| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5] > | Writing research paper on CAT tools - feedback needed Thread poster: IrisRinner (X)
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| Heartsome Translation Studio 8.2 | Apr 24, 2013 |
You might add Heartsome Translation Studio 8.2 to your cat research list, which can be tried for one month with full functions and compatible with main stream CAT tools. https://www.heartsome.net/EN/downloads.html
| | | | Balasubramaniam L. 
India
Local time: 23:14
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
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SITE LOCALIZER | Yes, it is crash prone | Apr 24, 2013 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
Install Across on an expendable computer
I did get into trouble initially with Across and lost all work. But the support from Across was quite quick and helpful.
Regarding the large size of the file and the hard disc space it requires, this is because Across uses SQL Database to store the translation units. This database has to be separately installed and configured.
The installation is a bit tricky, but otherwise Across is no problem. I have been having Across installation in my computer for ages and use it for a couple of clients who work with this software. I haven't had any major issues with Across.
While we are on crashing software, I have had even worse experience with memoq while in the middle of a mammoth project, though fortunately I was using the network version and the translations could be retrieved from the server with the client, but I did lose a couple of days in the process as this happened on a weekend and the client could not respond till Monday.
None of the existing CAT tools are hundred percent perfect. And all of them are more or less same from the point of functionality, in my opinion. Of course, as you get used to a particular CAT tool you form a habit for it and find it more easy to use, but that does not necessarily mean it has better functionality. Only that you learn to ignore its deficiencies or you become so familiar with them that they no longer bother you.
| | | | IrisRinner (X)
German to Italian
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TOPIC STARTER | commonly used features of CAT tools | Apr 25, 2013 |
Samuel Murray wrote: IrisRinner wrote:
Basically I have to compare one ore more CAT Tools to the markt leader Trados. I was busy writing a nice reply and then my browser crashed. I don't have a keylogger installed, but I do have a screen logger installed, and since I'm unfortunately a bit busy right now, all I can give you are these two screenshots of my answer. Good luck!  Perhaps one day in the far future ProZ.com's forum will have a "Save draft" option. [Edited at 2013-04-23 09:04 GMT]
Hi Samuel,
can I ask you which features of the CAT tools are commomly used by translators or ar very popular among them?
Greetings.
Iris
| | | | Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:44
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
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This might be useful to you as well:
http://www.translatorstraining.com/mat/cat/cat.htm
This page has a great overview of various different kinds of CAT tools and clearly shows the different approaches to user interfaces that have been tried so far.
Michael
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Nice effort, Michael.
lots of tags in CAT tool (Déjà Vu, TagEditor, PDFs that have been badly converted into Word docs) Vs. hardly any tags in CAT tool (memoQ, CodeZapper)
Isn't MQ just hiding these tags behind its WYSIWYG display?
Please add CafeTran to the hardly any tags category. Its Word filter is very, very good.
aimed at freelancers (memoQ, Déjà Vu, Wordfast)
Please add CafeTran to this category. IMO CafeTran has more editing features than any other CAT tool (perhaps Wf Classic has more, with its Pandora box), but users are complaining about the many new bugs in every public build.
[Edited at 2013-04-26 05:03 GMT]
| | | | | Wrong closing bracket! | Apr 26, 2013 |
IMO CafeTran has more editing features than any other CAT tool (perhaps Wf Classic has more, with its Pandora box), but users are complaining about the many new bugs in every public build.
Oops, this must be:
IMO CafeTran has more editing features than any other CAT tool (perhaps Wf Classic has more, with its Pandora Box, but users are complaining about the many new bugs in every new public build).
Sorry for that...
[Edited at 2013-04-26 08:30 GMT]
| | | | Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:44
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
| ‘Editing is disabled 24 hours after posting.’ | Apr 26, 2013 |
trhanslator wrote:
Please add CafeTran to this category.
Sorry, I just tried to add them, but am no longer allowed to edit my own post. Hmm. Kind of stupid, if you ask me.
Re: memoQ 'just hiding (...) tags behind its WYSIWYG display': I don't care what or how it does it, the net result is that I don't have to deal with them when translating. Italics and bold really should be WYSIWYG.
