| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] > | Are there any CAT freeware tools available? Thread poster: Jorge Gonza
|
|---|
| Free for how long? | Dec 17, 2008 |
I've had a look at the sites that interest me (MetaTexis Lite and Across 4.0). The only problem is that they don't say what the limit (as free versions tend to be available for one or two months). I'm I blind? Does anyone no anything about these free versions?
I have Wordfast's free version and am quite happy with it. It can help to get familiarised with the principals of CAT tools for 0,00€ and only has a TM limit (500 segments roughly). I would personally recommend it!
| | | | | Why is free important? | Dec 28, 2008 |
Jorge Gonza wrote:
They say there is no such thing as that. So what's the price you have to pay... bugs?
Jorge
If you focus too much on the "free" aspect rather than features, power and performance, the price to pay may be not being considered as a "professional" translator.
Would you go to a dentist who told you he'd picked up his equipment free from some scrapyard or other?
The price of even the most expensive CAT tool is a tiny fraction of the investment required in other professions, or even to become a taxi driver.
| | | | Robert Tucker (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:24
German to English
+ ...
David Turner wrote:
Would you go to a dentist who told you he'd picked up his equipment free from some scrapyard or other?
Would you go to one who insisted on using equipment better known for its price tag than its functionality?
| | | |
Jorge Gonza wrote:
They say there is no such thing as that. So what's the price you have to pay... bugs?
Anyway, I've already downloaded omegaT and wordfast 3.35x, and will the other ones, too.
Thanks again.
Jorge
Well the Internet is revolutionary because there IS a free lunch a lot of the time. It's just dumb to say there is no free lunch. Some of the best things out there are free.
SW: Linux, Chrome, Firefox, Openoffice.org, google toolbar, google desktop, avast, AVG, Thunderbird etc.
Service: Wikipedia, countless dictionaries and email services etc.
With CAT tools I don't think this is the case, though. After testing the available options, you may be better off getting a paid CAT.
(BTW is WF3.35x fully functional? Where is the download? I might just give it a test run.)
| | |
|
|
|
Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 16:24
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Why free may be important | Dec 28, 2008 |
David Turner wrote:
If you focus too much on the "free" aspect rather than features, power and performance, the price to pay may be not being considered as a "professional" translator.
I suspect people who ask for or about free CAT tools are usually people who (a) don't use CAT yet or (b) have bought a CAT tool but are unhappy with it. So yes, price would be an important aspect for them, even if they are professionals.
I agree that an expensive CAT tool can be a good investment, if it fulfills your needs, but different people have different needs, and for people with simpler needs inexpensive tools often suffice. The price and/or complexity of your needs is not a good measure of how professional you are.
| | | | Mulyadi Subali
Indonesia
Local time: 21:24
Member
English to Indonesian
+ ...
| freeware = scrap? | Dec 29, 2008 |
David Turner wrote: If you focus too much on the "free" aspect rather than features, power and performance, the price to pay may be not being considered as a "professional" translator. Would you go to a dentist who told you he'd picked up his equipment free from some scrapyard or other? The price of even the most expensive CAT tool is a tiny fraction of the investment required in other professions, or even to become a taxi driver.
comparing freeware to scrap is an overstatement. i believe most people would agree that firefox is one of the best browser, if not the best. it's a freeware.
even omegat has several features that are better than its commercial counterparts. it can be used portably, just copy the program folder into ufd, and you're ready to go. it's cross-platform, i can resume my translation, which was created on windows, on my mac/linux, vice versa.
| | | | John Fossey
Canada
Local time: 10:24
Member (2008)
French to English
+ ...
| Free lunch - paid for... | Jan 1, 2009 |
Freeware just means that the developer is being paid other than by selling the software. EG, Google paid Firefox US$60m to have the Google bar put on the Firefox window. So Mozilla is paid by Google, not the software users. Its a marketing strategy. Somebody pays for the lunch, but not necessarily the software user.
| | | |
Advertising may "pay" for free web resources / software but for the user, that is still a "free luch".
Also, a buch of stuff IS free without any financial gain being sought, made by academic institutions and the like and published for the greater good, or made by generous individuals in their free time. What I consider to be the best map application made so far for mobile phones (MGMaps) was made by a sole developer as a hobby and is freeware.
| | |
|
|
|
esperantisto
Local time: 17:24
Member (2006)
English to Russian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
John Fossey wrote:
Google paid Firefox US$60m to have the Google bar put on the Firefox window. So Mozilla is paid by Google, not the software users.
