Forum: CAT Tools Technical Help
Topic: Why are more and more agencies these days choosing memoQ or SDL Studio as their "preferred" tool?
Poster: Michael Beijer
Post title: The Choppy Segmented Sea.
[quote]2nl wrote:
[quote]Michael Beijer wrote:
Actually the translator needs additional time for the TM handling, compared to a simple, overtypable .doc file.
[/quote]
I import everything in my CAT tool. Even press releases. I really like this presentation of source and target below each other. The big disadvantage of overtyping is: once you have overtyped any text, it's gone. (Unless you have a print out :).) [/quote]
Funny that you should say that, as I was thinking exactly the opposite just today. Let me explain.
For a few years now I have been doing press releases for company X, which I have always done in a CAT tool. For no particular reason, yesterday, I decided to try to translate one of these press releases using the same method I used many, many moons ago, when I had just started translating and didn't yet use a CAT tool: I used to create a copy of the Word document, and open the two docs side-by-side, using MS Word's cool ‘View Side By Side’ feature. Anyway, so this is how I translated this press release. I actually had to open my CAT tool to look up a few specific terms, as my memory never has been that great. And guess what? I actually discovered that a few of the things that I had stored in my TM, which I have been automatically using for months, if not years, were ... suboptimal. I was also stuck by something which has been niggling me now for years when translating in CAT tools: how working in segments can really mess up the flow of your translation, and result in a stilted, choppy text. Probably no biggie with your product manuals, but not so great with many other kind of text. Forcing your target text into the form of your source text will often create a strange sounding target text. Of course, CAT tools allow you to merge and split segments (unless some idiot PM sent you a malconfigured SDL Studio project file), but this often isn't enough. It wil often be necessary to do some serious moving around of phrases etc. to create a target text that doesn't sound like a translation.
For a very interesting look at similar issues, see Joy Burrough-Boenisch's great book "Righting English That's Gone Dutch": [url removed] #v=onepage&q=%22choppy%22%20text%20writing%20English%20it's%20going%20Dutch&f=false
Michael
Topic: Why are more and more agencies these days choosing memoQ or SDL Studio as their "preferred" tool?
Poster: Michael Beijer
Post title: The Choppy Segmented Sea.
[quote]2nl wrote:
[quote]Michael Beijer wrote:
Actually the translator needs additional time for the TM handling, compared to a simple, overtypable .doc file.
[/quote]
I import everything in my CAT tool. Even press releases. I really like this presentation of source and target below each other. The big disadvantage of overtyping is: once you have overtyped any text, it's gone. (Unless you have a print out :).) [/quote]
Funny that you should say that, as I was thinking exactly the opposite just today. Let me explain.
For a few years now I have been doing press releases for company X, which I have always done in a CAT tool. For no particular reason, yesterday, I decided to try to translate one of these press releases using the same method I used many, many moons ago, when I had just started translating and didn't yet use a CAT tool: I used to create a copy of the Word document, and open the two docs side-by-side, using MS Word's cool ‘View Side By Side’ feature. Anyway, so this is how I translated this press release. I actually had to open my CAT tool to look up a few specific terms, as my memory never has been that great. And guess what? I actually discovered that a few of the things that I had stored in my TM, which I have been automatically using for months, if not years, were ... suboptimal. I was also stuck by something which has been niggling me now for years when translating in CAT tools: how working in segments can really mess up the flow of your translation, and result in a stilted, choppy text. Probably no biggie with your product manuals, but not so great with many other kind of text. Forcing your target text into the form of your source text will often create a strange sounding target text. Of course, CAT tools allow you to merge and split segments (unless some idiot PM sent you a malconfigured SDL Studio project file), but this often isn't enough. It wil often be necessary to do some serious moving around of phrases etc. to create a target text that doesn't sound like a translation.
For a very interesting look at similar issues, see Joy Burrough-Boenisch's great book "Righting English That's Gone Dutch": [url removed] #v=onepage&q=%22choppy%22%20text%20writing%20English%20it's%20going%20Dutch&f=false
Michael