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Translation without CAT tools
Thread poster: blue_swimmer
blue_swimmer
blue_swimmer
Australia
Jul 27, 2014

Hi,

I am working in a specific environment where translators don't use CAT tools that much and all translation is done in word files. Still, I would like to utilize some tools to improve quality of the translation.

There are three main areas I am interested in, but I am open to any other suggestions:

1) Terminology/glossary tool: are there any tools working with the monolingual files? E.g. with separate source and target files. What is your experience wit
... See more
Hi,

I am working in a specific environment where translators don't use CAT tools that much and all translation is done in word files. Still, I would like to utilize some tools to improve quality of the translation.

There are three main areas I am interested in, but I am open to any other suggestions:

1) Terminology/glossary tool: are there any tools working with the monolingual files? E.g. with separate source and target files. What is your experience with them?

2) TM creation from monolingual files: i know there are tools that can align source and target monolingual files and create a TM from them. From my experience with WinAlign it's not a flawless process and requires lot of manual review and fine tuning. Do you have better experience with some other tools that would require minimal or no review?

3) Terminology extraction tool: which tool is the best in your experience?

Thank you!
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José Henrique Lamensdorf
José Henrique Lamensdorf  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 13:02
English to Portuguese
+ ...
In memoriam
What's the point? Jul 27, 2014

Sorry if I sound blunt, but I don't get it.

As I understood it, you want to have the benefits of CAT tools without using CAT tools.

The image I get is as if you were asking how to jam the shaft of an electric screwdriver, so that you can use it as a regular manual screwdriver. IMHO it becomes clumsy, since instead of having a regular screwdriver handle, you'll be hand-turning an enclosure containing the motor, gears, and (supposedly dead) batteries.

If it's
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Sorry if I sound blunt, but I don't get it.

As I understood it, you want to have the benefits of CAT tools without using CAT tools.

The image I get is as if you were asking how to jam the shaft of an electric screwdriver, so that you can use it as a regular manual screwdriver. IMHO it becomes clumsy, since instead of having a regular screwdriver handle, you'll be hand-turning an enclosure containing the motor, gears, and (supposedly dead) batteries.

If it's the cost of CAT tools themselves, though a few thousand people here on Proz and elsewhere will tell you that you MUST have Trados or kill yourself, there are some free CAT tools around.

All CAT tools I've ever heard of perform quite badly from a strictly software point of view, they are buggy by design. However their efficiency is far superior to the half-manual system you are trying to devise.
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blue_swimmer
blue_swimmer
Australia
TOPIC STARTER
Limitations I can't influence Jul 27, 2014

I know it's a strange setup, but lot of translators here simply don't use CAT tools. And I have to use local translators due to legal requirements. So I'm trying to utilize at least some technology in order to improve the quality of translation.

Another option is to purchase some CAT tool and persuade translators to use/purchase it, but that might be a lengthy battle. So I would like to know what is possible without CAT tools.

Thanks!


 
Bernard Lieber
Bernard Lieber  Identity Verified
Local time: 17:02
English to French
+ ...
Trial Versions Jul 27, 2014

Download trial versions and see what suits you best!

Cheers,

Bernard


 
Orrin Cummins
Orrin Cummins  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 01:02
Japanese to English
+ ...
My opinion Jul 27, 2014

If you are looking to CAT tools to improve the quality of your translations, you may be taking the wrong approach. You might just need to find better translators.

A CAT tool is not going to magically improve quality if it wasn't there in sufficient amounts to begin with.

Edit: I just realized that I may have misread your post because you mentioned that translators in your field don't use CAT tools, so I somehow assumed that you were an outsourcer, not a translato
... See more
If you are looking to CAT tools to improve the quality of your translations, you may be taking the wrong approach. You might just need to find better translators.

A CAT tool is not going to magically improve quality if it wasn't there in sufficient amounts to begin with.

Edit: I just realized that I may have misread your post because you mentioned that translators in your field don't use CAT tools, so I somehow assumed that you were an outsourcer, not a translator, and were looking for something for your translators to use. I mean, if you are a translator, why would you care what anyone else in your field uses? If you think that you can gain benefits from using a CAT tool, then by all means use it. And there are free or very low-priced solutions out there if you look around, you don't need Trados necessarily.

I agree with the above comments that you shouldn't be trying to manually piece together the functionality of a CAT tool without using a CAT tool, that's just insanity.

[Edited at 2014-07-27 18:38 GMT]
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John Moran
John Moran  Identity Verified
Ireland
Local time: 16:02
German to English
+ ...
OmegaT Jul 27, 2014

Is the problem your employer does not want to pay for a CAT tool? In that case, no problem. Just use OmegaT. It is reliable and pretty easy to use once you get used to it. There are plenty of training videos on youtube etc. to help you get started.

