| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20] > | General strike against TRADOS and other expensive CAT tools Thread poster: Thomas Johansson
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Jaroslaw Michalak 
Poland
Local time: 01:06
Member (2004)
English to Polish
SITE LOCALIZER
...which I feel has been too much influenced by assumptions, guesswork, lack of experience of real programming, and so on).
Mostly, I am afraid to say, on your part. It's enough to look at the "list".
You keep talking about "inflated" prices. Yet the "inflating" simply does not make sense - it might for the one platform which has a near-monopoly, but not for the rest...
Let's take, looking at your list, four tools: A, B, C, D.
A - has, say, 70% of the market and costs 800 simoleons. It is preferred by software purchasers' clients.
B - has 10% of the market.
C - has 5% of the market and costs 100.
D - has 3% of the market and is free.
What drives the price of the tool B , in your opinion? Would it be better to "inflate" the price near the point of A - which would effectively mean forfeiting any chance to expand the user base and undermine A? Why on earth would someone choose tool B if it cost almost the same as A? If the purchasers believed most important is the clients' preference, they would obviously choose A, as it significantly increases their (chance of) income.
On the other hand, if they are not interested in that aspect and decide mostly on price, they would certanly choose C or D.
So, again: why would the maker of tool B decide to "inflate" the price? It would certainly make them lose money in the long run...
| | | | Jaroslaw Michalak
Poland
Local time: 01:06
Member (2004)
English to Polish
SITE LOCALIZER | Guilty if they do, guilty if they don't... | Feb 24, 2011 |
Neil Coffey wrote:
- I see jobs advertised by agencies specifying that they need the translator to use "Wordfast or TRADOS or [miscellaneous other CAT tool]", i.e. "any of several CAT tools is OK, we just need you to use a CAT tool" -- if the requirement is due to workflow needs, don't they need you to use the particular CAT tool of the client, not any old tool?
Poor agencies can't get a break, can they? If they require a particular tool, they must be corrupted by the vendor, if they don't, they are even more suspect...
Seriously, though, it depends on the workflow itself. For example, a small agency catering mostly for local clients (e.g. doing mostly marketing or legal texts) can easily manage all their translations in TMX - the differences in the tools don't make that much of an impact. On the other hand, if an agency works for a software giant, one change in the segmentation rules (or even analysis rules!) may incur thousands of dollars of additional costs.
- if a particular client is doing so much translation that they see a need for CAT tools, why don't they just hire in-house translators?
Basically, because in-house translators are too expensive for most activities - you have to feed them when they don't have enough work and when there is too much you have to outsource anyway.
| | | | | A note on this | Feb 24, 2011 |
Neil Coffey wrote:
- I see jobs advertised by agencies specifying that they need the translator to use "Wordfast or TRADOS or [miscellaneous other CAT tool]", i.e. "any of several CAT tools is OK, we just need you to use a CAT tool" -- if the requirement is due to workflow needs, don't they need you to use the particular CAT tool of the client, not any old tool?
- if a particular client is doing so much translation that they see a need for CAT tools, why don't they just hire in-house translators?
I remember advertising a similar job myself. It was an e-shop database of automotive parts to be localized from English into Czech, Spanish, Turkish, and Italian.
I did the Czech localization myself and needed to outsource the rest. My condition was that the translators use ANY TM software and that they deliver a TMX export along with the target-language files.
The reason was that the files had some 280k words, out of which about 240k words were repetitions. So using a TM software (ANY software) was compulsory to ensure a reasonable deadline and a fair price. The TMX output was important to me for future updates.
As to Neil's second point, it would be quite difficult to find a Spanish, an Italian, and a Turkish translator in the Czech Republic willing to work in-house. And it doesn't make much sense to employ three people in-house for a one-month's job and to dismiss them afterwards, of course.
