CAT (Translation Memory) tools

[Jeff ALLEN <jeff -at- ELDA -dot- FR>]

>  Adrienne Gutmans <adrienne -at- ISDN -dot- NET -dot- IL> wrote on  Thu, 12 Aug 1999:
>Subject: CAT Tools
>I just got back from the FIT conference in Mons, Belgium which was very
>interesting. There is more and more reference to CAT tools in academic
>presentations, but unfortunately most of the translators at the
>conference just could not conceptualize the advantages of using
>translation memory.

For fear of being replaced by computers.  This is a very common attitude.
The
LANTRA-L translation discussion list achives contain many discussions on
this
topic.  I am currently working on a presentation for the Translating and the
Computer 21 conference (November 1999, London) on the topic of developing
authoring memory systems.

>The two most professional translation memory tools have been developed
>by Trados and Star Transit. A third one, Deja Vu, can--according to a
>couple of colleagues of mine--be problematic.

In the ITI Bulletin (April 1999), Michael Benis produced a good comparative,
and fairly unbiaised, review of 5 TM systems (Star Transit, Trados WB, Atril
Deja Vu, SDL's SDLX, and IBM Translation Manager).  I'm working on a short
reply to that 18-19 page review with just a few comments from the point of a
developer, trainer and end-user of memory-based authoring and translation
systems.

FYI, Please note the following article recently published in the European
Language Resources Association (ELRA) Newsletter :

O'Brien, Sharon. 1999.  Translation Memory as a linguistic resource in the
Localisation Industry: A snapshot of the present and glance into the future.
ELRA Newsletter. Vol. 4, No. 2. (April - June),  pp. 8-9.

I am currently editing articles submitted by Atril and Trados that are to
appear in upcoming issues of the ELRA Newsletter.  IBM and SDL have
indicated
that they would also like to submit articles on the topic of TM systems and
language resource databases for the newsletter.

>All three were presented at the conference. Most open-minded translators
>willing to open their minds to the value of CAT tools left there with
>some kind of an undertanding of their usefulness for translations with
>repetitive terminology or phrases such as technical, legal, financial
>and other types.

Some new techniques in memory-based technologies are making it possible to
use
the TM systems on jobs that are not just highly repetitive.  Upcoming ELRA
articles and my Translating and the Computer 21 presentation will explain
this
more.

>I personally use Transit as I find it more pwerful than the others. It
>also has one main advantage over them, which is that it does not have a
>live database. Live databases have the horrible habit of gobbling up
>loads of memory and thus causing horrendous problems such as the
>inability to export the finished document. This doe not happen with
>Transit.

The Transit approach of corresponding files, rather than a single, large
translation memory, is advantageous in some ways (especially for free-lance
independent translators), but it is disadvantageous in other other contexts.
I
will be discussing the pros and cons of integrating TM systems in large
documentation workflow systems in my presentation in November.  I have
worked
in environments where we decided to actually develop our own TM tool on-site
because the existing commercial products (all of the above) at that time
were
not a functional alternative for a high-volume translation environment with
highly-reusable files (not just sentences).  TM developers are quite aware
of
these ideas, as confirmed at the seminar mentioned below:

ALLEN, Jeffrey. 1998.  Practical issues for implementing new NLP
technologies
in industrial environments.  Seminar presented to the R&D team of Trados SA,
Brussels, Belgium, 25 July 1998.

Best,

Jeff
Technical Manager - ELRA/ELDA
jeff -at- elda -dot- fr

 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=