| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] > | Does anyone else hate Trados as much as I do? Thread poster: Surtees
|
|---|
Ralf Lemster 
Germany
Local time: 17:53
English to German
+ ...
| Any tool needs to be used in the right way | Mar 20, 2006 |
Hi Robert and all,
Robert Forstag wrote:
There are, in my view, far larger issues at stake re the use of Trados and other CAT tools than this or that technical problem.
Very true - this is about being able to leverage the entire toolbox available (as Jerzy mentioned) to win attractive business, and to make sure you're working as efficiently as possible. The fundamental issue many translators have yet to understand is that the price per word (line, byte, page, whatever) is irrelevant, as long as your cash inflow per hour (day, month) worked is ok (bearing in mind fixed costs, plus depreciation of equipment, amortisation of software, retirement provisions, etc.).
Dinny hits the nail on the head with the comment regarding spending a ton of money on a tool to increase productivity, spending considerable time to learn how to use it, and then being rewarded by insulting rates by agencies that know that you now have this supposedly powerful tool at your disposal.
If that's the problem, you're talking to the wrong customers.
Who *are* all of those smiling people in the Trados ads anyway? I rather doubt that they are translators who spent upwards of $700 for the Trados software and then invested dozens of hours of their own time in order to gain a rudimentary understanding of it,
Er... no. In my case, I that amount is about half of the annual cost for software maintenance and support. And yes, the return on investment is remarkable.
(Not that Trados is some kind of 'magic wand' - I guess I could have achieved more or less the same effect with other CAT tools, but as it happens, I've been using Trados for almost a decade, so switching would be burden on returns.)
only to find that being registered Trados users enabled them to be offered jobs where they could now earn 2 cents per word for identical matches and 4 cents for "fuzzy matches".
As I said - wrong target customers.
Do not Trados and similar tools actually work in this way to depress the rates offered to qualified translators?
Not in the case of translators who know their market value. Very simply put: if I were to try and depress the rates at which I outsource, I would either be left with substandard suppliers, or I could do the work myself in the first place - neither is an option. Check my BB record for smiling faces...
I would be interested to hear the opinions of people who use these tools regarding how much more money they have made as a result of CAT Tools - and on what class of documents they have found such tools helpful.
There are virtually no documents I work on without Trados.
Surely there is a place for such tools, although I suspect it is a fairly limited one.
I believe you've got this fundamentally wrong - but sorry, I won't provide you with figures here...
Best regards,
Ralf
| | | | | place for CAT tools | Mar 20, 2006 |
I believe they are all but indispensable nowadays in software localization and other applications where large volumes have to be translated and suported over long time by teams of translators. Also for materials that are in DTP formats.
I do not do lots of work of these types, but I use CAT tools (mainly, Wordfast) with most of the documents I translate. Very useful for manuals, an in general for materials that you regularly receive from the same source. Or even not so regularly -- try to... See more I believe they are all but indispensable nowadays in software localization and other applications where large volumes have to be translated and suported over long time by teams of translators. Also for materials that are in DTP formats.
I do not do lots of work of these types, but I use CAT tools (mainly, Wordfast) with most of the documents I translate. Very useful for manuals, an in general for materials that you regularly receive from the same source. Or even not so regularly -- try to remember how you translated that name in another letter two months ago... And, more than once, it made my day by digging 100% matches to 90% of sentences in some intimidating legal document from a long-forgotten job that I had done (as it turned out!) years ago. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | A pain to figure out | Mar 20, 2006 |
I've found Trados more useful than not, and it's helped productivity, especially because I often translate documents that go through several drafts.
I think it's a fine product, but the learning curve is just too steep for a non-techie. The documentation is breathtakingly inadequate, IMHO. It would still be sitting unused on my computer were it not for all the helpful tips and tricks and tweaks I found on proz.
| | | | Jaroslaw Michalak
Poland
Local time: 17:53
Member (2004)
English to Polish
SITE LOCALIZER | Price of progress | Mar 20, 2006 |
Robert Forstag wrote:
Do not Trados and similar tools actually work in this way to depress the rates offered to qualified translators?