If you find it does not help it will only have cost you some time.

There is a new terminology extraction tool (TAAS) that you can use for free in OmegaT.


 
Paulette Romero
Paulette Romero  Identity Verified
Colombia
Local time: 11:02
English to Spanish
+ ...
Free CAT Tools Jul 27, 2014

There are a couple of free CAT tools out there such as OmegaT and Across. You should look them up.

In addition, as someone asked in one of the other posts, what does it matter if other translators in your area use CAT tools or not? Do you often subcontract work out to other translators in your area? If not, then don't worry about what they do and look into starting out with one of the free CAT tools available.


 
blue_swimmer
blue_swimmer
Australia
TOPIC STARTER
Local situation Jul 28, 2014

First, thanks for all your responses.

I know that while rest of the world is exploring MT and post-editing, here in Australia it's still very old school, heck, some translators still use pen and paper. A significant portion of the local language services market are government projects which require usage of local translators. This government shielding certainly doesn't encourage adoption of new technologies, resulting in a very backward pool of translators.

One option
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First, thanks for all your responses.

I know that while rest of the world is exploring MT and post-editing, here in Australia it's still very old school, heck, some translators still use pen and paper. A significant portion of the local language services market are government projects which require usage of local translators. This government shielding certainly doesn't encourage adoption of new technologies, resulting in a very backward pool of translators.

One option I have now is to use industry leading CAT tools, such as Trados and MemoQ. Perhaps as the server based edition, with CAL licensing so translators don't have to purchase anything. At the same time, this might be quite an expensive option, as our agency is small and margins slim.

Another option is to use open source tools, like previously mentioned OmegaT. I'm bit afraid about the file support (e.g. InDesign files) and troubleshooting in that case, again, our agency is small and can't afford l10n engineer.

That's why I'm trying to explore the most cost effective solution in this case, e.g. monolingual LQA tools, even though it's cumbersome.

Thanks!
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Maxi Schwarz
Maxi Schwarz  Identity Verified
Local time: 11:02
German to English
+ ...
trying to understand Jul 28, 2014

blue_swimmer wrote:

I know it's a strange setup, but lot of translators here simply don't use CAT tools. And I have to use local translators due to legal requirements. So I'm trying to utilize at least some technology in order to improve the quality of translation.

So you are not doing the translations yourself, but rather, you are hiring translators to do the work, and you want to improve the quality of what they have produced through CAT-like technology. I'm not sure I understand this. I don't use CAT tools. The quality of my translations are excellent (imho) and I can't see how anyone could "improve" them through a tool afterward. In fact, I'd be afraid they might make it worse. But I also don't have the picture.

What types of things do you want to improve that presently are not good enough in your view?


 
jyuan_us
jyuan_us  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 12:02
Member (2005)
English to Chinese
+ ...
He is an outsourcer though Jul 28, 2014

Orrin Cummins wrote:

If you are looking to CAT tools to improve the quality of your translations, you may be taking the wrong approach. You might just need to find better translators.

A CAT tool is not going to magically improve quality if it wasn't there in sufficient amounts to begin with.

Edit: I just realized that I may have misread your post because you mentioned that translators in your field don't use CAT tools, so I somehow assumed that you were an outsourcer, not a translator, and were looking for something for your translators to use. I mean, if you are a translator, why would you care what anyone else in your field uses? If you think that you can gain benefits from using a CAT tool, then by all means use it. And there are free or very low-priced solutions out there if you look around, you don't need Trados necessarily.

I agree with the above comments that you shouldn't be trying to manually piece together the functionality of a CAT tool without using a CAT tool, that's just insanity.

[Edited at 2014-07-27 18:38 GMT]


And he has to use local translators, most of whom are not CAT tool users.


 
Orrin Cummins
Orrin Cummins  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 01:02
Japanese to English
+ ...
... Jul 28, 2014

jyuan_us wrote:

Orrin Cummins wrote:

If you are looking to CAT tools to improve the quality of your translations, you may be taking the wrong approach. You might just need to find better translators.

A CAT tool is not going to magically improve quality if it wasn't there in sufficient amounts to begin with.

Edit: I just realized that I may have misread your post because you mentioned that translators in your field don't use CAT tools, so I somehow assumed that you were an outsourcer, not a translator, and were looking for something for your translators to use. I mean, if you are a translator, why would you care what anyone else in your field uses? If you think that you can gain benefits from using a CAT tool, then by all means use it. And there are free or very low-priced solutions out there if you look around, you don't need Trados necessarily.

I agree with the above comments that you shouldn't be trying to manually piece together the functionality of a CAT tool without using a CAT tool, that's just insanity.

[Edited at 2014-07-27 18:38 GMT]


And he has to use local translators, most of whom are not CAT tool users.


