Is Trados 2021 fit for purpose? Thread poster: Terence Jeal
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Terence Jeal 
Spain
Local time: 01:16
Member (2018)
Spanish to English
+ ...
Over the years, I have successfully upgraded many types of software from an older to a newer version. Almost without exception, the process extracts and maintains settings and preferences from the previous version, and provides “wizards” to set up any essential new configurations, so that the user can be up and running with the updated version in a matter of minutes.
Upgrading from Trados Studio 2019 to 2021 does none of that – the process is nothing short of a translator's w... See more Over the years, I have successfully upgraded many types of software from an older to a newer version. Almost without exception, the process extracts and maintains settings and preferences from the previous version, and provides “wizards” to set up any essential new configurations, so that the user can be up and running with the updated version in a matter of minutes.
Upgrading from Trados Studio 2019 to 2021 does none of that – the process is nothing short of a translator's worst nightmare. I have now wasted two days reading the forums and watching YouTube videos trying to get everything configured to the point where I can actually translate a document, with no success at all. I do not even understand much of the technical terminology used in the instructions, and neither should I be required to: I am a user, a paying customer, a translator – and not an IT engineer.
Having ready many, many adverse comments both here and on the RWS forums, it seems that even if I were able to decipher the extraordinarily complex instructions for getting Trados 2021 to function, it would not work reliably anyway. I am reading reports of constant crashes and glitches that make using the software a stressful experience for those of us working in a high-pressure environment in which time is money.
This is unacceptable for software that costs more than the entire Microsoft Office suite, which is simplicity itself to install and update, and works perfectly. In short, it is my opinion that Trados Studio 2021 is overpriced, unhelpful to the user who wants to buy a tool to make life simpler, and is quite simply not fit for purpose. Caveat emptor.
[Edited at 2021-12-29 00:01 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:16
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
| In short: No, not really. | Dec 28, 2021 |
Get memoQ instead. I have extensively tested pretty much every CAT tool known to man (both desktop-based and online), and own up-to-date licences for tons of them, but always end up using memoQ. It's very powerful, has a great UI and is rock solid.
Michael
| | | | Kevin Fulton
United States
Local time: 19:16
German to English
| I've always felt like a beta tester | Dec 29, 2021 |
I still have the installation disk(s) from my first version of Trados Workbench and MultiTerm, purchased around the time it was acquired by SDL. I bought the program because a lot of agencies required it, although my CAT of choice in 1998 was Déjà Vu for clients who only wanted the finished translation. Trados Workbench was a buggy program then, and various Studio upgrades improved the stability of the product, but there have always been weird glitches or unintuitive peculiarities that require... See more I still have the installation disk(s) from my first version of Trados Workbench and MultiTerm, purchased around the time it was acquired by SDL. I bought the program because a lot of agencies required it, although my CAT of choice in 1998 was Déjà Vu for clients who only wanted the finished translation. Trados Workbench was a buggy program then, and various Studio upgrades improved the stability of the product, but there have always been weird glitches or unintuitive peculiarities that required getting assistance from more experienced colleagues, or failing that, from the internet. I didn't bother getting upgrades after 2017, and when I bought my current computer this past summer, I didn't transfer the license to the new device – mainly because both procedures for returning the license and retrieving it again failed without explanation.
I don't see any reason why someone new to this profession should invest the considerable expense and effort involved in trying to use the program when other viable alternatives are available.
[Edited at 2021-12-29 04:03 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 01:16
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| My experience | Dec 29, 2021 |
Sorry to hear about your negative experience. I myself had no problem upgrading from 2019 to 2021, and the program works in pretty much the same way, too. (I chose to upgrade to 2021 because of the online translation feature, which later turned out to be a bit of a scam, since those of us who bought the upgrade first were not told that the online feature is not actually part of 2021 but requires an additional annual subscription.) But otherwise it's just as stable as 2019.
