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Poll: How important is it for you to have a CAT tool for your work?
Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
ProZ.com Staff
ProZ.com Staff
SITE STAFF
Feb 11, 2019

This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "How important is it for you to have a CAT tool for your work?".

This poll was originally submitted by SafeTex. View the poll results »



 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:18
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Not at all Feb 11, 2019

I used Trados for a while (two years) when I was working in-house and I've dropped it as soon as I started freelancing after my retirement. Most of my work consists of transcreation jobs, texts of journalistic nature and documents for EU institutions and UN agencies and I continue to get all the work I need without using CAT tools. Anyway, I prefer helping my brain work well and improve my own memory than be confronted with text fragments.

P.S. I do use XTM for one of my clients, bu
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I used Trados for a while (two years) when I was working in-house and I've dropped it as soon as I started freelancing after my retirement. Most of my work consists of transcreation jobs, texts of journalistic nature and documents for EU institutions and UN agencies and I continue to get all the work I need without using CAT tools. Anyway, I prefer helping my brain work well and improve my own memory than be confronted with text fragments.

P.S. I do use XTM for one of my clients, but that's the exception not the rule...

[Edited at 2019-02-11 08:23 GMT]
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Jan Truper
Jan Truper  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 14:18
Member (2016)
English to German
CAT tools are... Feb 11, 2019

... indispensible for game translation work
... useless for subtitle translation work

For other jobs, I pretty much load everything into memoQ these days (even when TMs/TBs are of no benefit) because I have become so used to working in its environment.


 
Kay-Viktor Stegemann
Kay-Viktor Stegemann
Germany
Local time: 14:18
English to German
In memoriam
Indispensable Feb 11, 2019

For game translations as well as technical translations with lots of tags, terminology, and repetitions of phrases, CAT tools are a big time saver, even more when combined with voice recognition.

Michael Harris
Ventnai
Elaine Ruby
neilmac
Spyros Salimpas
Mario Freitas
Susana Rivas
 
Justin Peterson
Justin Peterson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:18
Member (2007)
Spanish to English
Indispensable Feb 11, 2019

Indispensable. For me, translating without my CAT and MT is like painting a house with a toothbrush.

Michael Harris
Ventnai
Axelle H.
Elaine Ruby
Richard Purdom
Spyros Salimpas
Mario Freitas
 
Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
+ ...
I'm ashamed to say... Feb 11, 2019

...indispensable.

That is, used with my own TMs.

All that lovely free money!!!

But agencies with their shite TMs and fuzzy discounts can take a running jump...


Elaine Ruby
neilmac
ipv
Mario Freitas
Susana Rivas
 
SafeTex
SafeTex
France
Local time: 14:18
French to English
+ ...
Indispensible Feb 11, 2019

I'd like to review a big job one day from a translator who says that they don't need a CAT tool and check for stuff like consistency. I'm sure they would be shocked by the results.

Elaine Ruby
Richard Purdom
Laureana Pavon
Mario Freitas
 
Axelle H.
Axelle H.  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 14:18
English to French
Very .. Feb 11, 2019

Except for some jobs (who need transcreation).
It's like refusing to use a washing machine because it will not do the laundry as well.
CAT tool is a help, a partner, it does not translate for you; you still manage the final translation


Elaine Ruby
neilmac
 
DZiW (X)
DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
+ ...
overhyped Feb 11, 2019

While CAT seems relatively useful for similar techy works, it's just a tool with many additional restrictions and flaws, requiring segment joints polishing and post-editing.

Perhaps, soon computer-aided translation tools would be up to such thing as a human irrationality, considering the languages tempo, style and flow difference, making it more natural, and improving the writing process at ease, but not now.

Furthermore, I still can't help wondering why there's so much
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While CAT seems relatively useful for similar techy works, it's just a tool with many additional restrictions and flaws, requiring segment joints polishing and post-editing.

Perhaps, soon computer-aided translation tools would be up to such thing as a human irrationality, considering the languages tempo, style and flow difference, making it more natural, and improving the writing process at ease, but not now.

Furthermore, I still can't help wondering why there's so much fuss about even expensive CATs, which rather many clients and agencies traditionally ab/use as a tool for more "fuzzy discount".
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neilmac
neilmac
Spain
Local time: 14:18
Spanish to English
+ ...
Other Feb 11, 2019

Before I started using any CAT tools, I didn't think I needed them or that they would be important for my work. However, I'm used to them now, and prefer working with them on most of the texts I get for translation, so I suppose I have to say yes, they're quite important. That doesn't mean I couldn't go back to slate and chalk like in the pre-techno days if need be.

