Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: What is the easiest-to-use tool for large Word documents with tables, figures and text boxes?
Poster: Kevin Fulton
Post title: Reusing old translations
You will find that translators feel about their tools the way some people feel about their political affiliation, religion or favorite beverage. They feel that theirs is the best, and they're all correct!
CAT tools rely on a database of previous translations generally called a translation memory (or some variant). They become more useful the more you use them to translate. Many translators starting to use CAT tools create this translation memory from alignment of the sentences/segments of previously-translated source and target texts. There are tools for this, many of which are contained in the CAT tool package, but there are stand-alone programs for this as well, some of which are available at no cost. Alignment can be arduous, especially for the inexperienced, but can pay off handsomely, I've read. I started using CAT tools almost 20 years ago, so I haven't done much alignment recently.
MemoQ has a feature called "Live docs" which is an attempt to overcome the problem of a large body of translations that have not yet been integrated into a translation memory. I have not relied on this feature, but it sounds like a good selling point.
CAT tools are also very useful for terminology management. If you've compiled glossaries, in many cases they can be converted to CAT-compatible terminology databases.
Topic: What is the easiest-to-use tool for large Word documents with tables, figures and text boxes?
Poster: Kevin Fulton
Post title: Reusing old translations
You will find that translators feel about their tools the way some people feel about their political affiliation, religion or favorite beverage. They feel that theirs is the best, and they're all correct!
CAT tools rely on a database of previous translations generally called a translation memory (or some variant). They become more useful the more you use them to translate. Many translators starting to use CAT tools create this translation memory from alignment of the sentences/segments of previously-translated source and target texts. There are tools for this, many of which are contained in the CAT tool package, but there are stand-alone programs for this as well, some of which are available at no cost. Alignment can be arduous, especially for the inexperienced, but can pay off handsomely, I've read. I started using CAT tools almost 20 years ago, so I haven't done much alignment recently.
MemoQ has a feature called "Live docs" which is an attempt to overcome the problem of a large body of translations that have not yet been integrated into a translation memory. I have not relied on this feature, but it sounds like a good selling point.
CAT tools are also very useful for terminology management. If you've compiled glossaries, in many cases they can be converted to CAT-compatible terminology databases.