What software, programming languages and computer tools are necessary for translators? Thread poster: Manuel Locria
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I created this topic in the StudentZ section a few days ago and found out that full members cannot post comments there, so I re-post it here to see if I have better luck with the answers.
I have encountered an endless amount of information about different CAT tools and the benefits of specializing in the use of them. Although I do not deny their usefulness- I find TRADOS to be excellent for translation -I am interested in knowing what other software, programming languages, comput... See more I created this topic in the StudentZ section a few days ago and found out that full members cannot post comments there, so I re-post it here to see if I have better luck with the answers.
I have encountered an endless amount of information about different CAT tools and the benefits of specializing in the use of them. Although I do not deny their usefulness- I find TRADOS to be excellent for translation -I am interested in knowing what other software, programming languages, computer tools in general, etc. are in your opinion necessary or- at least useful -for translators (XHTML, PHP, Adobe Tools, etc for example).
Thanks in advance! ▲ Collapse
| | | | | MemoQ is the way to go, definitely! | Nov 3, 2012 |
Dear Manuel,
I would warmly recommend you to have a try at MemoQ, lately the most innovative (and copied by the competition) integrated translation environment tool, including translation memory, terminology and a lot more.
MemoQ is easy to learn and use and yet extremely powerful, if you go into the fine details.
It is able to handle an enormous number of document file formats and is able to work with a few other CAT tool proprietary formats, which frees you from... See more Dear Manuel,
I would warmly recommend you to have a try at MemoQ, lately the most innovative (and copied by the competition) integrated translation environment tool, including translation memory, terminology and a lot more.
MemoQ is easy to learn and use and yet extremely powerful, if you go into the fine details.
It is able to handle an enormous number of document file formats and is able to work with a few other CAT tool proprietary formats, which frees you from the obligation to have those other tools, even if an agency requests the use of them.
It allows you to effortlessly keep an enormous amout of reference material at hand, align previously done work on the fly, extract terminology from the texts to be translated, and so on and so forth.
It also allows you to share resources in real time for an extremey efficient collaborative team work, via the MemoQ server, and/or to outsource filtered parts of the work you are not able or have no time to perform yourself, without revealing the original file nor its confidential details.
Well, there would be a lot more to say about MemoQ, but this is much better written on Kilgray's website and on sooo many enthousiastic translators blogs, on the MemoQ yahoo group, etc... etc...
Ah, did I mention ? You can download MemoQ from http://www.kilgray.com/downloads and try it for free, to its full extent for 45 days, and then still and forever but with some limitations.
Besides the growing community of very helpful MemoQ users, Kilgray provides free and extremely effective and fast customer support, and still offers online webinars and training and a wealth of videos and documentation for free, available to everyone.
The number of reasons why so many translators and agencies swap to MemoQ is endless. Check it out too and you will understand why.
Take care,
Martin ▲ Collapse
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Thank you Martin! I haven't tried MemoQ yet, I'm more of a SDL Trados person, but if you took the time to recommend it I'll definitely look into it Any other software appart from CAT tools that you would recommend?
| | | | | Tools you might need | Nov 22, 2012 |
Hi Manuel,
one of the problems you will sooner or later face are PDF documents, which require converting before you can work with them. Therefore some basic knowledge about PDF "to" Text/Word conversion tools will be helpful.
Another topic you might be interested in is aligning existing translations into a TM. Therefore some basic knowledge about alignment tools might be helpful.
You need to know you Office Suite Word/Excel/Powerpoint in and out.
Some... See more Hi Manuel,
one of the problems you will sooner or later face are PDF documents, which require converting before you can work with them. Therefore some basic knowledge about PDF "to" Text/Word conversion tools will be helpful.
Another topic you might be interested in is aligning existing translations into a TM. Therefore some basic knowledge about alignment tools might be helpful.
You need to know you Office Suite Word/Excel/Powerpoint in and out.
Some knowledge about Framemaker and Indesign (maybe even Robohelp etc) might help - a lot of documents come in these formats.
Depending on your specialization, knowledge about subtitling might be useful.