Michael
| | | | | Research paper Trados and memoQ | Apr 26, 2013 |
Dear all, dear Iris,
Thanks for the information.
I'm also writing a research paper. I have to compare Trados with memoQ. Does any one have any more suggestions about those two specifically?
Kind regards,
Els Eerdekens
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Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:44
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
Els Eerdekens wrote:
Dear all, dear Iris,
Thanks for the information.
I'm also writing a research paper. I have to compare Trados with memoQ. Does any one have any more suggestions about those two specifically?
Kind regards,
Els Eerdekens
Hi Els,
If you have any specific questions about either Trados or memoQ, or the similarities/differences, feel free to ask them here! Which version(s) of Trados are you comparing?
Michael
| | | | | Research paper Trados and memoQ | Apr 26, 2013 |
@ Michael:
Thanks for this interesting overview!
I have some experience with CAT tools, but not so much that I can follow all the things said about those tools.
So, I'm comparing memoQ 6.2 and Trados Studio 2011.
I have some questions for you, Michael, if you don’t mind.
1) What’s the difference between open source and proprietary?
2) What’s the difference between online and local?
3) What do you mean with interop... See more @ Michael:
Thanks for this interesting overview!
I have some experience with CAT tools, but not so much that I can follow all the things said about those tools.
So, I'm comparing memoQ 6.2 and Trados Studio 2011.
I have some questions for you, Michael, if you don’t mind.
1) What’s the difference between open source and proprietary?
2) What’s the difference between online and local?
3) What do you mean with interoperable system and closed system? Is SDL Trados Studio 2011 interoperable?
4) If you say ‘hardly any tags in CAT tool’, do you mean that they are not displayed?
5) What do you think about the user interface of Trados Studio 2011?
6) Where can I find the active user community of memoQ? And of Trados Studio 2011?
7) I suppose Trados Studio 2011 is not aimed at freelancers? Why is memoQ aimed at freelancers?
8) What do you mean with 'server solutions'?
Can you think of some huge differences between the two CAT tools?
I'm going to read the complete manual of memoQ, but I have already seen some terms I don't understand:
- the Zen
- the Muse
Where can I find the LiveDocs Corpus?
Thanks a lot!
Els ▲ Collapse
| | | | | | | Just thought I'd help a little... | Apr 28, 2013 |
Els Eerdekens wrote:
1) What’s the difference between open source and proprietary?
Maybe worth reading a few articles on this... there are plenty around and seem to the point without being too wordy. Like this for example:
http://www.bloomtools.com/articles/open-source-vs-proprietary-software.html
Els Eerdekens wrote:
2) What’s the difference between online and local?
Local resources (Translation Memories, Termbases, files etc.) reside on your own computer. Online resources reside on a server that you access through an internet or intranet connection.
Els Eerdekens wrote:
3) What do you mean with interoperable system and closed system? Is SDL Trados Studio 2011 interoperable?
I think that interoperable in this context means that it is possible to start with a source file in one CAT tool and then pass it to a translator using a different CAT so that they can work on it and then successfully pass it back. The most common bilingual formats for sharing work like this are probably Bilingual Doc, TTX and nowadays XLIFF. Both Studio and memoQ support this.
Another definition of interoperable might be that it is possible for one CAT tool to handle the bilingual formats of less commonly used CAT tools so that if work originated in these tools then it would still be possible to handle them... TXML or Transit for example. This is useful where tools do not support the "standards" for interoperability mentioned above, or have simply not used them to share work with others. In this case I think it would be fair to say that memoQ supports one more formats out of the box than Studio. However, Studio provides an "open" SDK and API that supports the ability of anyone who knows how to develop to create filetypes for anything and these are often made available through a shared platform called the OpenExchange. With memoQ the addition of new filetypes like this always requires the memoQ developers to add them, whereas with Studio they can be provided by anyone who knows how to develop. Many of these are provided for free so all Studio users have access to them.
So think back to your question on "open" versus "proprietary" and in this scenario Studio is more open and provides more possibilities for interoperability.
But in general, I think both tools satisy the majority of requirements for interoperability.
Els Eerdekens wrote:
4) If you say ‘hardly any tags in CAT tool’, do you mean that they are not displayed?