[Edited at 2019-02-11 10:36 GMT]


Mario Freitas
 
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 14:18
Member (2003)
Danish to English
+ ...
@ SafeTex: You'd probably be surprised Feb 11, 2019

SafeTex wrote:

I'd like to review a big job one day from a translator who says that they don't need a CAT tool and check for stuff like consistency. I'm sure they would be shocked by the results.


Consistency existed in pre-CAT days too, and translators certainly coped with it.
I know my early colleagues spent time checking the source for terminology, making out term lists and drafting key sections of wording before actually starting to translate. I still do it myself, although I use Multiterm as my term list, with the added benefit that it shows when each term comes up as I translate.

Without a CAT, you may get slight variations in the way sentences are worded, but those often help to make the text more fluent and readable. When I use my CAT I like to 'post edit' and tidy up to check that pronouns still refer correctly, and that the text is coherent, even when the segments appear in different contexts and in a different order.
100% consistency is not actually desirable.

My father was a bible translator, and worked with a committee. They had their ways of ensuring consistency individually and as a group - long before the days of e-mails and instant communication, when even the telephone was expensive and a disturbance of the workflow. It was only used when really necessary!

I would not go back to those days, and I voted that my CAT is indispensable, but it is a tool. I read the text through without the CAT first, and never hesitate to delete its offerings, if I have thought of something better. I CAN still translate without it!


Christopher Schröder
Michael Harris
Jocelyne Cuenin
ipv
Laura Nagle (X)
Michele Fauble
Apolonia Dermit
 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:18
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Thanks, Christine Feb 11, 2019

Christine Andersen wrote:

SafeTex wrote:

I'd like to review a big job one day from a translator who says that they don't need a CAT tool and check for stuff like consistency. I'm sure they would be shocked by the results.


Consistency existed in pre-CAT days too, and translators certainly coped with it.


I've been translating for over 40 years, well before the CAT era!


 
Richard Purdom
Richard Purdom  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:18
Dutch to English
+ ...
CAT makes life easier Feb 11, 2019

Teresa Borges wrote:

Christine Andersen wrote:

SafeTex wrote:

I'd like to review a big job one day from a translator who says that they don't need a CAT tool and check for stuff like consistency. I'm sure they would be shocked by the results.


Consistency existed in pre-CAT days too, and translators certainly coped with it.


I've been translating for over 40 years, well before the CAT era!


'I always do it like that/sempre fiz assim' always gets my alarm bells ringing
With all respect, years of experience never means years of doing things right. Translators may have coped. as you say, but what a waste of brain power for something a computer does so easily.
And if there's one thing clients don't like and pick up on, it's inconsistency.


 
Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
+ ...
OTOH Feb 11, 2019

SafeTex wrote:
I'd like to review a big job one day from a translator who says that they don't need a CAT tool and check for stuff like consistency. I'm sure they would be shocked by the results.

I'm always shocked by the lack of consistency on the occasions I agree to use agencies' TMs...

Richard Purdom wrote:
Translators may have coped. as you say, but what a waste of brain power for something a computer does so easily.
And if there's one thing clients don't like and pick up on, it's inconsistency.

But many translations don't have any repetitions and don't need much in the way of consistency.

There are many kinds of translation. CAT is ideal or useful for some, but useless for others.


Jennifer Forbes
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Christine Andersen
Laura Nagle (X)
Michele Fauble
Kay Denney
 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 13:18
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Well... Feb 11, 2019

Richard Purdom wrote:

Teresa Borges wrote:

Christine Andersen wrote:

SafeTex wrote:

I'd like to review a big job one day from a translator who says that they don't need a CAT tool and check for stuff like consistency. I'm sure they would be shocked by the results.


Consistency existed in pre-CAT days too, and translators certainly coped with it.


I've been translating for over 40 years, well before the CAT era!


'I always do it like that/sempre fiz assim' always gets my alarm bells ringing
With all respect, years of experience never means years of doing things right. Translators may have coped. as you say, but what a waste of brain power for something a computer does so easily.
And if there's one thing clients don't like and pick up on, it's inconsistency.


I must be doing something right as two of my long-standing clients are still with me (one of them since 1985). Your sentence ‘I've always done it like that’ doesn't apply to me: when I started translating (first as a part-time translator for a few years, then full-time as in-house translator and since 2016 as a freelancer) computers didn't exist (only typewriters) and I bought my first computer in the mid-80s…


Kay Denney
 
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Poll: How important is it for you to have a CAT tool for your work?






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