You can’t “pay Firefox”, because Firefox is just a name of a program. And there is no Google bar in my Firefox installation under Windows. And under Linux, I use GNU IceCat (gnuzilla.gnu.org), which is as free as software can be.
| | | | | OmegaT & OmegaT+ are Free Software | Jan 3, 2009 |
Both OmegaT and OmegaT+ are free as in "they don't cost any money" and as in freedom. The former reason is nice, but the latter is the one that makes me use them.
OmegaT+ just released a new version and I really like it. I tried Trados once and I hated it and there was nothing I could do to change it. In the case of OmegaT+ I just email the developer and I can give him feedback. He answers personally and he's very helpful.
To clarify: the price tag of a tool does not sa... See more Both OmegaT and OmegaT+ are free as in "they don't cost any money" and as in freedom. The former reason is nice, but the latter is the one that makes me use them.
OmegaT+ just released a new version and I really like it. I tried Trados once and I hated it and there was nothing I could do to change it. In the case of OmegaT+ I just email the developer and I can give him feedback. He answers personally and he's very helpful.
To clarify: the price tag of a tool does not say anything about its quality. My laptop works 100% with free software (free as in freedom, it just happens to be free as in "no money" as well). There's nothing I can't do with my OS (gNewSense GNU/Linux). There's no point in using non-free, proprietary, restrictive and, in this case, commercial and very expensive tools. Freedom is great, and if it also means "no monetary cost" all the better. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Igor Kmitowski
Poland
Local time: 16:24
Member (2016)
English to Polish
+ ...
| It makes me wonder... | Jan 3, 2009 |
The whole disussion about free software makes me wonder how would those free translation software zealots react if some generous individual, hobbist - translator set up an office next to theirs and started the translation job for free, for pleasure, for "greater good".
| | | | | Tools and translations for free | Jan 3, 2009 |
Igork wrote:
The whole discussion about free software makes me wonder how would those free translation software zealots react if some generous individual, hobbist - translator set up an office next to theirs and started the translation job for free, for pleasure, for "greater good".
As a former software developer, I do think of this occasionally. I don't let it disturb me greatly, which is why I am also fairly unsympathetic to all the whining about "competition" from part-timers, hobbyists and other "translation unprofessionals".
There's nothing inherently wrong with freeware, but there's also no more than a short-term, limited advantage to it either. The ROI with a good CAT is so quick that I consider it the height of unprofessionality to base one's long-term use of a commercial or freeware CAT tool on the acquisition price alone. There are many other factors to consider, including convenience of use and opportunity costs. If the freeware tool meets all your needs, doesn't waste your time with bad workflows or ergonomics and doesn't hinder the acquisition of projects you need to survive, then it would indeed unnecessary to look elsewhere (unless one is inclined to keep an open mind about expanding the business to include whatever features may be offered with another tool).
But if my best "competitor" out there (hello, Jill!) started doing all her work for free and several other good translators in my areas joined her, it would not concern me in the slightest. There is a limit to what any one person can do and that limit is quickly reached when you're talking about services. Software, though, is another matter....
| | |
|
|
|
Igork wrote:
The whole disussion about free software makes me wonder how would those free translation software zealots react if some generous individual, hobbist - translator set up an office next to theirs and started the translation job for free, for pleasure, for "greater good".
If a company can't make a better product than hobbyists, despite the massively greater financial and thus human resources at their disposal, they deserve to go down in flames.
Frankly, I won't have to cry myself to sleep every night if OmegaT ends up becoming better than Trados and SDL goes bust. But don't see that happening anytime soon.
| | | | Robert Tucker (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:24
German to English
+ ...
FarkasAndras wrote:
If a company can't make a better product than hobbyists...
With reference to Microsoft
After reading the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics ... Gates contacted Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) ... to inform them that he and others were working on a BASIC interpreter for the platform.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Microsoft
Popular Electronics was a magazine started by Ziff-Davis Publishing in October 1954 for hobbyist and experimenters in electronics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Electronics
With reference to Google:
From humble beginnings in a garage in California's Menlo Park, the company is now one of the most recognised brands in the world
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7599342.stm
| | | | Marc P (X)
Local time: 16:24
German to English
+ ...
| Unprofessional | Jan 3, 2009 |
Frankly, I find the expression "free translation software zealots" insulting and unprofessional. I am all for free speech and am not suggesting that ProZ moderators should censor it, but I would like to point out that comparatively innocuous statements are routinely deleted.