[Upraveno: 2011-02-24 11:47 GMT]
| | | | | And a general note on the strike | Feb 24, 2011 |
Fairly speaking, I didn't have the patience to read through all of the previous posts and I'm fairly sure it must have already been mentioned before, so I apologize if I'm repeating somebody else's ideas.
The thread heading says "General strike against Trados and other expensive CAT tools".
1) Now the very basic question would be what you actually consider expensive. What is expensive for me might not be expensive for somebody else and vice versa.
2) Did the autho... See more Fairly speaking, I didn't have the patience to read through all of the previous posts and I'm fairly sure it must have already been mentioned before, so I apologize if I'm repeating somebody else's ideas.
The thread heading says "General strike against Trados and other expensive CAT tools".
1) Now the very basic question would be what you actually consider expensive. What is expensive for me might not be expensive for somebody else and vice versa.
2) Did the author consider the fact that some "expensive" CATs can be actually less expensive on some local markets than the "inexpensive" ones? To give an example, SDL Trados Freelance currently comes at some € 420 (CZK 10,000) in the Czech Republic, making this software far less expensive than the comparable versions of MemoQ, DVX or StarTransit and slightly more expensive than WordFast.
This said, I would have to strike against many tools in the author's "Okay list" (the list itself being anything but objective). Therefore, rather than speaking about nominal values, let's talk about value for money:
- What does this or that tool offer for this or that price?
- What do I expect from a CAT tool?
- Which features do I really need and which features I can do without?
- Do I need a CAT tool at all?
----- What is my client portfolio?
----- What kind of jobs do I usually work on?
- If I buy this or that particular tool, what ROI and what benefits can I expect in future?
And many, many more criteria to be taken into account...
[Upraveno: 2011-02-24 12:04 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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| Quite simple | Feb 24, 2011 |
Paula Borges wrote:
No, it isn't about that. But I'd like to know how come certain developers can offer tools and charge less?
This might be far less difficult to answer than it may seem at the first sight. Just to name but a few possible reasons:
1) Less functionality of some of the CATs;
2) Less file filters;
3) Most developers only develop a CAT tool without linking its functionalities to other software types (localization software, CMS, DTP, publishing QA etc.);
4) Most free tools are the result of hobbying = limited financial and human resources = limited or no support.
| | | | | Lost time, lost money | Feb 24, 2011 |
Thomas Johansson wrote:
Please note that the whole thing took me some 10-12 hours to compile/research (perhaps partly because of my currently slow internet connection) and that I therefore could not spend too much time on each item on the list.
OK! If you had been working those 12 hours at a rather frequent rate of Eur 40 per hour... you have lost 480 euros which you could have invested in a good translation tool.
| | | | QUOI
Chinese to English
+ ...
| Buy the best possible tools you can afford | Feb 24, 2011 |
It is a business, it is a trade, whatever you want to call this thing we call translating, and that requires investment in many areas, CAT tools included. If a person has too much time on hand and decides to have a strike or compile a useless shopping list, go ahead, no body is going to stop you. The whole thing is thick and silly.
| | | | esperantisto
Local time: 02:06
Member (2006)
English to Russian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
To me, this discussion makes no sense. Use what you like, what makes you feel good!
I use OmegaT and Anaphraseus because:
a) they are free software;
b) they almost fully satisfy my needs in CAT tools;
c) I feel comfortable with them, they don’t betray me by unexpected crashes or problems ... See more To me, this discussion makes no sense. Use what you like, what makes you feel good!
I use OmegaT and Anaphraseus because:
a) they are free software;
b) they almost fully satisfy my needs in CAT tools;
c) I feel comfortable with them, they don’t betray me by unexpected crashes or problems with resulting documents;
d) they run in Linux.
Because of b) I also use Wordfast Classic and Wordfast Pro, but neither of the latter is as robust as OmegaT.
