Which CAT tools to use in my case?
Thread poster: Assia Amnay
Assia Amnay
Assia Amnay
Canada
Local time: 05:11
Arabic to English
+ ...
Aug 29, 2020

Hi fellow translators! I am excited I am starting a new job in a big company as their in-house translator. The company asked me to suggest a CAT tool. I have not been keeping up with the market and feel a bit rusty. At my previous job, we only used their internal program + antidote for proofreading.

Please can you recommend a CAT tool? I tried to contact SDL Trados but boy they have changed since 2013.

I will be the only translator so it's only (1) license. I would appr
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Hi fellow translators! I am excited I am starting a new job in a big company as their in-house translator. The company asked me to suggest a CAT tool. I have not been keeping up with the market and feel a bit rusty. At my previous job, we only used their internal program + antidote for proofreading.

Please can you recommend a CAT tool? I tried to contact SDL Trados but boy they have changed since 2013.

I will be the only translator so it's only (1) license. I would appreciate a MT feature for productivity as well as proofreading (but open to buy antidote separately if not).

i will probably be translating extensions like docs, ppts and pdfs (brochures, articles, commercial bids etc).

Thank you for your help
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Hedwig Spitzer (X)
Hedwig Spitzer (X)  Identity Verified
Peru
French to Spanish
+ ...
Wordfast Pro Aug 29, 2020

Hi,
I use Wordfast and it is the best option for me. User friendly, available assistance, server option, it is a very powerful tool. Give it a try for free. https://www.wordfast.com/store_download.html
The newest is Wordfast Pro 5.
Good luck and all my best in your new position.
Cheer!


Aline Amorim
 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 10:11
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Assia Aug 30, 2020

Assia Amnay wrote:
I am starting a new job in a big company as their in-house translator. The company asked me to suggest a CAT tool. I have not been keeping up with the market and feel a bit rusty. At my previous job, we only used their internal program + antidote for proofreading.


I had a look at Antidote's list of supported file formats, and no CAT tool formats are on that list. This means that unless there is an add-on or a functionality built into the CAT tool, if you were to use Antidote, you'd have to use it on the final file (or on a temporary version of the final file), and then (if you want to update your translation memory) make the edits in your CAT tool manually also.

There is a free add-on for Trados (the latest version is for Trados 2021 and works with Antidote 10, despite somewhat outdated information on the add-on's main page): here. I don't use either, so I can only tell what I read. It may be that not all of Antidote's features are available inside Trados.

If you last used Trados in 2013, then you had used Trados 2011, the last version without the ribbon. Here is a list of some of the major new features in each version of Trados since 2009: here. The ribbon is not easier or better to use at all, and in fact it means that some buttons or options don't appear on the screen unless you maximise your window or use a little arrow button which then makes the ribbon work like a menu system anyway. So yes, unfortunately the post-2011 Trados has a ribbon. But it is otherwise a very similar program to version 2011.

I don't know what you meant by "contacting Trados". You can buy Trados straight from their web site, or you can contact one of their resellers (and possibly get a better deal). There are no resellers in Canada, and only one in the United States: here.

I would appreciate a MT feature for productivity as well as proofreading (but open to buy Antidote separately if not).


I know of no CAT tool that offers built-in rules for English or French that can rival Antidote (note: I don't use Antidote), so if you're happy with Antidote then perhaps you should either use Trados or you should realise that you'd have to run the checks on the final file and then manually update the segments in the CAT tool to ensure that your TM remains useful.

Have a look at what some of the current CAT tools look like: here.

The big five (Trados, MemoQ, Wordfast Pro 5, Déjà Vu and Transit) and the small five (Wordfast Pro 3, CafeTran, Wordfast Classic, OmegaT and Swordfish) and the online five (SmartCat, Wordfast Anywhere, Memsource, XTM and MateCat) all offer a variety of MT functionality, but you need to buy a separate subscription from the MT service provider, e.g. Google Translate. Figuring out how to get an MT key from the MT provider isn't always simple. The subscriptions are typically very cheap (but some are not: e.g. DeepL), and not all of the CAT tools can handle all MT engines.

i will probably be translating extensions like DOC, PPT and PDF (brochures, articles, commercial bids etc).


In my opinion and experience, Trados' PDF converter is the best of the bunch. That said, none of the CAT tools can actually translate PDF files -- instead, they convert the PDF file to e.g. DOC and then produce a DOC file as the output file. Be careful, the PDF conversions of some CAT tools are very primitive.

So, given that you have past experience with Trados post-2007, and given that Trados has the fewest quirks (in my opinion), I would suggest that you consider getting Trados.

Added: I used to work in a newspaper's translation office and from what I can remember, if I had worked there today and had to choose a CAT tool, I would probably have chosen Wordfast Pro 3 (which is included in the license for Wordfast Pro 5) because it is very easy to convert a source file to its bilingual format and then convert it back again, without bothering with special folder trees. I can have a DOC file sitting in any folder on my Desktop, open it in WFP3, which creates a TXML file right there in the same folder, and when I'm done, the final file gets created right there in the same folder as well. And you don't have to create a new project for each new file. But WFP3 has rather fewer features. The next easiest big CAT tool w.r.t. file management is probably Trados: while it does create and require its own folder trees, they are simple to navigate and work with, and you can save and move TMs anywhere, and the TMs are simply files.


[Edited at 2020-08-30 09:15 GMT]


Anastasia Andriani
 


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Which CAT tools to use in my case?







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