This may be what is meant... certainly Studio has a wysiwyg mode that removed tags where they are visible in any other CAT I have tested. But the reality is that these tags are still there and need to be handled correctly by the translator.
PDF files sometimes produce more taggy documents, and most of them are also irrelevant as they tend to be added by the OCR software in an attenpt to match the spacing of the letters as the document is scanned... for example. Some tools have built in capability for "cleaning" these up... take DVX for example that hase a third party tool called Codezapper built in.
So in my opinion this point is not very important in normal use, although the usecase for PDFs in DVX is pretty handy.
Els Eerdekens wrote:
5) What do you think about the user interface of Trados Studio 2011?
All down to personal preference really. I like it
Els Eerdekens wrote:
6) Where can I find the active user community of memoQ? And of Trados Studio 2011?
Main places are these:
ProZ
http://www.proz.com/forum/sdl_trados_support-65.html
http://www.proz.com/forum/memoq_support-590.html
Yahoo
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/TW_users/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/memoq/
Els Eerdekens wrote:
7) I suppose Trados Studio 2011 is not aimed at freelancers? Why is memoQ aimed at freelancers?
I would disagree with this. Studio is also aimed at Freelancers.
Els Eerdekens wrote:
8) What do you mean with 'server solutions'?
An application that runs on a Server rather than just a local computer like your laptop. It runs on a server because it is designed to be used for sharing the resources on the server between users running the local application on their laptops/PCs.
So for example, Studio has a server solution called GroupShare that allows users to share Translation Memories, Termbases and projects.
Hope that's helpful... tried hard to be unbiased
Regards
Paul
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IrisRinner (X)
German to Italian
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TOPIC STARTER
Hi Els,
nice to have a colleague in here
And thanks to all users for support and suggestions.
I will have some more questions for you soon.
Iris
| | | | Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:44
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
Els Eerdekens wrote:
I have some questions for you, Michael, if you don’t mind.
1) What’s the difference between open source and proprietary?
Without going into the intricacies of trying to define them both, open source is software like OmegaT, Anaphraseus, Poedit, Pootle, Virtaal, Okapi Framework, developed by people in their free time, because they enjoy coding and being able to give something back to the community. There is also whole range of complete open source operating systems, most of them based on Linux or Unix code. Ubuntu is one of the most well known examples of open source OSs, and is itself based on Debian, another flavour of Linux. The Ubuntu people are primarily trying to compete with the Windows (Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows RT, etc.) and Mac OSs (OSX, iOS).
I used to be a big Linux fan, years ago. However, my experience has been that, in general, if you want to just get work done and make money, and don't want to have to worry about your files being incompatible with your clients' computers, it is usually better to stay away from open source software. There are many people who use OmegaT that will have course strongly disagree with me, so remember that this is just my own opinion. Perhaps it is possible to work productively with OmegaT, but I would really discourage translators (especially new ones) to try and work only on a Linux or Unix operating system. Note that there are few important exceptions, such as Olifant, a TM editor made by the Okapi Framework people, which many different CAT users use to edit and maintain their TMs with because of a lack of functionality in their own tools. Many clever people also use Rainbow and the Okapi Framework to convert and prepare translation files, and to pipe them back and forth between all kinds of esoteric interfaces using the command line. However, as I said above, if you are a new translator or are not very technical, I don't think these programs will be of much use to you.
Proprietary software is anything made by a company, or sometimes even individual person (like CafeTran), and sold for money. There has been a recent price war going on between CAT tool vendors, with Déjà Vu, memoQ and SDL Studio (and many others) fighting it out in the PGB (Proz Group Buys: http://www.proz.com/tgb) ring. Some of the CAT vendors who are still stuck in the past, such as STAR Transit, are still trying to charge way too much money for their programs, although I think it is only a matter of time before they wake up and change their pricing strategy.
2) What’s the difference between online and local?
Online is where you do the translation online, in your browser, and local is when you have the CAT tool installed (locally) on your own computer. People will tell you that online (and 'cloud-based solutions') is the future. I would say: don't believe them. All online CAT tools are ... pretty bad.
3) What do you mean with interoperable system and closed system? Is SDL Trados Studio 2011 interoperable?
