Comparing technical forum use frequency Thread poster: Heinrich Pesch
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Heinrich Pesch 
Finland
Local time: 02:37
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
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Out of curiosity I looked at two technical fora, one for SDL Trados Support and the other for MemoQ Support. The SDL page has entries from about 6 most recent days (September 10), the one for MemoQ reaches back about 2,5 months (July 2).
So it seems SDL Trados users encounter about 10 times more problems than those from the MemoQ-brand. Or the user base of SDL Trados is so much broader. Or MemoQ users are technically better trained.
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I believe that SDL Trados (still) has a much bigger market share than memoQ, and therefore it is only natural that more people seek help for Trados.
I work with both, and find that memoQ has a steeper learning curve. But that is probably just my personal impression, because SDL Trados was the first program I worked with and I had more time then to get to know the software.
I tend to prefer memoQ these days. It has more useful functions, and indeed it seems to have less ... See more I believe that SDL Trados (still) has a much bigger market share than memoQ, and therefore it is only natural that more people seek help for Trados.
I work with both, and find that memoQ has a steeper learning curve. But that is probably just my personal impression, because SDL Trados was the first program I worked with and I had more time then to get to know the software.
I tend to prefer memoQ these days. It has more useful functions, and indeed it seems to have less problems than SDL Trados. One extremely annoying thing with Trados is the problems of using Autosuggest and DNS together, a bug that was introduced with the 2015 version and is hopefully going to be fixed soon. I use DNS a lot, and so far memoQ has handled DNS better and faster than Trados.
What I clearly prefer in SDL Trados is the file structure. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Emma Goldsmith
Spain
Local time: 01:37
Member (2004)
Spanish to English
| Different forums, different figures | Sep 16, 2015 |
Heinrich Pesch wrote:
Or the user base of SDL Trados is so much broader. Or MemoQ users are technically better trained.
In general, I agree with both statements. But it's dangerous to draw conclusions just from ProZ forums.
If you check out the SDL and memoQ forums on Yahoo Groups you could draw quite different conclusions. Over there, SDL has 5884 group members and memoQ has 1423.
Here are the figures for posts in the first quarter of this year:
January:
SDL 174
memoQ 261
February:
SDL 185
memoQ 348
March:
SDL 186
memoQ 358
So, based on those figures, I'd say memoQ users encounter about double the problems compared with SDL users. 
[Edited at 2015-09-16 08:40 GMT]
| | | | | On Proz, it's worse | Sep 16, 2015 |
After a number of prospects who really wanted my services told me in a quite obnoxious manner that I MUST have Trados, I developed some dislike for it. After they harshly instructed me not to contact them under any circumstances unless I had bought a Trados license, I found it was not a piece of software, but instead some kind of religion based on hatred. I got the impression SDL distributes cruises on the Caribbean to PMs who uphold this ... See more After a number of prospects who really wanted my services told me in a quite obnoxious manner that I MUST have Trados, I developed some dislike for it. After they harshly instructed me not to contact them under any circumstances unless I had bought a Trados license, I found it was not a piece of software, but instead some kind of religion based on hatred. I got the impression SDL distributes cruises on the Caribbean to PMs who uphold this attitude all year round.
Yet every single day, when I open the Most Recent Posts on the Proz forums, I see that up to 60% of the posts, depending on the day, are in the SDL Trados Forum.
My takeaway conclusion is that Trados has more bugs and user-unfriendly quirks than the entire MS Office suite. On the other hand, I've used MemoQ with a client-provided portable license, and it was not too bad; I'd use it again whenever my WF Classic were not adequate.
Of course, the user base size is relevant to the quantity of posts. However a large user base should provide enough income to the developers, so that part of it could be directed to product improvement, which doesn't seem to be the case for Trados.
Yet this (keeping the profits, not investing substantially in improvements) may be a trend only for some CAT tools.
WordFast Classic is not one of them. I've been using it since when it was free, and the latest version - in spite of its current price - still keeps the unfriendly user interface that is typical of $19.99 shareware.
Differently from WFC and SDL, during the months I used MemoQ, I reported a few bugs (via my client), and these were promptly fixed by frequent updates. Therefore I got the impression that the MemoQ developers are clearly investing in getting their act together ASAP, so the need to ask questions about it on forums should gradually taper off.
[Edited at 2015-09-16 10:15 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Erik Freitag
Germany
Local time: 01:37
Member (2006)
Dutch to German
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José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
My takeaway conclusion is that Trados has more bugs and user-unfriendly quirks than the entire MS Office suite.
(...)
However a large user base should provide enough income to the developers, so that part of it could be directed to product improvement, which doesn't seem to be the case for Trados.
I agree with both statements. Some major flaws and bugs have survived three major version releases and are now still present in Studio 2015. And I'm not talking about annoying little perks, but real productivity killers. SDL prefers assigning development manpower to shiny features that read well in glossy advertisement copy and helps selling the product to new customers, instead of trying to keep the existing user base happy.
On the other hand, I've come back to Studio after trying other products like MemoQ or CafeTran - so for me, clearly, the product has something to offer to that others don't, if only the fact that I'm so used to it.
[Bearbeitet am 2015-09-16 10:29 GMT]
| | | | | And the winner is: | Sep 16, 2015 |
Heinrich Pesch wrote:
So it seems SDL Trados users encounter about 10 times more problems than those from the MemoQ-brand.
Any figures for Déjà Vu?
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 01:37
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Can't just compare numbers | Sep 16, 2015 |
Heinrich Pesch wrote:
Out of curiosity I looked at two technical forums, one for SDL Trados Support and the other for MemoQ Support.
If you want to compare, you'd have to look more closely at the actual content of the posts. How many of the questions had simple answers? How many problems were left unsolved? In how many cases did repliers offer a variety of potential solutions without giving a simple answer?
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