I, too... See more Sorry to hear about your negative experience. I myself had no problem upgrading from 2019 to 2021, and the program works in pretty much the same way, too. (I chose to upgrade to 2021 because of the online translation feature, which later turned out to be a bit of a scam, since those of us who bought the upgrade first were not told that the online feature is not actually part of 2021 but requires an additional annual subscription.) But otherwise it's just as stable as 2019.
I, too, am more impressed with MemoQ than with Trados, but MemoQ has a learning curve as well, and many of its aspects are not intuitive (you need to "read the manual" of watch videos first), and it's not all perfect either. For example, in MemoQ, if you want to reply to comments, you can only do it one comment at a time, and you don't have access to the translation editor while you read comments or write your reply. (There is a tooltip upon hover, but the tooltip disappears too quickly.) This means that if you really want to reply to comments in MemoQ, you have to open the comment, copy it to Notepad, close the comment, then write your reply in Notepad, then re-open the comment in MemoQ, and copy/paste your reply from Notepad. A typical programmed-on-Friday-afternoon type of functionality. ▲ Collapse
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Stepan Konev
Russian Federation
Local time: 02:16
English to Russian
Samuel Murray wrote:
I myself had no problem upgrading from 2019 to 2021, and the program works in pretty much the same way, too. Same here. I don't know what I am doing wrong, but SDL Trados Studio 2021 works fine for me.
This means that if you really want to reply to comments in MemoQ, you have to open the comment, copy it to Notepad, close the comment, then write your reply in Notepad, then re-open the comment in MemoQ, and copy/paste your reply from Notepad. As a workaround, you can Create view for the commented segments only and then export them as a 2-column rtf file. In the Comments column type Enter and add your reply. Import the rtf file to update the view. The reply will appear as another comment created by Table RTF user. Not a perfect solution but still... If you need to add "Resolved" to a number of comments, it can take less time to paste the same reply in rtf than open comments in memoQ.
[Edited at 2021-12-29 12:23 GMT]
| | | | Roy Oestensen
Denmark
Local time: 01:16
Member (2010)
English to Norwegian (Bokmal)
+ ...
| No problems here either | Dec 29, 2021 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
Sorry to hear about your negative experience. I myself had no problem upgrading from 2019 to 2021, and the program works in pretty much the same way, too. (I chose to upgrade to 2021 because of the online translation feature, which later turned out to be a bit of a scam, since those of us who bought the upgrade first were not told that the online feature is not actually part of 2021 but requires an additional annual subscription.) But otherwise it's just as stable as 2019.
I am also sorry to hear about the problems with 2021, as I myself haven't experienced any special problems either. But the main reason I do keep Studio and upgrade it as new versions come, is that I receive Studio packages for translation. The actual translation itself I do in either Deja vu or memoQ. Regrettably Deja vu also has problems keeping up with the competitors, otherwise it would have been my unquestionable favourite. As it is, I will also recommend memoQ, but using Studio to do the QA to ensure there are no problems with the files when returning them to the agency. To me, that is an insurance against later problems and well worth the money for me at least, especially because of the group purchases in ProZ which means the expense is reduced. (And I can deduct the price for Studio as a business expence too, which helps.)
Roy
| | | | Heinrich Pesch
Finland
Local time: 02:16
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
+ ...
but it does not support GT out of the box, so for the time being I continue to use 2019. Otherwise I hardly see any difference to previous versions.
| | | | Yossi Rozenman
Germany
Local time: 01:16
Member (2006)
English to Hebrew
+ ...
| My 2021 works, but crashes *at least* once a day | Dec 30, 2021 |
At least once a day it Pooofff! closes. No error message, nothing, simply closes out of the blue.
I bought a brand new Dell computer, with 16GB RAM, and still the same problem.
Another problem is that 2021 cannot connect to SDL server 2015, which some of my customers still use.
This is of course in addition to the same old problems that were never fixed, but I learned to live with them, like "Dependency file not found" etc.
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