Well, I'm just completely confused then.


 
Didier Briel
Didier Briel  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 17:02
English to French
+ ...
LF Aligner as an "automatic" aligner Jul 28, 2014

blue_swimmer wrote:
2) TM creation from monolingual files: i know there are tools that can align source and target monolingual files and create a TM from them. From my experience with WinAlign it's not a flawless process and requires lot of manual review and fine tuning. Do you have better experience with some other tools that would require minimal or no review?

LF Aligner is rather good:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/aligner/

3) Terminology extraction tool: which tool is the best in your experience?

I cannot say this is the best, as I have not tried many tools. TaaS, mentioned by John, gives interesting results. It only works with European languages plus Russian.
https://demo.taas-project.eu/

Didier


 
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 17:02
Member (2003)
Danish to English
+ ...
Use the CAT of your choice Jul 28, 2014

I have personally never persuaded the Multiterm Widget (that comes with Trados and now Studio) to work with Word files alone, possibly because I have not installed it properly from scratch - it is an option to use it as a stand-alone without the rest of the CAT.

However, I know a couple of colleagues who have happily done so, and others who use it alongside texts when the source is not machine readable. (Scanned PDFs that are not good enough for OCR)

I like Multiterm li
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I have personally never persuaded the Multiterm Widget (that comes with Trados and now Studio) to work with Word files alone, possibly because I have not installed it properly from scratch - it is an option to use it as a stand-alone without the rest of the CAT.

However, I know a couple of colleagues who have happily done so, and others who use it alongside texts when the source is not machine readable. (Scanned PDFs that are not good enough for OCR)

I like Multiterm linked up with the rest of the CAT.

I agree it is clunky and not very intuitive, but Multiterm is one big reason why I stay with Trados! It has more features and works more flexibly than other glossary tools I have tried. And like so many things, once you know how it works, you can use it.

I usually add terminology to it 'on the fly' as I am translating from within the CAT setup, but I do sometimes make a list in Excel, and there is now a free downloadable App from SDL that will convert an Excel file to a Multiterm database, so that saves a lot of time.

That might work for you.
The Excel files can of course be read or printed out etc. for totally CAT-free use.

A CAT is a tool , but it is not in fact black magic.
It is an elaborate (OK, sometimes VERY elaborate) search-and-replace macro.
The human can always override it, so we who use them happily can only see the advantages!

Different CATS suit different people, so I very much respect your approach of not forcing anyone to use a particular CAT - I still dislike some of them, and while others are usable, I strongly prefer the one I have opted for.

However, I have been working with a colleague whose CAT was not compatible with mine, and we have exchanged Excel glossaries and Word files with tracked changes when we needed to coordinate. I did produce an export of my TM that he could use, though in practice it did not give many repeats, although I have found the concordance absolutely indispensable. (That is a means of seeng terminology in context, and my way of keeping track of consistency.)

Best of luck!
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LilianNekipelov
LilianNekipelov  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 12:02
Russian to English
+ ...
If you need a glossary--you should ask the client for it. Jul 28, 2014

Otherwise, really qualified translators don't need any tools, other than a words editor--such as Microsoft Word, or a compatible program.

You can use online or paper dictionaries,a and computer search to check the usage of some words.

If you cannot work without a CAT tool, get one. I personally think they are useless, or even harmful, for my type of translation, but they may have some use in more technical, or the medical fields.

[Edited at 2014-07-28 09:52
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Otherwise, really qualified translators don't need any tools, other than a words editor--such as Microsoft Word, or a compatible program.

You can use online or paper dictionaries,a and computer search to check the usage of some words.

If you cannot work without a CAT tool, get one. I personally think they are useless, or even harmful, for my type of translation, but they may have some use in more technical, or the medical fields.

[Edited at 2014-07-28 09:52 GMT]
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LilianNekipelov
LilianNekipelov  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 12:02
Russian to English
+ ...
I would't recommend trying to persuade qualified Jul 28, 2014

blue_swimmer wrote:

I know it's a strange setup, but lot of translators here simply don't use CAT tools. And I have to use local translators due to legal requirements. So I'm trying to utilize at least some technology in order to improve the quality of translation.

Another option is to purchase some CAT tool and persuade translators to use/purchase it, but that might be a lengthy battle. So I would like to know what is possible without CAT tools.

Thanks!

translators to use something they don't want to use, or find useful. Translating with CAT tools is a totally different type of work, almost like an assembly line and many people hate CAT tools for their obstructing the creative process and the joy of work, plus meddling with their style However, but many technical translators seem to like them.

Based on what I read in your post, Australia may be the oasis where quality translation will still have a chance.

[Edited at 2014-07-28 10:12 GMT]


 
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