I recommend you start with the basics - MS Office and a CAT-Tool. ▲ Collapse
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esperantisto 
Local time: 21:18
Member (2006)
English to Russian
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SITE LOCALIZER | Programming language? | Nov 22, 2012 |
Well, do you really need one? I bet, most translators live and work happily without programming at all. Anyway, you might want to take a look at Python, Perl, Tcl/Tk (all three feature sufficiently clear and easy syntax with good text processing capabilities), Java (this one is good for almost any purpose, still being sufficiently easy to learn). And to make your life more comfortable, you’d also learn “native” programming languages for your favorite applications (such as VBA for Microsoft... See more Well, do you really need one? I bet, most translators live and work happily without programming at all. Anyway, you might want to take a look at Python, Perl, Tcl/Tk (all three feature sufficiently clear and easy syntax with good text processing capabilities), Java (this one is good for almost any purpose, still being sufficiently easy to learn). And to make your life more comfortable, you’d also learn “native” programming languages for your favorite applications (such as VBA for Microsoft Office and StarBasic for Apache OpenOffice/LibreOffice). ▲ Collapse
| | | | Selcuk Akyuz
Türkiye
Local time: 21:18
English to Turkish
+ ...
| A good text editor | Nov 22, 2012 |
All CAT tools are good and you can translate almost any format if you are a power user of your preferred CAT. A good text editor like Notepad++, some other free tools like Olifant, XBench, UniCSVed, PlusToyz, a demo version of Trados 2007 or Wordfast Classic, some knowledge of regex will be helpful.
Selcuk
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Some more free tools:
ChangeTracker
AutoHotKey
Expresso (for regex)
a free XML editor/validator program
DiffPD... See more All CAT tools are good and you can translate almost any format if you are a power user of your preferred CAT. A good text editor like Notepad++, some other free tools like Olifant, XBench, UniCSVed, PlusToyz, a demo version of Trados 2007 or Wordfast Classic, some knowledge of regex will be helpful.
Selcuk
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Some more free tools:
ChangeTracker
AutoHotKey
Expresso (for regex)
a free XML editor/validator program
DiffPDF (for comparing pdf files)
[Edited at 2012-11-22 22:54 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Not enough information to answer | Nov 22, 2012 |
This will very much depent on the type of translator you want to be and the industries you wish to serve. What kind of sciences of all of human activity would you like to specialise in?
(May I quickly say that a translator does not necessarily need knowledge of programming languages, other than the aspects in which such languages affect his/her work by means of the kind of resources received for translation.)
| | | | | Miscellaneous | Nov 22, 2012 |
Siegfried Armbruster wrote:
Hi Manuel,
one of the problems you will sooner or later face are PDF documents, which require converting before you can work with them. Therefore some basic knowledge about PDF "to" Text/Word conversion tools will be helpful.
Another topic you might be interested in is aligning existing translations into a TM. Therefore some basic knowledge about alignment tools might be helpful.
You need to know you Office Suite Word/Excel/Powerpoint in and out.
Some knowledge about Framemaker and Indesign (maybe even Robohelp etc) might help - a lot of documents come in these formats.
Depending on your specialization, knowledge about subtitling might be useful.
I recommend you start with the basics - MS Office and a CAT-Tool.
Thank you Siegfried! I will look into these right away
esperantisto wrote:
Well, do you really need one? I bet, most translators live and work happily without programming at all. Anyway, you might want to take a look at Python, Perl, Tcl/Tk (all three feature sufficiently clear and easy syntax with good text processing capabilities), Java (this one is good for almost any purpose, still being sufficiently easy to learn). And to make your life more comfortable, you’d also learn “native” programming languages for your favorite applications (such as VBA for Microsoft Office and StarBasic for Apache OpenOffice/LibreOffice).
Yes, I agree with you now. Most of the people I have contacted with this same doubt told me exactly what you said. Thank you esperantisto!
Selcuk Akyuz wrote:
All CAT tools are good and you can translate almost any format if you are a power user of your preferred CAT. A good text editor like Notepad++, some other free tools like Olifant, XBench, UniCSVed, PlusToyz, a demo version of Trados 2007 or Wordfast Classic, some knowledge of regex will be helpful.
Selcuk
I must confess I do not know any of these names, I will check them out. thanks!
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
This will very much depent on the type of translator you want to be and the industries you wish to serve. What kind of sciences of all of human activity would you like to specialise in?
(May I quickly say that a translator does not necessarily need knowledge of programming languages, other than the aspects in which such languages affect his/her work by means of the kind of resources received for translation.)
In answer to your question, I am planning to specialize in the field of Medicine and maybe some technology or law, I have not decided yet... but medicine for sure! Any suggestions?
Thank you all very much for your time!
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esperantisto wrote:
Well, do you really need one? I bet, most translators live and work happily without programming at all. Anyway, you might want to take a look at Python, Perl, Tcl/Tk (all three feature sufficiently clear and easy syntax with good text processing capabilities), Java (this one is good for almost any purpose, still being sufficiently easy to learn). And to make your life more comfortable, you’d also learn “native” programming languages for your favorite applications (such as VBA for Microsoft Office and StarBasic for Apache OpenOffice/LibreOffice).