And the price tag is irrelevant. Even if SDL slashes the price to zero, I won’t use it, because it does not comply with the above. ▲ Collapse
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Paula Borges
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:06
Member (2010)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
| My point exactly | Feb 24, 2011 |
esperantisto wrote: To me, this discussion makes no sense. Use what you like, what makes you feel good! I use OmegaT and Anaphraseus because: a) they are free software; b) they almost fully satisfy my needs in CAT tools; c) I feel comfortable with them, they don’t betray me by unexpected crashes or problems with resulting documents; d) they run in Linux. Because of b) I also use Wordfast Classic and Wordfast Pro, but neither of the latter is as robust as OmegaT. And the price tag is irrelevant. Even if SDL slashes the price to zero, I won’t use it, because it does not comply with the above.
We should experiment and see which tool actually makes out lives easier - people have different priorities and preferences. Of course I understand why agencies demand CAT tools (and even why they might require this or that one sometimes), but I do not understand this thinking "buy all the tools you can" as a good business practice. It doesn't help profit and it certainly won't improve your time management. You might be able to get more clients - but can you really take in that much work? Aren't we all always struggling with time? I'd rather master one tool that actually saves me time and makes my life easier.
And as for the cost, there'll be different ideas. It'll vary according to location, currency, people's personal finances, business costs, tax and so on. I was simply offering a point of view coming from a different continent, certainly not suggesting or endorsing any kind of boycott. Let's just be fair and ackowledge that price of CAT tools have a different weight for translators around the world, for obvious reasons.
Some developers consider that and offer attractive discounts for people in developing countries, others not so much. 100 EUR is not that much of a discount, if you consider on most days (due to currency rates) a Brazilian translator would have to work approximately 3 times more than one in Europe to buy the same tool. I'm sure you can understand why people in South America often go for cheaper tools with attractive discounts.
If something gives you the benefits you're looking for, then you will consider it a fair price. If not, you may feel it's overpriced. It's relative. It depends on what you need and what you're looking for.
All I'm saying is that there's a lot to choose from and we should see it as a good thing, as every consumer in the 'free market' wants to either pay less or get extra benefits. Why can't we just act like consumers here instead of dealing with the choice of a CAT tool as they are separate 'cults' that cannot be questioned? I mean, why are we not allowed to wanna pay less? Spend less, make more - every business wants that, and every business pressures their providers to offer lower prices. I've never heard someone from a big company saying "I'll pay whatever they want and will not even consider cheaper options".
Regardless of which tool we choose to use, we should support each other's freedom to experiment and choose the CAT tool we're most comfortable with and actually makes us more productive. Competition is a good thing because it will result in better tools, less bugs, better quality or lower prices for us.
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Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote: Thomas Johansson wrote:
OK
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MemoQ http://kilgray.com/products/memoq FREE This is misleading information. MemoQ is not for free. Today in Kilgray's shop, memoQ translator standard costs Eur 149, and memoQ translator pro costs Eur 620.
Thank you, Tomás, for pointing out this error.
I am correcting the list and will send out the corrected list eventually.
So according to your criteria, it is "not OK", and yet, it is the most profitable tool I have ever used.
As clearly stated, the definitions of Ok and not OK in this particular context (i.e. the pragmatic purposes of the strike) are based entirely on prices and have nothing to do with usability.
Of course, this tool may be very much ok from point of usability - just like many of the free and cheaper tools - but that has not been a criterion for the present division.
| | | | | Define "regular" | Feb 24, 2011 |
Thomas Johansson wrote:
In any event, reflecting on your approach, I might suggest - quite from the top of my head - as a possibly useful principle: identify the least expensive "regular" CAT tool that has a reasonable set of features fine for most regular translation needs, and then assume the price of that CAT tool as a reasonable maximum price level. (I.e. along the rough lines of: "if that price works fine for that vendor, then it should also work fine for other vendors.")
How would you define "regular translation needs"?
What are regular translation needs for me are not regular translation needs for some other translator. For me, only the higher-end CAT tools can fulfill my regular translation needs, that's why I invest in them. Somebody else might be perfectly happy with some other tool.
