Choosing a CAT tool for translating PDF's and Word documents

MamaG wrote:

I think it would be super-handy to have a poll or questionnaire that allows you to use a process of elimination in order to figure out what CAT tool is right for you as a function of what you tend to "do" as a freelancer. What your profile and lifestyle are, etc. I just bought SDL Trados Freelancer Studio 2014, and it was a big mistake, I can see now, even after a couple training seminars. The last I had worked with Trados was with the 2003 Workbench, I think it was called. For what you got paid (you don't get paid for all the fiddling with tags and errors and whatnot - you get paid for matches), the hassle was just not worth it. I chose SDL because it seems to be the industry standard, but the type of work I do does not really fit into an "industrial" context. My work is not the assembly-line sort. Trados is a very big, resource-intensive, expensive program that seems to be intended to be used with the kinds of ongoing projects/repeat jobs that large corporations generate, and with text that is already provided to you in a process-able format. I think the people who do well with it are people who work with it in companies or who have a lot of time to learn it (so can take some time off of income earning to actually sit down with it, study it, risk making mistakes, risk losing income etc.), a natural gift for understanding IT/technical matters in the first place, a few regular clients, same-ish material from those clients, and preferred limited focus as far as area of specialty. Given the type of work I myself tend to get (pretty varied subject areas, more than one language pair, small-ish docs in original or "only" versions that no one else has worked on yet, and text that cannot always be extracted unmessily from the source document), I should have opted for something much simpler. It has more features than I will ever begin to understand or use, even after two training courses, and was a huge investment and sacrifice for my family to make. I suspect I should have started with something much simpler and cheaper. I have asked whether they give refunds or not, but from what I have read on here, they don't do that, so I suspect I will have to just swallow it and try to recover. For the "little guy" freelancer with small-to-medium-sized varied clients and material, I would just not recommend that monster program. You do not need that many features, and it is designed for people who work on assembly-line type projects for large corporations that give regular same-ish work. As for which other tool would be good for me or for the other folks Trados hasn't worked out for, I don't know. I did a lot of research before buying it, and ultimately chose it because of its "established" nature, but I hope it doesn't end up gathering dust if I can't get it working for my particular workflow/lifestyle profile. I learned on this forum that you can't sell your license on ebay, apparently, either.

Mulyadi Subali wrote:


Well said. No need to have a huge Goliath when tiny David can deliver the same result. Every CAT tool is basically the same, i.e., get the translation done. Just pick one that can handles the most, if not all, the file formats you're assigned with.