Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: Efficiency of using CAT tools in comparison to using none
Poster: Tony M
Post title: Some help for some texts
I have always been a bit of a Luddite and resistant to CAT tools, but have been using Wordfast Classic for soem years now, on jobs where I feel it is useful.
On a totally new job for a new customer where there is little or nothing in the archives that I can leverage, creating a glossary as I go along seriously slows me up; this was the initial hurdle that put me off using CAT. However, once I have "taught" my CAT tool the words I want it to "remember" in its glossary, that can save me a great deal of time. At its very best, with a customer I've been working for for years and subject matter that I am very familiar with and is largely in the glossary, I have noted up to 300% increase in productivity — but that is exceptional! It is also a reflection of the fact that I am not a very fast typist, hence the glossary aspect, once taught, saves me the most time. I very rarely work on texts where there is enough repetition to make the actual TM much help, though the concordance facility sometimes helps me recycle small sections of existing TUs.
That said, there are many instances where I find the frustration of working within segments overwhelmingly handicapping, and I lose a lot of the time I might have saved by either manually forcing segmentation, or else in post-editing.
I am currently working on a large document where the glossary function is useful, because of the terminology repetition; BUT the author's undisciplined writing style and formatting is making it a real headache, having to constantly adjust the segmentation on about 50% of all segments!
One thing I have found useful, in instances where a customer has given me previosuly-translated documents, has been to spend the time before translation aligning these into a TM, which I am then able to use as I start translating, and also, with concordance to check terminology with existing translations; sometimes, I have no choice but to depart from previous translations, where there are clear errors, but at least this system helps me highlight those, which I can then warn the customer about.
Generally, for most of the material I work with, I don't both with CAT, but for a few specific customers that give me certain kinds of documents, it does soemtimes come in handy.
Topic: Efficiency of using CAT tools in comparison to using none
Poster: Tony M
Post title: Some help for some texts
I have always been a bit of a Luddite and resistant to CAT tools, but have been using Wordfast Classic for soem years now, on jobs where I feel it is useful.
On a totally new job for a new customer where there is little or nothing in the archives that I can leverage, creating a glossary as I go along seriously slows me up; this was the initial hurdle that put me off using CAT. However, once I have "taught" my CAT tool the words I want it to "remember" in its glossary, that can save me a great deal of time. At its very best, with a customer I've been working for for years and subject matter that I am very familiar with and is largely in the glossary, I have noted up to 300% increase in productivity — but that is exceptional! It is also a reflection of the fact that I am not a very fast typist, hence the glossary aspect, once taught, saves me the most time. I very rarely work on texts where there is enough repetition to make the actual TM much help, though the concordance facility sometimes helps me recycle small sections of existing TUs.
That said, there are many instances where I find the frustration of working within segments overwhelmingly handicapping, and I lose a lot of the time I might have saved by either manually forcing segmentation, or else in post-editing.
I am currently working on a large document where the glossary function is useful, because of the terminology repetition; BUT the author's undisciplined writing style and formatting is making it a real headache, having to constantly adjust the segmentation on about 50% of all segments!
One thing I have found useful, in instances where a customer has given me previosuly-translated documents, has been to spend the time before translation aligning these into a TM, which I am then able to use as I start translating, and also, with concordance to check terminology with existing translations; sometimes, I have no choice but to depart from previous translations, where there are clear errors, but at least this system helps me highlight those, which I can then warn the customer about.
Generally, for most of the material I work with, I don't both with CAT, but for a few specific customers that give me certain kinds of documents, it does soemtimes come in handy.