What is a "regular" CAT tool?
In your list of acceptable CAT tools, you list numerous highly specialized tools (only PO files, only Word files), a term extraction tool (Similis), some tools that require the end client to prepare the files for the translator, some lite tools that are crippled versions of their "big brothers" and have only limited use, etc. I think from your long list, only OmegaT and Across come actually close to "regular" CAT tools.
Your argument "if that price works fine for that vendor, then it should also work fine for other vendors" has a slight logical flaw in that you assume all tools above your "reasonable maximum price level" are indeed equal (or equivalent) to the CAT tool at that price level. If that were true, then I would support your argument wholeheartedly. But what if the tools above your price level offer a slew of other features not included in the tool with "a reasonable set of features"? How would these vendors generate the additional money necessary to develop these additional features? Or are you implying that any additional features beyond your "reasonable set" are superfluous?
As clearly stated, the definitions of Ok and not OK in this particular context (i.e. the pragmatic purposes of the strike) are based entirely on prices and have nothing to do with usability.
Of course, this tool may be very much ok from point of usability - just like many of the free and cheaper tools - but that has not been a criterion for the present division.
Huh? Usability is probably one of the most important criteria to justify a higher price! What good is a cheap tool that is not really usable because of user-unfriendliness, missing features, etc.? Even if it costs less than $100, this would be money thrown out of the window. And I thought it's about saving money...
If you base your division of "OK" and "not OK" solely on price, you might as well include any other software that hasn't even remotely to do with translation in your OK list as long as it's under $100 (you already included a term extraction tool). I thought you were looking for true alternatives to the expensive tools. If there are no true alternatives, that means their higher prices are justified because they offer features no other tool does. And it's up to the individual translator to decide which tool/features they need and how much money they are willing/able to spend.
One problem I see with your approach, Thomas, is that you try to make one size fit all translators. But every translator has different needs and expectations of a CAT tool.
Some interesting factors to consider might be:
How many translators are actually more than willing to invest in expensive tools because they think they get their money's worth, and how many don't and rely on free/inexpensive tools (we might have to expand your limit of $100 to make it more realistic).
What is the distribution of high- vs. low-end CAT Tool users across the different areas of specialization?
How much revenue is generated by translators using high-end CAT tools in comparison to the revenue generated by translators using CAT tools under $100?
How does the above correlate to the different areas of specialization?
How many agencies/end clients require the use of a specific CAT tool across the different areas of specialization?
What is the annual revenue of these agencies/end clients?
What is the average project size of high- vs. low-end CAT Tool users?
What are the most commonly encountered file formats for high- vs. low-end CAT Tool users?
What are the most important aspects apart from price that made CAT tool users decide on one particular tool?
How much "shopping around" (information on features, user feedback, trail versions) did translators do before deciding on one particular tool?
How many translators bought CAT tool X only because of some kind of pressure instead of actual price/value/ROI considerations?
How many translators regret having spend money on high-end tools?
How many translators regret having spend money on low-end tools?
How many translators have invested in more than one high-end tool? For what reasons?
How many translators have invested in more than one low-end tool? For what reasons?
How many low-end CAT tools offer features/versions from which also agencies/end clients would profit and make this tool interesting for all involved parties?
I'm sure there are additional factors that would allow a more differentiated view of the use/need for the different CAT tools.
| | | | Simone Linke
Germany
Local time: 01:06
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
Thomas Johansson wrote:
As clearly stated, the definitions of Ok and not OK in this particular context (i.e. the pragmatic purposes of the strike) are based entirely on prices and have nothing to do with usability.
Of course, this tool may be very much ok from point of usability - just like many of the free and cheaper tools - but that has not been a criterion for the present division.
Let's boycott all translators with rates higher then - uh, I'm just throwing out a number here for the sake of this discussion - $0.10.
After all, there are quite a few translators who deliver decent quality for $0.05/word. So, that must suffice, obviously. It doesn't really matter that translations for more than $0.10 may be more useable to some clients than the cheaper and free ones.. That is no criterion here.
