| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] > | Is it really so necessary to have Trados? Thread poster: Alex Dall'Asta
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Roger Melo
Brazil
Local time: 04:53
Member (Feb 2024)
| in general, there's no problem, as long as you use a similar software | Nov 17, 2021 |
Adieu wrote:
I get enough MemoQ-required work from several clients that I don't need Trados or even have it installed on my current laptop.
Yes! when customers put Trados in the requirements, I say that I use MemoQ and I quietly do my work on it. I never had any problem with that.
| | | | Stepan Konev 
Russian Federation
Local time: 10:53
English to Russian
| Trados or trados | Nov 17, 2021 |
Like Xerox/xerox at its time, Trados is still often used as a synonym for CAT tool. If you mean trados as any CAT tool, then yes, you'd better learn one (but not necessarily Trados). If you mean Trados specifically, then no, it is not absolutely necessary. Some find OmegaT (free software) even more useful to them. It is you to choose your tool.
[Edited at 2021-11-17 16:34 GMT]
| | | | neilmac
Spain
Local time: 09:53
Spanish to English
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| A cautionary tale | Nov 18, 2021 |
I recently met my friend/colleague who advised me to move into translation from TEFL twenty years ago. He has been using TRADOS for almost 3 decades, usually translating technical texts from German to English. I was surprised to hear that he is getting very little of that kind of work nowadays, and he blames it on the agencies who require TRADOS now having built up such a large bank or corpus of translated material, that they no longer need many human translators for that kind of thing. He is cu... See more I recently met my friend/colleague who advised me to move into translation from TEFL twenty years ago. He has been using TRADOS for almost 3 decades, usually translating technical texts from German to English. I was surprised to hear that he is getting very little of that kind of work nowadays, and he blames it on the agencies who require TRADOS now having built up such a large bank or corpus of translated material, that they no longer need many human translators for that kind of thing. He is currently supplementing his income by teaching again.
I don't use it myself, having found it too expensive and too complicated to use. FWIW, I use WordFast Classic instead, but then again, I don't work with agencies at all if I can help it. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Is necessary to have Trados? | Nov 18, 2021 |
It is your choice. I have been working for 30 years without it and will continue doing so. I have noticed that serious clients are not in favour of Trados which cannot replace the human brain. So I do not regret turning down jobs because people insist on the use of Trados as it is a way to pay less while giving you more technical issues to solve without any real benefit.
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Adieu
Ukrainian to English
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For creative work, it might actually be a bad thing.
For technical or bureaucratic translations, get a CAT or don't even bother.
mariealpilles wrote:
It is your choice. I have been working for 30 years without it and will continue doing so. I have noticed that serious clients are not in favour of Trados which cannot replace the human brain. So I do not regret turning down jobs because people insist on the use of Trados as it is a way to pay less while giving you more technical issues to solve without any real benefit.
| | | | | So long, and thank you for all the fish | Nov 18, 2021 |
Alex Dall'Asta wrote:
Hi everbody, I have been a full-time translator for 3 years now and have managed to dodge Trados, but several agencies seem to require its use. How necessary do you think it is today?
Dodging Trados, Windows (but that's another topic), and other "industry standards" since 2015 or more…
Interoperability is a thing…
I gather you don't use CAT tools at all? In 3 years, you have demonstrated that they may not be needed.
A translator's shop does not need to cater to everyone. You can only serve a handful of customers anyway. It is okay to say no. There's plenty of fish (unless you go too DeepL).
[Edited at 2021-11-18 15:40 GMT]
| | | | AnnaSCHTR
United States
Local time: 02:53
English to Czech
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It depends on what kind of work you do, and what kind of opportunities you want to have. I need CAT tools for my work, so I've invested my time and money into Trados and can accept files in pretty much any format. But I know some outstanding translators who work, for instance, in the field of legal translations and are dealing with not-quite great scans of unique and non-repetitive documents - they definitely do not need CAT tools at all.
| | | | Adieu
Ukrainian to English
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| Non-repetitive legal translation? | Nov 19, 2021 |
Ain't no such thing.
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finnword1
United States
Local time: 03:53
English to Finnish
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| Hardly an industry standard | Nov 21, 2021 |
It's like wanting a lumberjack to use a certain brand of chain saw.
| | | | Adieu
Ukrainian to English
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| Well, not quite | Nov 22, 2021 |
finnword1 wrote:
It's like wanting a lumberjack to use a certain brand of chain saw.
