Is there a preferred CAT tool you recommend?
Thread poster: Sofia Villella
Sofia Villella
Sofia Villella  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 02:52
Member (2010)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Sep 12, 2019

Hi, when someone gives you a legal translation, about 9000 words, do you all prefer to work with a CAT tool or just translate straight? If you prefer a tool which one would you recommend I get? I had cafetrans for a while but the license expired, I have no idea what’s out there or the prices, any suggestions?
Thanks!!


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 07:52
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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OmegaT Sep 12, 2019

Sofia Villella wrote:
Hi, when someone gives you a legal translation, about 9000 words, do you all prefer to work with a CAT tool or just translate straight?


A 9000-word job is a good size to give OmegaT a try to determine if that is the type of environment that you feel most comfortable in. Ditto Wordfast Anywhere. Both are free to use.


gayd (X)
 
Sofia Villella
Sofia Villella  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 02:52
Member (2010)
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Really? Sep 12, 2019

Oh those are free? Thanks I’ll give them a try. I use Mac, I hope I can use those with Mac thanks!

 
William Tierney
William Tierney  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 02:52
Member (2002)
Arabic to English
memoQ Sep 12, 2019

I was an SDL/Trados user for a number of years, but three things prompted me to change to memoQ: 1. The regular technical problems (perhaps they should spend less on advertising and more on quality software engineers). 2. they took out the ability to edit the source document (I work with OCR outputs that require source text correction), then reinstalled it on a later version as a "new" feature. 3. They got me used to sending out packages, then did a switch to force me to buy the enterprise ver... See more
I was an SDL/Trados user for a number of years, but three things prompted me to change to memoQ: 1. The regular technical problems (perhaps they should spend less on advertising and more on quality software engineers). 2. they took out the ability to edit the source document (I work with OCR outputs that require source text correction), then reinstalled it on a later version as a "new" feature. 3. They got me used to sending out packages, then did a switch to force me to buy the enterprise version in order to retain this capability, it was no longer available in the translator version. There is a step price jump between the translator and the enterprise version. This was the 2005-2009 time frame, so I don't know if they still have the same technical glitches. The last two points are a matter of doing honest business and SDL failed the test. I get the impression that they are very arrogant in that globalist kind of way. No thank you.

memoQ has been relatively glitch free (not perfect, but much better). I like a lot of its features and feel much more comfortable working with this company.
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Elías Sauza
 
achisholm
achisholm
United Kingdom
Local time: 06:52
Italian to English
+ ...
Free CAT tools for Mac Sep 12, 2019

OmegaT is pretty good but not very intuitive to use (in my opinion), but it has no limitations.

Wordfast Anywhere is web based, so it will work on any system. The only limitation I can find is that TM size appears to be limited.


 
Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 06:52
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
If your clients don't care, choose what you find productive Sep 12, 2019

Sofia Villella wrote:
Hi, when someone gives you a legal translation, about 9000 words, do you all prefer to work with a CAT tool or just translate straight?

I always prefer to work in a CAT tool. Segmentation and concordance alone make it worth the money, in my eyes.

If several of your clients mandate a specific tool (such as SDL Trados Studio) then I would strongly advise you to trial the tool in question. If not, Samuel's recommendations are on the money, as usual, and I would certainly go back and take another look at CafeTran, which I liked when I tried it, and which is very actively developed. I used MemoQ for one major project and thought it worked well and was more intuitive than Studio for a beginner.

Studio itself is probably the single most competent piece of CAT software, but has a number of niggles that never seem to get resolved, and some other irritating quirks that have confused me completely in the past. If you don't need it, probably best avoided at this stage.

Regards,
Dan


Laurent Mercky
 


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Is there a preferred CAT tool you recommend?







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