Ouch.
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Neil Coffey
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:06
French to English
+ ...
| Genuinely curious... | Feb 24, 2011 |
Jabberwock wrote:
Seriously, though, it depends on the workflow itself. For example, a small agency catering mostly for local clients (e.g. doing mostly marketing or legal texts) can easily manage all their translations in TMX
I think this is the thing I don't get -- where does the compulsion to "manage all their translations in TMX" come from? Won't the majority of clients just have a Word document (or even a document not in electronic format at all) that they need translated into Word form and not care in the slightest about the intervening process?
| | | | | Calculating reasonable prices for CAT tools | Feb 24, 2011 |
The price of a basic CAT tool in comparison with other softwares
To get at a reasonable price for a software, I propose, as a reasonable point of departure, to look at its overall design, complexity and features, while comparing it with other types of software available on the market.
Let's start by defining a "basic CAT tool".
I think the essential elements of a (most) basic CAT tool would be the following:
... See more The price of a basic CAT tool in comparison with other softwares
To get at a reasonable price for a software, I propose, as a reasonable point of departure, to look at its overall design, complexity and features, while comparing it with other types of software available on the market.
Let's start by defining a "basic CAT tool".
I think the essential elements of a (most) basic CAT tool would be the following:
- A Graphical User Interface (GUI)
- A Translation memory
- A Glossary (or terminology manager/database)
- An ability to process source documents of different file formats (e.g. doc/Word, PDF, and HTML, xls/Excel)
Now, how much would a basic CAT software with these elements and features be worth on the market?
For the purpose of this discussion, I have decided to compare such a software with two other types of softwares:
- Download managers
- Text editors for web developers.
(The reason I choose to compare with these two types of software is that I just happen to have acquired them myself and know them. I assume that the following considerations, however, would apply also to comparisons with most other types of softwares.)
In the case of download managers, look at Download Accelerator Plus. A download manager of this sort consists basically of a GUI together with a bunch of functionality associated with download management. The software is available for free or as a premium version at USD 40.
In the case of text editors, consider EditPlus 3 (http://www.editplus.com/), a really great tool used for web development (scripting etc.). Again it has a GUI, similar to a normal text editor but more advanced, and then a bunch of functionality associated with texts editing. In this case, the price is USD 35.
Compare these two software with a basic CAT tool (as outlined above).
The CAT tool also has a GUI, plus a bunch of associated functionality, in this case for facilitating translation.
Two observations:
- All 3 software have a GUI.
- All 3 software also have an associated set of functionality in addition to the GUI.
Now, I hold:
- The complexity of the GUI of a basic CAT tool is comparable to the complexity of the GUI of a text editor or download manager.
- The complexity of the functionality associated with a basic CAT tool is comparable to the complexity of the functionality of a text editor or download manager.
To explain this, I need to point out that the functionality of a basic CAT tool (as defined above) is actually not very complicated:
(A) Handling translation memories and glossaries is fundamentally just a matter of managing simple text files (opening, closing, searching them, reading them, writing to files, copying files, etc). This is really not very complicated and there are quite standardized procedures for these things.
(B) As for processing of external file formats, like Word's doc-format etc.:
The CAT tool needs to be able to analyze such a file, distinguish the purely textual content from surrounding blurr (markup etc), possibly order the textual content if necessary, and so on. Eventually, the basic CAT tool also needs to segment the text and store the segmentation. And finally, after translation, the basic CAT tool needs to put things together again into a final, clean target document (basically, by piecing together the "blurr" of the original document while inserting the target segments instead of the original source segments).
Again, this is all in all not very complicated. (What is needed is knowledge of how the source document is constructed, but once you have that, the rest is a matter of quite straightforward procedures.)
All in all, I'd say that the functionality of a basic CAT tool (as defined above) is equivalent in complexity to the functionality of a download manager or advanced text editor (like EditPlus).