Yes, I agree. Most translators don't know programming and don't really need to learn. I myself know perl, a little bit of bash and whatever the windows command line language is, but mostly out of interest and not strict necessity. Perl is said to be the best language for text processing so if you want to mess around with txt and xml files, perl's probably best. It has certainly been very useful to me, but it's not indispensable by any means.
What I would advise you to do on this front is to get Notepad++, which is a very good open source text editor with pretty good regular expression support. Then start learning and experimenting with regular expressions (regex). Regex can often be a life-saver for translators, and the regex syntax used by Notepad++ is pretty close to the one you'll find in Trados Studio and to the perl regex syntax, so this knowledge carries over easily. If you later find that you need to do more advanced things with regex (or just do certain regex operations often and/or on many files), you can install perl, learn the basics and get almost anything done. I can give you some pointers if you want to start playing with regex.
Learning a couple of very elementary things about the Windows command prompt is also recommended. It's great for quickly merging/renaming/deleting/moving large numbers of files.
| | | | kittyhall
France
Local time: 20:18
French to English
| translating software | Dec 4, 2012 |
I wanted to piggy-back on this question. I have been doing translations part-time for about 8 years. I'm now in a stage where I would like to do more full time translating. For the moment I am specialized in French to English medical translations. All of the files I have translated have been in Word or PDF. They are scientific articles and generally do not repeat sentences. I have created my own dictionary on Excel for highly technical terminology.
I am looking into software and it all lo... See more I wanted to piggy-back on this question. I have been doing translations part-time for about 8 years. I'm now in a stage where I would like to do more full time translating. For the moment I am specialized in French to English medical translations. All of the files I have translated have been in Word or PDF. They are scientific articles and generally do not repeat sentences. I have created my own dictionary on Excel for highly technical terminology.
I am looking into software and it all looks quite expensive. And the "selling points" appear to be that your translations will go so much faster because you won't have to translate the same sentence twice, which I've never had to do.
In my situation I am not clear why a translation software is even needed except to impress future clients.
For those who have more experience with this I have two questions:
1.In your opinion would this really make my translations faster?
2.A client from ProZ contacted me saying they wanted a project to be translated using a certain translation software. Why would they care which software I use and is it unprofessional to say I prefer translating with Word?
Thanks in advance for the help. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Giles Watson
Italy
Local time: 20:18
Italian to English
In memoriam
kittyhall wrote:
In my situation I am not clear why a translation software is even needed except to impress future clients.
For those who have more experience with this I have two questions:
1.In your opinion would this really make my translations faster?
Initially at least, translation software would slow you down as you climb the learning curve, which can be quite daunting if you already have a productive translation routine.
Over time, however, you would find that a CAT tool improves your accuracy and consistency by making your past work conveniently available and offering you effective, customer-specific terminology management tools, among other things.
The question to ask, though, is not whether a CAT will enable you to work faster but whether it will permit you to approach new clients, or to charge your existing clients for extra added value (improved accuracy, consistency, retrievability and, up to a point, speed of delivery).
2.A client from ProZ contacted me saying they wanted a project to be translated using a certain translation software. Why would they care which software I use and is it unprofessional to say I prefer translating with Word?
Your working preferences are entirely your own business but satisfying the client's requirements is what generates our income.
Your Proz customer probably wants to incorporate your work into an existing in-house translation memory. This is not difficult, although it still takes time, if your translations are delivered as plain text or Word files, which can be aligned and imported relatively easily. However, if the original file is more complex (InDesign, PowerPoint or whatever), your Word deliverable may require much more fiddling about before it can be imported into the native format or the client's translation memory. A client-compatible translation software format avoids this problem.
FWIW
Giles
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esperantisto
Local time: 21:18
Member (2006)
English to Russian
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SITE LOCALIZER | Some comments | Dec 5, 2012 |
kittyhall wrote:
For the moment I am specialized in French to English medical translations. All of the files I have translated have been in Word or PDF. They are scientific articles and generally do not repeat sentences. I have created my own dictionary on Excel for highly technical terminology.
CAT programs are not only about repetitions. Another important feature is terminology consistence. Do you find it convenient to constantly swap Word and Excel windows for terms? If yes, then alright, don’t bother about CATs.
it all looks quite expensive.