My personal opinion is that were Windows to be launched this week as a completely new operating system, it would not be taken seriously, for a number of reasons. Despite that, I don't find it necessary to attach... See more Frankly, I find the expression "free translation software zealots" insulting and unprofessional. I am all for free speech and am not suggesting that ProZ moderators should censor it, but I would like to point out that comparatively innocuous statements are routinely deleted.
My personal opinion is that were Windows to be launched this week as a completely new operating system, it would not be taken seriously, for a number of reasons. Despite that, I don't find it necessary to attach disparaging labels to Windows users.
People use free software for a variety of reasons, and often the cost is only incidental. I have been involved for many years with OmegaT project, which is one of the most prominent examples of free translation-related software, but my involvement arose only because OmegaT was, six years ago, the most promising CAT tool capable of running on Linux, and only after I had spent a long time trying without success to persuade commercial CAT tool vendors to port their products to Linux - at my expense. But for a quirk of circumstance, I could easily have used Heartsome instead, a commercial product which appeared on the market at around the same time (and which, in 2005, I did in fact buy).
People are free to use free software if they wish, and I don't accept that they should be criticized, or mocked, for exercising that freedom. Not only that, it is only thanks to the work of the free software community that there is any real choice at all in some product sectors. Without GNU/Linux and other OSS projects, the "choice" of operating system would be limited to Windows Vista and Windows XP. (Mac OS X also relies quite heavily on work done by the OSS community.) Without OpenOffice.org, there would be no viable alternative to Microsoft Office. (Hands up those who use WordPerfect, or Applixware, or Textmaker.) Choice - including the freedom to buy the market leader's product - is a good thing, and I am somewhat suspicious of people who think otherwise.
In turn, I have used Linux since 1999 not because it is "the free operating system", but because in my opinion it is the best operating system. Since then, I have *bought* - as in paid good money for - SuSE Linux versions 6.1, 6.3, 7.1, 8.1 and 9.2, not to mention commercial applications that run on Linux (such as Heartsome, as already mentioned). The fact that most of the software I use can be downloaded free of charge is not my reason for using it. I use it either because it is the best, or at least perfectly adequate.
It should also be pointed out that some of us have invested hundreds or even thousands of man-hours in producing a product that we are happy with: quantified financially, a greater investment than, for example, the 4,000 Deutschmarks that I paid for the leading CAT tool product in 1997.
Most Windows users also use free software: Adobe Reader, for instance, can probably be found on most translators' hard drives. Are these colleagues all "zealots"? I don't think so. In any case, it would be a very short-sighted person who fails to grasp that the existence of ProZ.com itself is based upon the principle of people helping each other free of charge. Not that I don't have misgivings about that: one misgiving is that the advice proffered by some in these fora is frankly ridiculous, whereas that offered by others is good enough to be printed, bound and sold for serious money; pearls and swine are both just two arbitrary numbers on an opaque commodities index. Free software suffers from the same problem; where quality products and dross compete in the same marketplace, it is convenient to think that price must be an indicator of quality. Fortunately, most colleagues are astute enough to see through this fallacy, or none of them would use Google.
So: I wish my colleagues a happy, peaceful and prosperous 2009, I invite you to try the latest version of OmegaT (www.omegat.org), and I will take this opportunity to thank the dozens of developers, authors, translators, administrators, testers, support people and others, whatever their motivation may have been, for providing me with the CAT tool that I personally am happiest to use.
Marc ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] > | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » Are there any CAT freeware tools available? | Wordfast Pro | Translation Memory Software for Any Platform
Exclusive discount for ProZ.com users!
Save over 13% when purchasing Wordfast Pro through ProZ.com. Wordfast is the world's #1 provider of platform-independent Translation Memory software. Consistently ranked the most user-friendly and highest value
Buy now! » |
| | Anycount & Translation Office 3000 | Translation Office 3000
Translation Office 3000 is an advanced accounting tool for freelance translators and small agencies. TO3000 easily and seamlessly integrates with the business life of professional freelance translators.
More info » |
|
| | | | X Sign in to your ProZ.com account... | | | | | |
Login to reply/comment 
Translation news related to CAT tools
