What is Trados and how does it work? Thread poster: Maaike van Vlijmen
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Hi all,
I have a "stupid" question...
I'm a beginning translator and I don't understand what Trados exactly is and does. I went to the internet site of Trados, but I just don't seem to get it. Can anybody tell me in simple words what it is and how it makes your life as a translator easier?
Thanks!
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ENGSOL
German to English
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| What is Trados and how does it work? | Dec 4, 2005 |
Maaike Anne wrote:
Hi all,
I have a "stupid" question...
I'm a beginning translator and I don't understand what Trados exactly is and does. I went to the internet site of Trados, but I just don't seem to get it. Can anybody tell me in simple words what it is and how it makes your life as a translator easier?
Thanks!
Hi Maaike,
I don't use Trados so I can't tell you much about the program! It's a CAT tool, I know that much.
Here's a short Introduction to CAT tools on the ProZ.com site.
Alternatively, you could check out this Wikipedia article on Computer-assisted translation.
That should cover some of the basics!
Thomas
[Edited at 2005-12-04 16:32]
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Maaike Anne wrote:
I'm a beginning translator and I don't understand what Trados exactly is and does.
You fire it up and feed it the document you translate. It opens up a frame with the first sentence to translate at the top; you type the translation of that sentence below. You then pass on to the next sentence, which will be presented to you in a similar way.
The thingy memorizes all your translations as you go along. Should a sentence come up that you have translated before, it will present the corresponding old translation, so that you don't need to translate the sentence again. Should a sentence come up that is similar to a translated sentence, you will still get your old translation as raw material you can modify to fit the current sentence.
That's the main idea of it in a nutshell.
Try out Wordfast; this program is similar to Trados. Contrary to Trados, Wordfast has a trial mode that is sufficient for translating mid-size documents and that doesn't cost license fees.
P.
[Edited at 2005-12-04 17:37]
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Jack Doughty 
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:22
Russian to English
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In memoriam | "Trados for Idiots" | Dec 4, 2005 |
I am not trying to insult you or Trados, this is the title of an article I found on Google which might interest you. The URL is:
http://life.bizland.com/trados.htm
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Maaike van Vlijmen
Netherlands
Local time: 18:22
Member (2009)
Italian to Dutch
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TOPIC STARTER
Thank you all for your answers! Finally I understand...
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| I tell people it's an advanced 'search and replace' function | Dec 5, 2005 |
A CAT is an empty database when you start, but records every sentence of source text together with your translation of it. Later, if it can find a previous occurrence of a sentence, it fills in the translation.
I use Trados mainly for the concorcance function - this is the facility that allows you to search for single words or expressions that do not come up as full sentences, but can be found in the database together with the way or ways you translated them earlier on.
... See more A CAT is an empty database when you start, but records every sentence of source text together with your translation of it. Later, if it can find a previous occurrence of a sentence, it fills in the translation.
I use Trados mainly for the concorcance function - this is the facility that allows you to search for single words or expressions that do not come up as full sentences, but can be found in the database together with the way or ways you translated them earlier on.
Fixed legal terms, for instance, or other terminology can be found very quickly this way, and it's great for those collocations and expressions you simply can't look up in dictionaries. Once you have found them, you can see them in context and decide how and when to use them again.
(The same word in Danish can be translated as 'Remember! Please remember! or Don't forget ... according to context, and there are endless examples like that in every language pair.)
How useful it is depends on the type of text you work with.
But trying the other (cheaper) CATS before you invest in Trados is definitely good advice. ▲ Collapse
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Portanza
Italy
Local time: 18:22
English to Italian
As I understand, one day Trados will do all the job (thanks to our collaboration) and all the translators will lose their job. How does it sound to you?
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Jerzy Czopik
Germany
Local time: 18:22
Member (2003)
Polish to German
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| Completly false | Oct 16, 2010 |
Portanza wrote:
As I understand, one day Trados will do all the job (thanks to our collaboration) and all the translators will lose their job. How does it sound to you?
CAT tools will never replace human translators - because a CAT tool without a human translator does simply not have any data.
Even machine translation will not replace the humans, or at least not during our lifetime.
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