Surely this is nothing to smile about.
In a way, you are right. You might also add that using those tools will eventually lower the average quality of translations, as more and more "matches" will be used, not necessarily in the best context.
The thing is, that how progress works. It has been the same with textiles, shoes, garments, and mass production of many other things. Well, you might call it "mass translation".
While the process has its obvious disadvantages, for the end customer it has one big advantage: it makes things cheaper. Therefore, it will prevail, especially that there is no loom to throw our sabots into.
And if you cannot fight them, you might as well join them and make the best of the situation.
[Edited at 2006-03-20 23:03]
| | |
|
|
|
piotrsut
Local time: 17:53
English to Polish
+ ...
| another hand up | Mar 20, 2006 |
Jabberwock wrote: Robert Forstag wrote:
Do not Trados and similar tools actually work in this way to depress the rates offered to qualified translators?
Surely this is nothing to smile about.
In a way, you are right. You might also add that using those tools will eventually lower the average quality of translations, as more and more "matches" will be used, not necessarily in the best context. . [Edited at 2006-03-20 23:03]
This reminds me of when I once saw a list of languages, each in its respective language, with "Polish" represented as "polerować" (to polish).
This is just to declare myself among the naysayers, even though I do use Trados for my own purposes sometimes. Never without thorough consideration and document analysis, though. Perhaps I would be using it all of the time, but the looming vision of what I got a few times makes me stay away as much of the time can. My trauma comes from documents with formatting garbled a bit during translation, but totally defaced in cleanup. Delivery time, press "clean up"... and the document comes out all covered in random formatting, bold type or italics beginning from one Polish character and ending at another, or just starting mid-sentence with no apparent reason. Italicised phrases not italicised at all. Not to mention fonts changed to god knows what, the new fonts present neither in the style descriptions, nor written on top of styles. Nowhere in the original document at all. So, 40 pages to review thoroughly in comparison with original, with no time left.
But then, it's a case of "what can you do". It's an automated world. 90 percent of translations have no such problems, at least if you learn to avoid certain cursor moves like a fencing master. At least it allows me to capitalise on my geekiness and get jobs some of my colleagues can't take because they couldn't make heads or tails of the software.
| | | | | Where Trados is helpful | Mar 21, 2006 |
Robert Forstag wrote:
I would be interested to hear the opinions of people who use these tools regarding how much more money they have made as a result of CAT Tools - and on what class of documents they have found such tools helpful.
Surely there is a place for such tools, although I suspect it is a fairly limited one.
Regularly maintained and updated software help/support content is such an example where Trados can be helpful—but unfortunately helpful more for the customer than the translator.
On the other hand, the translator may also receive benefits using Trados if he/she must conform to strict terminology and style, including sentence templates and such. Here a translation memory helps you a lot when the customer does not care about how you ensure conformance but demands it as a fundamental part of your basic translation offer (I mean when you get no higher prices just because you have to conform to a "style" described for you by hundreds of thousands of TUs/sentences).
The main drawback of Trados's Workbench is the hell you face when you want to maintain your translation memory. Workbench is almost impossible to maintain, that filtering window from the File menu is everything but not a convenient way to clean up or update your stored TUs.
| | | | Giles Watson
Italy
Local time: 17:53
Italian to English
In memoriam | TM maintenance | Mar 21, 2006 |
e-Musty wrote:
The main drawback of Trados's Workbench is the hell you face when you want to maintain your translation memory. Workbench is almost impossible to maintain, that filtering window from the File menu is everything but not a convenient way to clean up or update your stored TUs.
