Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: Efficiency of using CAT tools in comparison to using none
Poster: RobinB
Post title: CAT/TM worthwhile for me
Richard,
I know some translators who rarely use a CAT/TM tool because most of the documents they translate are scans that cannot be easily converted into an editable format. However, I couldn't work effectively and productively without the CAT/TM tool I use (which happens to be Trados Studio, which I really like, but I have also used other tools such as memoQ and Wordfast). I translate mainly highly complex financial and legal texts, predominantly for direct clients, and I use my CAT tool for almost every document I translate. Using TM allows me to leverage a vast repository of bilingual information (not only my own translations, but also publicly available documents I have aligned or sourced from e.g. the EC), without which I just wouldn't be able to work quickly and accurately.
I can't give you any percentages for how much more efficiently I work because I don't have a benchmark for comparison purposes - I've been using CAT tools for amost 20 years now. What I can tell you is that if I didn't have a really good CAT tool like Trados Studio, I simply wouldn't be able to work any longer as a premium professional translator, as I know that my productivity - and hence my income - would be slashed to the point where it wouldn't be worthwhile doing this job any more. The translation memory massively augments my human memory. It's also faster at retrieving relevant information, and using it often stops me from going completely crazy. The cost (annual subscription) of the licence is a tiny fraction of the income I generate using it.
Topic: Efficiency of using CAT tools in comparison to using none
Poster: RobinB
Post title: CAT/TM worthwhile for me
Richard,
I know some translators who rarely use a CAT/TM tool because most of the documents they translate are scans that cannot be easily converted into an editable format. However, I couldn't work effectively and productively without the CAT/TM tool I use (which happens to be Trados Studio, which I really like, but I have also used other tools such as memoQ and Wordfast). I translate mainly highly complex financial and legal texts, predominantly for direct clients, and I use my CAT tool for almost every document I translate. Using TM allows me to leverage a vast repository of bilingual information (not only my own translations, but also publicly available documents I have aligned or sourced from e.g. the EC), without which I just wouldn't be able to work quickly and accurately.
I can't give you any percentages for how much more efficiently I work because I don't have a benchmark for comparison purposes - I've been using CAT tools for amost 20 years now. What I can tell you is that if I didn't have a really good CAT tool like Trados Studio, I simply wouldn't be able to work any longer as a premium professional translator, as I know that my productivity - and hence my income - would be slashed to the point where it wouldn't be worthwhile doing this job any more. The translation memory massively augments my human memory. It's also faster at retrieving relevant information, and using it often stops me from going completely crazy. The cost (annual subscription) of the licence is a tiny fraction of the income I generate using it.