OmegaT and other programs) are examples of CAT software.
Each offers slightly different features. Your best bet is to look at their web sites.
| | | | Heinrich Pesch
Finland
Local time: 22:18
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
+ ...
| They save you lots of time | Feb 2, 2008 |
(once you have learnt to use one of them). And time is money.
Cheers
Heinrich
| | | | Nesrin
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:18
English to Arabic
+ ...
Hi dmoamin
I know how you feel, cause I remember two years ago before buying Trados I wished someone could explain to me in very basic terms what this whole buzz is about!
So anyway, CAT tools are translation memory tools that "remember" translations you've done, sentence by sentence, or segment by segment. I have only used Trados so far, but I assume the others are similar in the way they work.
In Trados, when you're doing new translations, it can: 1) tell you if... See more Hi dmoamin
I know how you feel, cause I remember two years ago before buying Trados I wished someone could explain to me in very basic terms what this whole buzz is about!
So anyway, CAT tools are translation memory tools that "remember" translations you've done, sentence by sentence, or segment by segment. I have only used Trados so far, but I assume the others are similar in the way they work.
In Trados, when you're doing new translations, it can: 1) tell you if you've translated that sentence or a very similar sentence before (that's very rare, unless your work is kind of repetitive)*, 2) allow you to search for previous translations of specific terms, through a feature called "Concordance", (which I find most useful), 3) suggest translations for individual terms in your sentence through a programme called "Multiterm" which includes glossaries that you have entered yourself, 4) Another programme that's part of Trados is called WinAlign, and that allows you to align translated documents (e.g. translations you'd done before using Trados), so that the translation memory can "see" those translations as well.
I'm sure there are other features as well, but those are the main ones as far as I can see. Good luck!
*PS: I said that this feature is rarely useful, but actually it can be very useful in longer documents which tend to be repetitive.
[Edited at 2008-02-02 09:05] ▲ Collapse
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| Wikipedia on computer-assisted translation | Feb 2, 2008 |
Wordfast, Trados and SDL are all CAT tools (CAT = computer-assisted translation).
Many professional translators consider them invaluable, since they speed up translation and has features to make translations more consistent.
Trados is currently the most widely used.
See the CAT Tools article on Proz.com:
http://www.proz.com/cat
See the Wikipedia article on computer-assi... See more Wordfast, Trados and SDL are all CAT tools (CAT = computer-assisted translation).
Many professional translators consider them invaluable, since they speed up translation and has features to make translations more consistent.
Trados is currently the most widely used.
See the CAT Tools article on Proz.com:
http://www.proz.com/cat
See the Wikipedia article on computer-assisted translation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-assisted_translation
 Jørgen ▲ Collapse
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 21:18
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Have have time-saving functions | Feb 2, 2008 |
dmoamin wrote:
What do these programs do? what kind of services do they provide?
Wordfast
Trados
SDL
CAT tools
They save you time with various features. They can also save you money.
Some clients want you to buy them so that it will save *them* money.
| | | | dmoamin
United States
Local time: 12:18
Arabic to English
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TOPIC STARTER | can the client tell the difference? | Feb 2, 2008 |
Thank you so much for replying all of you, I just wanted to know something, if I used Word Document, can the client tell the difference at all?
or can the client tell the difference if he wanted me to use Trados and I used wordfast??
Sorry, the purpose behind this is not to cheat the client, I am just curious to find out more about the programs, I ve been in the business for a very long time but I never used those programs ( I never had to) but I keep saying them on Proz.com and oth... See more Thank you so much for replying all of you, I just wanted to know something, if I used Word Document, can the client tell the difference at all?
or can the client tell the difference if he wanted me to use Trados and I used wordfast??
Sorry, the purpose behind this is not to cheat the client, I am just curious to find out more about the programs, I ve been in the business for a very long time but I never used those programs ( I never had to) but I keep saying them on Proz.com and other translation websites so I got a bit curious, specially with having a lot of long translation documents to work on.
Many thanks
P.S : does Trados or any of these programs provide spell check or error correction? ▲ Collapse
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Samuel Murray wrote:
Some clients want you to buy them so that it will save *them* money.
We could even replace "some" by "an overwhelming majority". Otherwise, why would there be so many outsourcers asking for "CAT tool pricing" on top of your best rate?
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Margreet Logmans (X)
Netherlands
Local time: 21:18
English to Dutch
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dmoamin wrote:
Thank you so much for replying all of you, I just wanted to know something, if I used Word Document, can the client tell the difference at all?
or can the client tell the difference if he wanted me to use Trados and I used wordfast??