Oliphant (freeware) can sometimes help.
http://www.translate.com/technology/tools/index.html
FWIW
Giles
| | | | | Translation Memory Maintenance | Mar 21, 2006 |
e-Musty wrote:
The main drawback of Trados's Workbench is the hell you face when you want to maintain your translation memory. Workbench is almost impossible to maintain, that filtering window from the File menu is everything but not a convenient way to clean up or update your stored TUs.
An easy way to do translation memory maintenance is to export the memory (to .txt format, although I think .tmx also would work fine), edit it with appropriate tools (I use Search&Replace, plus a programmer's editor), then re-import it to an empty (new) memory.
Easy, and definitely better then trying to do it from within Workbench.
| | |
|
|
|
| Not if you set it right | Mar 21, 2006 |
Robert Forstag wrote:
2.) Whether in the long run productivity ally is notably improved for many different classes of documents. It would seem that, paradoxically, the greater the translation memory of the CAT Tool being used, the more this would tend to slow down work, since any given string of words might evoke he program's suggestion of several possible alternatives.
[/quote]
Not if the translation memory is set right, so as not to allow more than one translation per each SL segment.
I would be interested to hear the opinions of people who use these tools regarding how much more money they have made as a result of CAT Tools - and on what class of documents they have found such tools helpful.
Surely there is a place for such tools, although I suspect it is a fairly limited one.
I use TM for *all* documents, with the exception of those (now very rare) ones that only arrive as hard copy.
When I worked for a software company, we estimated that the productivity savings afforded by using TM ranged from 17% (in the case of the first translation of a brand new document: no previous versions, and starting with an empty translation memory) to 80% or more (subsequent versions of documents that had already been translated with translation memory before).
But the productivity gains from perfect and fuzzy matches are not teh only advantages: a very big plus is the fact that by using TM tools one can access all his previous translation (concofrance feature), so, no more wondering "how did I translate that before"... now it's just a click or two away.
| | | | Selcuk Akyuz
Türkiye
Local time: 18:53
English to Turkish
+ ...
| Trados 5.5 with Office 2003 | Mar 22, 2006 |
Thanks for the tip
e-Musty wrote:
Unfortunately, I do not think Trados is such a user-focused company. I think it's marketing policy is more than rude and they commit everything possible just to put the user in the need of purchasing the latest version of their tool... that usually becomes outdated and actually unsupported shortly after you bought it. Let me say a short example: I use Trados 5.5 and I was not able to upgrade Office XP to Office 2003 just because Trados 5.5, as I was told by the support, does not support OFF2003, for the support I must buy Trados 6.5.
But I know for sure, there have been no changes in those parts of Word which are used by the add-on. Simply there's a version check in Trados Workbench, and if it finds you have an Office newer than Office XP, it will tell you it is not compatible and will block you. By removing this moneygrabbing-inspired message, I could use Trados 5.5 with Office 2003 perfectly.
| | | | Lia Fail (X)
Spain
Local time: 17:53
Spanish to English
+ ...
Lothar Kneifel wrote:
.... the learning curve is just too steep for a non-techie. The documentation is breathtakingly inadequate, IMHO. It would still be sitting unused on my computer were it not for all the helpful tips and tricks and tweaks I found on proz.
I agree, there's reams of manual, but it's not very helpful, and us computer-challenged types do have problems
...and I agree with the poster when he/she says " Do something about it you stupid program, that is supposed to be your job, that's why I bought you...."! Wordfast is much more user friendly...and cheaper. I'm only using Trados at this stage becuase I paid nearly 700 euros for it.
For example, why is the Trados approach to footnotes so complex that we very frequently see "Help! toolbar lost" posts here in Proz???? And indeed, why do so many of us come to Proz for quick solutions? (I know, I know, it's partly becuase we have Ralf and Jerzcy here.....:-)
| | | | La Classe
Local time: 21:23
French to English
+ ...
Trados is not as friendly as Deja vu. Because if you want ot work in word file it always has some problem. I have already used Trados, but it is past now. I think you can think for Deja vu.
| | |
|
|
|
First of all, let me say Ralf explained everything very well.
