Trados for medical translations Thread poster: liz askew
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liz askew United Kingdom Local time: 08:51 Member (2007) French to English + ...
Hello, Although I mainly do interpreting, I do some translation work as well and wondered whether any of you "out there" use Trados when translating medical texts. [I do not have this]. In fact I don't know much about Trados at all. I look forward to your comments. | | |
Lia Fail (X) Spain Local time: 09:51 Spanish to English + ... Trados and med | Jul 7, 2007 |
liz askew wrote: Hello, Although I mainly do interpreting, I do some translation work as well and wondered whether any of you "out there" use Trados when translating medical texts. [I do not have this]. In fact I don't know much about Trados at all. I look forward to your comments. I do monthly articles for two journals (case reports, editorials, etc) and it's not hugely useful, except we are a team (with a team translation memory), so we get the benefit of other people's research (i.e. we avoid duplication of effort). The only time Trados was hugely valuaable for me was wehn I did technical manuals that had many similar sentences (not just words). In translating the med articles (and leaving aside the fact that we work as a team), Trados has some use in checking previous translations of items (i.e. its concordance function). As far as I remember (and despite having the huge team memory and translting an entire journal every monthy), I have never recycled a 100% match other than 1 or 2 word items such as "case description", etc:-) There are other options that would work just as well as Trados. One is Wordfast, a cheaper CAT tool that works just as well. Or a text indexer like Archivarius, which allows you: 1) to easily search previous translations, and 2) seacrh any documents you collect off the Internet (i.e. a corpus).
[Edited at 2007-07-07 21:35] | | |
medical stuff | Jul 7, 2007 |
Is what I do most of. Trados is ok to use with this - I just wish I could get the latest version to work. | | |
Selcuk Akyuz Türkiye Local time: 11:51 English to Turkish + ... why latest version? | Jul 7, 2007 |
Hilde Granlund wrote: Is what I do most of. Trados is ok to use with this - I just wish I could get the latest version to work. Am I missing something? Why do you want to get the latest version? Well actually I have done the same mistake as well. Although I was happy (say not happy but satisfied) with version 6.5, I have upgraded to SDL Trados 2006 only to get SDLX, assuming that SDLX will be much more demanded. But to my surprise, no new customers asked for SDLX this year. So it was a wrong investment for me. And another point, some of my clients, which were using Trados formerly, have 'upgraded' to Deja Vu. | |
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Grygorii Gusak Ukraine Local time: 10:51 Member (2007) English to Russian + ... I used Trados when translating Philips and Baxter medical devices | Jul 8, 2007 |
Very well helped. | | |
latest version | Jul 9, 2007 |
was a digression, I have started a separate thread on my experience with that, so I won't spoil this thread by commenting any more of that. I suppose it would depend a bit on what kind of medical texts you are translating, but often a very consistent vocabulary is necessary (I do a lot of EMEA stuff, for instance), and in this respect Trados works great - remembers the correct words for you and puts them in the right place, so you can concentrate on the translation itself. | | |
achisholm United Kingdom Local time: 08:51 Italian to English + ... I translate all types of clinical trial documents | Jul 9, 2007 |
and I find it very useful due to the very repetitive nature, and its also useful for term consistency. Indispensable for patent applications due to the very very high repetitions and similarities. However, I tanslate everything using it, since it is a way of keeping a record of all the phrases and terms you have researched over the years. | | |
Trados and Medical Charts | Jul 10, 2007 |
I didn't think this was a very viable business until I started using Trados. I do a lot of medical charts and clinical studies, and Trados is indispensable. For one thing, I can't stand trying to find my place when I'm switching back and forth between target and source documents. Since charts are so repetitive, it saves a lot of time. I've turned out over 15,000 words in an 8-hour day on medical charts using Trados (and I wasn't even grumpy afterwards). When I did it all manua... See more I didn't think this was a very viable business until I started using Trados. I do a lot of medical charts and clinical studies, and Trados is indispensable. For one thing, I can't stand trying to find my place when I'm switching back and forth between target and source documents. Since charts are so repetitive, it saves a lot of time. I've turned out over 15,000 words in an 8-hour day on medical charts using Trados (and I wasn't even grumpy afterwards). When I did it all manually, the best I could hope for was 5,000 words a day (and carpal tunnel syndrome). The TM I use for charts continues to grow, and my output continues to rise. For clinical studies, the concordance function is extremely helpful. Some documents are as much as 50,000 words, and I don't want to scroll back 75 pages to see how I translated it last week. Also, these documents tend to come back months later for revisions/updates, so it's very helpful for consistency. The biggest drawback, of course, is the need to OCR source documents before working. Luckily, hospitals in Latin America are using more and more word processors every day (though I still get a LOT of handwritten documents), and the OCR software is getting better. I've taken to hiring an assistant that handles all my OCR work since it can be tedious and I can be more productive concentrating on the translating. When you consider that the OCR process can be as much as a quarter of the time spent on a project (depending on the document quality), it makes sense to outsource. Finally, for proofreading jobs, it's always easier if the agency can provide you with an unclean Trados document. It saves "Wimbledon Neck" from going back and forth between documents and allows for better consistency. SaludoZ! ▲ Collapse | |
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liz askew United Kingdom Local time: 08:51 Member (2007) French to English + ... TOPIC STARTER Trados when translating medical texts | Jul 11, 2007 |
Hello everybody Many thanks for all the interesting and useful comments. Much seems to depend on the type of medical text being translated. The stuff I translate is mainly text, with a few charts now and then, not many. I usually translate hospital admission/discharge reports and cytology reports. I shall print these comments off and think it over; whether I get Trados or Wordfast will depend on the quantity of work I get over the next year or so, and the... See more Hello everybody Many thanks for all the interesting and useful comments. Much seems to depend on the type of medical text being translated. The stuff I translate is mainly text, with a few charts now and then, not many. I usually translate hospital admission/discharge reports and cytology reports. I shall print these comments off and think it over; whether I get Trados or Wordfast will depend on the quantity of work I get over the next year or so, and the type of work. Thanks again for all your contributions. Liz Askew ▲ Collapse | | |