So, if we just look at the sheer internal complexity of a basic CAT tool and compare it with the prices of other softwares with equivalent complexity, I'd conclude that a basic CAT tool should cost at most around USD 40, let's say 50 to give it a margin.
Adjustment for market and competition
There are a few additional considerations:
- The market targeted by CAT tools is probably smaller than the markets targeted by download accelerators and text editors for web developers respectively.
- The market targeted by CAT tools may possibly have a higher percentage of customers willing, or needing, to buy this type of product in question than the markets for download accelerators and text editors for web developers respectively. (In the case of text editors, there are many freewares available and many developers use such tools.)
All in all, to resolve these issues, I suggest to double or triple the proposed reasonable rate for a basic CAT tool: USD 100-150.
Adjustment for more advanced features?
So far I have left out all more advanced features that often exist in CAT tools, like for instance:
- support for additional file formats beyond the basic ones.
- more advanced terminology management
- spell checker
- grammar checker
- plugin for external dictionaries or terminology databases (e.g. on CD-ROM or accessible through the Internet)
- search tools to query already translated texts or reference documents of various kinds
- concordance tools (to retrieve instances of a word and their context in a corpus or translation memory)
- project management tools to manage assignment of tasks to people and track progress
- suggestions of machine-generated translations
etc.
Once the basic CAT tool has been launched on the market, it will continue to be developed gradually, which will result in features such as these.
How, then, should adding these features affect our expectations regarding the price of a CAT tool? I'd say they shouldn't affect our expectations much at all.
A few observations here:
- The costs for this development process (labor, education, etc.) is covered by the ongoing sale of the product (at, as per above, USD 100-150).
- The business has to continue developing the CAT tool in this way, if it wants to be able to continue to sell its CAT tool in competition with alternative CAT tools.
- The business might of course desire to, and even attempt to, raise the price of the tool, but essentially there should normally be no fundamental economic need for the business to do so (unless, of course, there have been extraordinary investments not covered by ongoing sales).
- If competition and the free market works fine in a situation like this, the price should therefore end up at about this level (USD 100-150).
So, along these lines of reasoning, a reasonable price of an advanced CAT tool, i.e. a CAT tool that has been out on the market for a few years should be at most about USD 100-150 (assuming that the market functions well, with competition etc.).
So why are CAT tools so much more expensive then?
Because CAT tools happen to be a little bit different from download accelerators and text editors in one principal aspect. And this principal aspect has nothing to do with design or internal complexity.
The difference is this:
CAT tools tend to be sold to (1) high-paid professionals (2) who get a sizable return on their purchase of these CAT tools and therefore may overrate their real monetary value, (3) who tend to exaggerate or perhaps even be somewhat superstitious about the internal complexities of these tools and (4) who ultimately tend not to care too much for taking action or protest against prices.
Therefore, the manufacturers of these tools know that they can raise the prices a lot, and they don't hesitate to do just that.
[Edited at 2011-02-24 21:30 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Paula Borges
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:06
Member (2010)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Simone Linke wrote:
Let's boycott all translators with rates higher then - uh, I'm just throwing out a number here for the sake of this discussion - $0.10.
Let's not pretend many companies haven't.
But that's not the point. If I choose the tool I want, the one that makes my life easier and I feel like I get everything I need and more, then I'll certainly feel like it's worth the price. But if there's no competition, how do we expect them to get better? It's not just about the cost, but competition drives developers to improve their products.
Why should anybody care WHICH tool a translator is using as long as the job is being done?
I don't understand why when I mention unethical marketing practices people will say that's the 'free market' but when I say I'd like to pay less for it the 'free market' rule no longer applies.
In the 'free market' we're also free to choose which product to buy.
| | | | | Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20] > | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » General strike against TRADOS and other expensive CAT tools | Protemos translation business management system | Create your account in minutes, and start working! 3-month trial for agencies, and free for freelancers!
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