Of course, if you want a software to help you, you obviously have to learn how it works. Just one example:
And I would say that I have to use the 'fix document' function at least once (and often much more, as in the text I am currently working on) because the stupid thing tells me that a start or end of translation unit marker is apparently missing. The thing is not stupid at all: you destroy elements that are absolutely nessecary for it function, so of course it won't go any further! By the way, this is only about a basic Word feature, so no need to incriminate Trados, here there's only a need to learn to use Word.
Robert Forstag wrote:
Who *are* all of those smiling people in the Trados ads anyway? I rather doubt that they are translators who spent upwards of $700 for the Trados software and then invested dozens of hours of their own time in order to gain a rudimentary understanding of it, only to find that being registered Trados users enabled them to be offered jobs where they could now earn 2 cents per word for identical matches and 4 cents for "fuzzy matches". Here I am! Not exactly indeed. I don't appear in Trados ads, I didn't pay myself for Trados (but surely would) and I have not spent dozens of hours to understand it rudimentarly, I have rather spent about 1 dozen hours to understand it very well.
Trados is not long to learn. Simply there are prerequisites to it: be able to use a computer and basic programmes such as Word for example. If you don't, so of course you won't cope with Trados! It's just like you want to learn to dive whereas you can't even swim!
Concerning rates, I really don't understand your point of view, which is often relayed by other anti-CAT translators here on ProZ: what's wrong about being paid 2 cents for identical matches, that is to say, being paid 2 cents for doing nothing? I think it's a rather good deal, indeed! How many jobs do you know where people are paid for doing nothing?
Yes, rates for fuzzies, reps and 100% matches are lower because of Trados - but your workload also decreases impressively!!! Which means you can take on more jobs. So, in the end, earn more.
And it still without taking into account that Trados also speeds you up, making your deadline more attractive to potential customers.
Surely there is a place for such tools, although I suspect it is a fairly limited one. I use TM for *all* documents, with the exception of those (now very rare) ones that only arrive as hard copy.
| | | | Ralf Lemster
Germany
Local time: 17:53
English to German
+ ...
| Handling repetitions vs. doing nothing | Mar 30, 2006 |
Hi Sonka,
Thanks for your posting.
I would just like to suggest some caution in respect of one issue: what's wrong about being paid 2 cents for identical matches, that is to say, being paid 2 cents for doing nothing? I think it's a rather good deal, indeed! How many jobs do you know where people are paid for doing nothing?
Careful here - handling repetitions involves more than just sitting there, watching the computer tick away. However, as you correctly point out, the workload can be reduced - at the end of the day, what counts is the income per hour (day, month), not per word.
Best regards,
Ralf
| | | |
Hi Ralf,
Ralf Lemster wrote:
Careful here - handling repetitions involves more than just sitting there, watching the computer tick away. I agree, but in my case, I must say handling repetitions involves nothing more than sitting and entering Alt+* in 99% of cases. It happens that I have to check repetitions in case of very short strings with a single word that can be translated differently in context depending on the French gender (whereas there is no gender issue in English), or other similar situation. But this is in fact a very small part of repitions as a whole. Do you have much more ambigous repetitions than I?
Regards
| | | | | Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] > | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » Does anyone else hate Trados as much as I do? | Trados Business Manager Lite | Create customer quotes and invoices from within Trados Studio
Trados Business Manager Lite helps to simplify and speed up some of the daily tasks, such as invoicing and reporting, associated with running your freelance translation business.
More info » |
| | CafeTran Espresso | You've never met a CAT tool this clever!
Translate faster & easier, using a sophisticated CAT tool built by a translator / developer.
Accept jobs from clients who use Trados, MemoQ, Wordfast & major CAT tools.
Download and start using CafeTran Espresso -- for free
Buy now! » |
|
| | | | X Sign in to your ProZ.com account... | | | | | |
Login to reply/comment 
Translation news related to SDL Trados