Some brands of chainsaw like MemoQ download the trees and upload the lumber for you.
| | | | | Even if you do only creative jobs... | Dec 5, 2021 |
...and your clients don't request you to use a CAT tool, it maybe very useful as a means to find instantaneously your specialized dictionary/memory entries, thus saving much time. Then, after exporting the file you forget the CAT tool and start adjusting and rearranging everything as you please in the exported document. To do this, you don't need an expensive CAT tool.
| | | | | Same here ... | Dec 5, 2021 |
neilmac wrote:
I recently met my friend/colleague who advised me to move into translation from TEFL twenty years ago. He has been using TRADOS for almost 3 decades, usually translating technical texts from German to English. I was surprised to hear that he is getting very little of that kind of work nowadays, and he blames it on the agencies who require TRADOS now having built up such a large bank or corpus of translated material, that they no longer need many human translators for that kind of thing.
Almost the same experience here, but I believe that this is generally the result of the surplus of translators flooding the market, who specifically look for a domain they may fit to although they are not qualified for. Technical texts (manuals etc) are still being underestimated and the results can be seen in the manuals I recently was confronted with when I started to work again as a service technician. Your friend suffers from being undercut in the price offered by these translators.
He is currently supplementing his income by teaching again.
Again, the same here, but vice versa (I supplement my income as a technician with the few qualified and well paid translation work Deepl and those cheaper newbies still have left for me). And I still use Déjà Vu.
[Bearbeitet am 2021-12-05 07:38 GMT]
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 08:53
Member (2008)
Italian to English
It's always agencies that ask if you use Trados. There's a reason why they do that. See NeilMac's post above "A cautionary tale".
[Edited at 2021-12-05 09:52 GMT]
| | | | Stepan Konev
Russian Federation
Local time: 10:53
English to Russian
| Corpus can be reused for MT, not for CAT | Dec 5, 2021 |
neilmac wrote: agencies who require TRADOS now having built up such a large bank or corpus of translated material, that they no longer need many human translators for that kind of thing This sounds very dubious. Exactly the same as to say that there are so many books written that they don’t need writers, or that there are so many songs sung that they don’t need singers or musicians. I think there is something else behind your friend’s situation he didn’t want to share with you. I have many giant TMs from early 2000s that can hardly help me these days. Because there is no such thing as “enough translated”.
[Edited at 2021-12-05 10:57 GMT]
| | | | | It is a tool, and many peple like it, but there are plenty of alternatives | Dec 5, 2021 |
I was dragged to Trados, kicking and screaming, when I worked in-house, but it was more than my hob was worth to refuse altogether. Later, I struggled with a faulty dongle when I started as a freelancer, and my former employer, as my major client, still wanted me to use Trados.
Another client had its own online CAT, which was AWFUL, so I do sympathise with people who hate CATs and Trados. However, this was nearly 20 years ago, and I also knew several colleagues who said Trados was n... See more I was dragged to Trados, kicking and screaming, when I worked in-house, but it was more than my hob was worth to refuse altogether. Later, I struggled with a faulty dongle when I started as a freelancer, and my former employer, as my major client, still wanted me to use Trados.
Another client had its own online CAT, which was AWFUL, so I do sympathise with people who hate CATs and Trados. However, this was nearly 20 years ago, and I also knew several colleagues who said Trados was not so bad, so I kept trying. I finally had the dongle replaced, and although I have tried Wordfast and MemoQ along the way, I have come back to Trados every time, and it has improved beyond recognition since the old Workbench and TagEditor we used back then.
Studio has improved with every version up to 2019 at least - whether 2021 is actually better for freelancers depends on whether you like the new features. I carry on without them, but they are no disadvantage.
If you take time and learn to benefit from a number of features of Trados Studio, it is well worth the effort, but you will not see all the advantages in a single day. Probably no one needs all the features, but I have used many of them at one time or another. It is excellent for registering terminology, keeping consistent with earlier work for the same client (or varying it, if that is what they want!) I use it to compensate for my poor typing skills, and I use it for creative work too.
I would recommend finding a CAT of some sort that suits your workflow, but it does not have to be Trados! ▲ Collapse
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