I agree with most of what Paul said. Trados Studio and memoQ are both pretty interoperable tools. Trados, the old Trados, wasn't exactly known for being very interoperable. This was because they used to be the market leader, and therefore it was other CAT tools that had to try and be interoperable with them, not the other way around. However, things have changed a lot in the past 5 years or so, and SDL Trados Studio is now just one of many different successful CAT tools.
4) If you say ‘hardly any tags in CAT tool’, do you mean that they are not displayed?
Yes, that's what I mean. In my view, a good CAT tool is one that presents as few tags in the source and target segments to the translator as possible. Some are better than others, although in general they are now all trying to develop tools that are as devoid of tags as possible. In memoQ, e.g., if sth is in bold or italics, you just see it that way. In Déjà Vu, however, this all needs to be coded in tags, so there will be a little tag before and after every bold or italicised fragment of text, which is of course ridiculous and impedes your work as a translator. We are human beings, not computers, and so should be presented with text to translate, not code. That's what our computer is supposed to do: remove as much of the underlying computer and formatting code as possible so we can focus on the flow of the text.
5) What do you think about the user interface of Trados Studio 2011?
Here I have to (respectfully) disagree with Paul. I personally find Studio's user interface (UI) HIDEOUS. In my opinion, UI design is one of the most important aspects, if not the most important aspect, of a CAT tool. The program can have 4 functions or 4,000, but if the UI is a mess, who the hell is going to want to work with it for extended periods of time every day. As a translator, I spend god knows how many hours of my life clicking my way around the UI of my CAT tool, so I would have course like it to be the best one that I can find. I have tried a great many different CAT tools, and focused on the UI during performing test translations, and finally decided that memoQ has the best user interface out there, currently. I don't like to use my mouse when I am translating, and in memoQ I hardly have to, almost everything can be done via my keyboard and using shortcuts: adding terms ot my glossary on-the-fly, doing concordance searches, filtering both source and target segments in the translation 'grid', searching for terms in my glossaries, etc. To be honest, I haven't really used Studio for any extended period of time, and so my experience will have course not count for all that much. The more you work in any particular program, the more your muscle memory starts to take over, and translating in memoQ is now sth that I do almost half on auto pilot. I mean of course the clicking and typing, not that my thinking is on auto pilot;) However, I think that Studio's UI is very cluttered and confusing. The basic structure of the translation interface, however, is good, and resembles memoQ. Although I believe that there are many different ways to build a good UI, I do think that some are better than others, and I have very strong opinions about why some are better than others. The way that memoQ displays hits and additional information from entries in your glossary, e.g., while you are working in the translation grid, is one of the best solutions, imo. The fact that in memoQ you can select any term and click Ctrl+Shift+F, and it will then automatically filter on that term in either source or target segments, is another very clever idea that only exists in a few CAT tools.
6) Where can I find the active user community of memoQ? And of Trados Studio 2011?
I'll just copy what Paul said:
ProZ
http://www.proz.com/forum/sdl_trados_support-65.html
http://www.proz.com/forum/memoq_support-590.html
Yahoo
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/TW_users/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/memoq/
7) I suppose Trados Studio 2011 is not aimed at freelancers? Why is memoQ aimed at freelancers?
I agree with Paul: they are both aimed at freelancers. However, there is a very important difference between SDL (Trados Studio 2011) and Kilgray (memoQ). SDL is not exactly a company that is much loved by the community. I'm sure Paul will disagree with me here, but then again, Paul works for SDL, and so kind of has to. In any case: there is a real different feel to the memoQ community, and SDL users. There is no real SDL community. SDL also has a Yahoo mailing list and the forum at Proz, but there is just a big difference between the way that people feel about both tools. I won't go into the reasons here, as it is a long and convoluted story. Let me just say that memoQ users very often really love their CAT tool, and will try and convince other people to get it too, whereas Studio users are different. There are a few quite vocal Studio users/fans, but there just isn't the same feeling of community, in my opinion. Incidentally, this also applies to other CAT tools. Let me repeat what I wrote in my 'Cats Vs. Dogs' overview above:
there is an active user community and contact with the developers (CafeTran, memoQ) Vs. no active user community or contact with the developers (Across, Transit, LogiTerm, MultiCorpora)
Oops, I forgot to add Déjà Vu to the active community side. Déjà Vu users also often feel very passionately about their CAT tool, just like memoQ users. CafeTran is agood example because it is a relatively new CAT tool that is being developed by one man, and is also very cheap, although it has zillions of great features, many of which only feature in CafeTran.