Many thanks
P.S : does Trados or any of these programs provide spell check or error correction?
If you're supposed to return only the translation as such, no. But CAT-tools' first output is a special type of file, called 'unclean' (most of them, anyway). This is a bilingual file with certain markings/traces. Some clients want to have these files returned to them, as well as the Translation Memory (that's a special file that 'records' your work as 'units' that can be used for further translations; whether or not you should hand these over is a wholly different subject).
So, if a client wants an 'unclean file' and/or TM, MS Word won't save you.
Between Wordfast and Trados, I believe the difference is hard to tell, depending on how you save the file. But I've only ever worked with Workfast for one day. I'm a Trados-user (and Transit, to add to your confusion....;-) )
Spell check, error protection: yes, but very basic and it certainly does not replace proofreading and human correction. It will help you avoid basic typo's, like 'liek' in stead of 'like', but not much more.
P.S. Can a native speaker of English please tell me if my use of 'output' in the above sentence is correct? Somehow it does not seem right....
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 21:18
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| The client can't tell the difference | Feb 2, 2008 |
dmoamin wrote:
...if I used Word Document, can the client tell the difference at all?
or can the client tell the difference if he wanted me to use Trados and I used Wordfast?
The client will be able to tell the difference when he asks you for the translation memory, and then you give him a TMX file instead of a Trados file. And the client will also be able to tell the difference if he had given you a TM in Trados format, and you didn't use any of the 99% matches from that memory. So, honesty is the best policy.
But the client won't be able to tell the difference if all he's looking at is the MS Word file. In fact, if you had done a manual job without any CAT tool, he'd still be unable to tell the difference.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 21:18
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Error correction? | Feb 2, 2008 |
dmoamin wrote:
Does Trados or any of these programs provide spell check or error correction?
What do you mean by "error correction"? What kinds of errors are we talking about here?
As for spell-checking, well, Wordfast uses the MS Word spellchecker. I'm not sure if Trados has a built-in spellchecker, but AFAIK it can use the MS Word spellchecker if MS Word is installed on the same machine.
Once, I was told by one client that his CAT tool of choice comes with spellchecking, and when I tried to spellcheck on a fresh machine, I got the error message "MS Word was not found on this computer"... so much for integrated spellchecking, then.
The unreleased new version of OmegaT uses Hunspell (similar to the spellchecker used by Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org), if I'm not mistaken. In web-based CAT tools, you can use the browser's spellchecker, of course.
It would be interesting to know which CAT tools have integrated spellcheckers, or have at least the ability to let users create their own spellcheckers.
| | | | Sheila Wilson
Spain
Local time: 20:18
Member (2007)
English
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| Wordfast checks the current translation against previous ones | Feb 2, 2008 |
does Trados or any of these programs provide spell check or error correction?
I only use Wordfast, but I can tell you that it is "just" a Word add-on - it doesn't have anything to do with verifying that you typed what you ought to have typed - that's for the Word spelling and grammar checkers, and your own proofreading.
At its most basic, it takes you through the document step by step, so you don't miss anything. You can also get it to do many other clever thing such as automatically converting numbers and other language-specific formats eg French 1 025,25 becomes English 1,025.25.
Starting from the second, similar, document it starts to be more and more useful as it has stored all previous translations and can propose them. If you do a lot of very similar translations (eg house details for estate agents) then you can end up doing little more than confirming the suggestions - a massive saving in time (ie money) that the agency likes you to share with them.
P.S. Can a native speaker of English please tell me if my use of 'output' in the above sentence is correct? Somehow it does not seem right....
Note to Margreet - seems fine to me. Geen probleem.
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Margreet Logmans (X)
Netherlands
Local time: 21:18
English to Dutch
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| Thanks, Sheila | Feb 2, 2008 |
Sheila Wilson wrote:
P.S. Can a native speaker of English please tell me if my use of 'output' in the above sentence is correct? Somehow it does not seem right....
Note to Margreet - seems fine to me. Geen probleem.
Thanks, Sheila. Have a nice weekend!
| | | | dmoamin
United States
Local time: 12:18
Arabic to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Thanks a lot great information | Feb 3, 2008 |
Thanks to all of you really great information. So far been doing fine without those programs but I might go ahead and buy them and the information all of you provided is really great and will help me decide better.
Thanks again
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