| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Will a CAT be helpful to me for a large academic book project? Thread poster: sbdryh
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Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 09:02
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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| More of the same | Dec 3, 2013 |
sbdryh wrote:
I'm in discussion...
So you still have time to read the manual and watch the videos of the CAT tool that you choose and get to know how it works.
...a book of over 100,000 words ... And the client wants this translated in a month.
That's 5000 words per day. Can you normally translate 5000 words per day?
...in an academic field that is my specialty.
So does that mean you're fairly confident that you can do 5000 words per day?
I realize from what I've read in various posts here that CATs are most helpful in technical work, where the language is very repetitive.
You seem to equate "technical" with "repetitive" (and "non-technical" with "non-repetitive"). I can assure you that it is quite possible to get a 20 000 word technical text with not a single internal high fuzzy match in it (i.e. practically no repetition), and it is equally possible to get a non-technical text of 5 000 words lots and lots of internal fuzzy matches. Technical versus non-technical, or hard scientific versus soft scientific (or even: versus everyday non-scientific) makes no difference.
However, since this is a "book", I would assume that the number of high internal fuzzy matches would be low, i.e. very few repetitions in which most of the sentence repeats itself.
Given the large size, would a CAT help me get this project done faster?
Well, as you have seen, some people think that CAT makes you slower (and some CAT tools have that effect) and some think that it makes you faster, even if there are no repeating phrases. Some people believe that segmentation leads to unnaturalness, but I think that that may depend on the language and/or the CAT tool that they use. Some people here discount the benefit of automatic glossary look-up and the ability to search through your translation to find terms and/or other things that you recall but can't remember where they were written.
From what I can see, you're probably going to have to use OmegaT or MemoQ, because of the size of the job and the limitations on evaluation versions. OmegaT is a much simpler tool but it has many of the features that you're likely going to use. OmegaT has the source and target text above and below each other, and MemoQ has the source and target text side-by-side. Both tools can do "paragraph segmentation", i.e. you get to translate larger chunks of text at a time, which could lead to a more natural-sounding translation, but it will remove any benefit that repeating sentences may have given you.
MemoQ: 45-day evaluation, thereafter continues in demo mode, or buy for EUR 620.
OmegaT: Fully functional freeware.
The features that you'd likely use most are the ablility to insert glossary matches with a keypress (saves you time in thinking and typing) and the ability to search through the text that you already translated to see how you translated something previously.
| | | | sbdryh
United States
Local time: 01:02
Ancient Hebrew to English
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TOPIC STARTER | Thank you, everyone, for your thoughtful and helpful replies. | Dec 4, 2013 |
Thanks, everyone. I'm really grateful for your help!
Meantime, I haven't heard from the client yet. Yes, the one with the rush project.
| | | | | Use your spare time to get familiar with a widely used CAT | Dec 4, 2013 |
I would suggest that while you wait (probably for the next project, not this one...) that you get familiar with a CAT - Wordfast, MemoQ and Trados Studio, and see which suits your style best.
There are free demos, and although you may not get all the benefits, you can start using them.
The segmentation need not cripple your style - you can always read the whole paragraph and see your 'segment' in context.
With the latest versions of Studio and MemoQ it is f... See more I would suggest that while you wait (probably for the next project, not this one...) that you get familiar with a CAT - Wordfast, MemoQ and Trados Studio, and see which suits your style best.
There are free demos, and although you may not get all the benefits, you can start using them.
The segmentation need not cripple your style - you can always read the whole paragraph and see your 'segment' in context.
With the latest versions of Studio and MemoQ it is far easier to hop between sentences/segments than it used to be, so the mechanics are less distracting.
Learn to think in units smaller than segments - the concordance feature of a CAT is far more valuable than the number of 100% matches in many texts.
The concordance shows you particular terms or expressions - which you choose by highlighting them - in context in earlier translations, provided of course that they are in the TM.
(I work in so-called non-repetitive texts, but still miss my CAT badly when I have to work with a PDF that it cannot open... and have been known to re-type documents to get them workable for a CAT.)
If you are going to use a CAT, it really is worth the time and effort of learning to use all relevant features.
That said, I always read the target text in its final format - usually Word, but whatever it is - to check a real WYSIWYG version, preferably on paper.
It is not a waste of time - you see the text more 'as the user sees it' in a changed format, which is useful.
Best of luck! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 08:02
Member (2008)
Italian to English
deleted
[Edited at 2013-12-04 12:16 GMT]
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Kay Denney
France
Local time: 09:02
French to English
could you elaborate a little on this? I have no idea where to start but I'm sure it could be very helpful to me
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 08:02
Member (2008)
Italian to English
deleted
[Edited at 2013-12-04 12:16 GMT]
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