As a memoQ user I can post a question in the mailing list on a Sunday night and get an answer 5 minutes later from one of the memoQ developers. The Kilgray guys are open and honest about what is going on behind the scenes and often ask us what we think should be done about a particular problem. For me personally this is one of the main reasons why I always recommend memoQ to colleagues. Well, this and the fact that I think memoQ currently has the best UI bar none and the most active development.
8) What do you mean with 'server solutions'?
Compare, e.g., memoQ server with memoQ pro.
memoQ Pro: I get a Word file from my client and translate it on my computer using memoQ and then send them the target file back.
memoQ server: A client assign me a memoQ server project, which means that I get a code which allows my desktop version of memoQ to connect over the internet with their 'memoQ server', which is on their computer. I do the actual translating on my computer, but often the TM is actually stored on their server, and so can be immediately accesible to other translators elsewhere in the world working on the same project perhaps.
Translation agencies like sending these memoQ server projects (because of various improvements to their own workflow or sometimes because they are trying to coordinate a large project with many translators working on a single project simultaneously), but I don't really like them and prefer doing everything locally. Sometimes their server will go sown for a few hours and you will not be able to work on your job, which can be very annoying when you planned to do some translating and can't. There are a few other technical reasons why online projects are less desirable from the translator's perspective.
Can you think of some huge differences between the two CAT tools?
1. the memoQ UI is much better
2. there is a lively and active memoQ community and direct contact between the users and the developers, whereas Trados doesn't really have the same
3. memoQ is much quicker and responsive than Studio
4. terminology management is much more straightforward in memoQ. MultiTerm is an abomination.
5. Kilgray has a sense of humour.
I'm going to read the complete manual of memoQ, but I have already seen some terms I don't understand:
- the Zen
- the Muse
Where can I find the LiveDocs Corpus?
'The Zen' is another one of Kilgray's little jokes. It's basically this funny ambient background music in memoQ that you can activate with a button. Ther are 2 settings: one is the funny music, and the other is no music but these kind of peaceful clicking sounds when you type. Kind of fun for a while but it soon gets boring.
'The Muse' is a new idea that I am still investigating. You can now create things called 'Muses', which are ways for memoQ to learn from TMs you feed it and then feed this to the new predictive typing function. To be honest, I hate all forms of autocomplete and predictive typing and so have all that switched off. But some people like it and think it's great. Studio has something similar. I'm not sure which is better.
'LiveDocs Corpus': Click on Project home > LiveDocs > Create use/new, and you can create a new LiveDocs corpus. LiveDocs is relatively new feature that can be used in all kinds of interesting ways. It can even be used as a new way of using translation memories. However, most people use LiveDocs as a great aligner, one of the best in the business, incidentally. If you are familiar with the idea of a 'corpus', LiveDocs allows you to create and manage (bilingual and monolingual) corpora for use as a resource during translation.
Phew! Hope this helps!
Michael
| | | | IrisRinner (X)
German to Italian
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TOPIC STARTER | new question | Apr 30, 2013 |
By reading your comments and making some research now I'm thinking about to compare Trados 2011 to some of the free available CAT-tools. One of my big question is, why should a translator buy a Cat tool if there are free Cat tools available which are working well?
In your opinion, which one is the best one among the free Cat tools?
I'm planning to take into consideration the following:
- OmegaT
- Wordfast Anywhere
- Memsource cloud
Do you have any suggestion a... See more By reading your comments and making some research now I'm thinking about to compare Trados 2011 to some of the free available CAT-tools. One of my big question is, why should a translator buy a Cat tool if there are free Cat tools available which are working well?
In your opinion, which one is the best one among the free Cat tools?
I'm planning to take into consideration the following:
- OmegaT
- Wordfast Anywhere
- Memsource cloud
Do you have any suggestion and experience with the following?
Thanks a lot for help.
Greetings.
Iris ▲ Collapse
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