There are free programs (OmegaT, Anaphraseus), freeware (Across for freelancers) or low-cost (MetaTexis, Wordfast) ones or online services (Wordfast Anywhere, Google Translate Toolkit) Try and find what is good for you. BTW, Proz.com just launched a new software comparison tool [1]. The list is not exhaustive, but offers quite a choice.
I do 80 to 90% of my translations with OmegaT, ≈10% with Anaphraseus and a small share with Wordfast Pro. I also have a license for Wordfast Classic, but haven’t used it for quite a long. I’ve bin asked to use Trados or MemoQ a couple of times, but could decline them, as I have enough work without them.
And the "selling points" appear to be that your translations will go so much faster because you won't have to translate the same sentence twice, which I've never had to do.
Depending on your workload and texts (degree of their homogeneity in vocabulary and grammar), it may take years to get them accelerate your translation. That’s life.
2.A client from ProZ contacted me saying they wanted a project to be translated using a certain translation software. Why would they care
Ask them. Some clients require Trados because “it’s cool”.
is it unprofessional to say I prefer translating with Word?
It’s unprofessional to deliver bad translations. If you deliver good translations with pen and paper, it is professional.
[1] http://www.proz.com/software-comparison-tool/
[Edited at 2012-12-05 05:52 GMT]
| | | | Neil Coffey
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:18
French to English
+ ...
| Programming languages... | Dec 5, 2012 |
Manuel Locria wrote:
TRADOS to be excellent for translation -I am interested in knowing what other software, programming languages, computer tools in general, etc. are in your opinion necessary or- at least useful -for translators (XHTML, PHP, Adobe Tools, etc for example).
In general, I would say the *necessary* tools are really the basic editors of common documents. Across the board, most clients will still expect to send you a boring old Word or PDF document and receive a boring old Word document in return. By and large.
So if you're not already a programmer, I'm not sure I'd bother learning just for the sake of translation.
If you happen to *already* be a programmer, then you might be able to use this to offer certain clients some niche services. I do this occasionally in some very specific cases where it's beneficial to particular clients. As you can imagine, there are some very specific cases where e.g. you can write a program to pre-process a document to automatically transform text with particular characteristics to reduce the amount of time/budget needed for translation, or to make certain machine-readable documents eligible for translation in the first place.
But as you can also imagine, this is quite client-specific. In most typical cases, the most exotic tool you'll probably deal with is an image editor. If you are an IT specialist, then you'll probably find that most of your specialist skills are put to use in terms of the actual textual material you can deal with rather than auxiliary processes.
[Edited at 2012-12-05 06:12 GMT]
| | | | 564354352 (X)
Denmark
Local time: 20:18
Danish to English
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| Depends entirely on the services you want to offer | Dec 5, 2012 |
You intend to specialise in medicine, technology and law? Wow! That is quite a wide spectrum, good luck to you. I think most translators would find that specialising in just one of those subjects would keep them busy. But that's your choice.
At any rate, I would agree with the people here who say that initially, all you need is the Microsoft Office package (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), a PDF to Word/Excel conversion tool (I would recommend Adobe Acrobat XI, although it it snot cheap) o... See more You intend to specialise in medicine, technology and law? Wow! That is quite a wide spectrum, good luck to you. I think most translators would find that specialising in just one of those subjects would keep them busy. But that's your choice.
At any rate, I would agree with the people here who say that initially, all you need is the Microsoft Office package (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), a PDF to Word/Excel conversion tool (I would recommend Adobe Acrobat XI, although it it snot cheap) or some OCR tool (Abbyy Fine Reader is pretty good), and again, often you don't even need that, because clients (agencies, at least) will be able to do the conversion for you.
With your intended specialisations, I would say that a CAT tool is an absolute must. Especially in relation to technology and law, you will come across lots of repetitions in the texts and it will absolutely essential that you start building translation memories (with concordance search as a key tool) and termbases as a part of your CAT tool.
In terms of technical texts, you may find it useful to have InDesign at your fingertips, but it is expensive, and I wouldn't invest in it until I had one or more clients who were offering substantial amounts of work in this format. Again, if you have a good CAT tool, you will be able to translate InDesign files via the 'intermediary' work files in .inx format, which the client can supply to you, and then they will have to convert back to .indd once you have done the translation. Not ideal, because you won't be able to edit the final text for the client unless you actually have InDesign installed, but still.
For technology, I have come across hopeful clients who would have liked me to be able to translate legends in AutoCad, but that is very much a niche service to offer, and again, of course, not on the cheap side. ▲ Collapse
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