This summer, I’ve had a number of conversations with fellow freelance translators about some of the negative aspects of translation memory tools (CAT tools, TenTs, you know what I mean!). While I use and enjoy OmegaT and Wordfast, I agree that TM tools are not right for every translator or for every translation.
TM tools have some obvious selling points, primarily that they allow us to work faster and more consistently. I’ll never forget the first job on which I used Wordfast: it was a computer skills manual, and the final chapter consisted of fill-in-the-blank questions that were drawn word for word from the previous chapters. Using Wordfast, I think it took me an hour to translate that last chapter, which was about 3,000 words long. Without a TM tool, that task would have required an excruciating amount of copying and pasting from the material I had already translated. Right there, I felt that Wordfast was worth every cent I had paid for it.
I also think that TM tools have some ergonomic advantages. If you’re working between two documents, it’s very tiring on your eyes to be constantly glancing back and forth between them as you lose and find your place over and over again. Less typing is obviously better for your hands, and the colored text fields that many TM tools use are much easier on your eyes than a glaring white screen with black type. I have a tendency to read too fast, and I like the fact that the TM segments force me to look at only one sentence at a time; I find that when using OmegaT or Wordfast, I can also work about 10% faster even if the document does not have many repetitions.
Some of the disadvantages of TM tools are obvious, and some are more subtle. It’s easy to see that match propagation (automatically applying a given translation throughout your document or project) also means error propagation. It’s horrifying enough to receive a reference document from a client that includes a serious translation error, but it’s far worse to think that that error has been enshrined in the client’s TM database and provided to every translator that the client works with.
Over time, and after attending Translate in the Catskills and other writing-focused workshops for translators, I’ve also come to believe that TM tools often impede good writing. The segment-by-segment approach has its advantages, but it definitely does not encourage smooth writing that flows throughout the document since you’re working on only one segment at a time. In some TM tools I’ve demo’d (not OmegaT or Wordfast), your translated segments even disappear from the screen once you approve them, which makes it almost impossible to create a text that has a cohesive tone. TM tools also make it difficult to reverse the order of words or sentences, since you then end up with matches that don’t match up. The TM tool has no way of knowing that you decided to restructure a paragraph for stylistic reasons, it simply matches your source and target sentences and assumes that they mean the same thing.
Since I’ve spent this year focusing on the quality of my writing, I’ve changed my workflow for jobs on which I use a TM tool. Instead of proofreading directly in the tool’s interface, I clean up/compile the translation, then proofread from that target-only document, then input my changes into the TM tool interface. This takes longer than proofing directly in the tool, but I’ve found that when I’m proofing mostly for style, tone and flow, it’s nearly impossible to work in one segment at a time.
Any other TM pros/cons/best practices out there?
You forgot to mention one benefit that people tend to forget – you can’t skip any text with a TEnT. Before TEnTs translators would occasionally skip a sentence or even a paragraph. It was easy to do if you had skipped ahead or if your eyes got focused somewhere else in the text. Now it is a lot less prevalent.
Any translator who uses a TEnT should know how to expand and shrink segments as needed. It gives you more control and allows you to combine sentences when needed. Plus, like you, I always do a final read-through once I’ve cleaned up the file and tinker with the style then.
Thanks Jill, you’re so right! I agree that (especially for those of us who tend to read to fast), working in the tool interface forces you to slow down and look at the exact segment you’re translating. Thanks for the tip about expanding and shrinking segments, very useful!!
A definite pro for translation memory is being able to use the same language throughout projects over the years. Many clients prefer to keep wording consistent, especially if multiple translators have been hired over time. Clients can pick their preferred translation once and use the same terms over and over again, which not only makes it simpler for translators but makes companies look more professional!
As a Wordfast user, I also like how easy it is to edit segments after they’ve been translated. The .txt TM document is so straightforward that anyone can pick it up in no time!
A con? Translators can become too dependent on TM and lose the context of a project if they don’t carefully edit the text after translation.
One of things that keeps me from adding some tools to my stable is exactly the way they impede stylistic editing. With WF, I can turn off the paragraph marks, and all the segmentation disappears from view, allowing me to concentrate on the text flow and the editing process.
@Jill: you can usually skip entire sections of text, you’ll just need to remove them by hand once you’re done. But you’re right, if the tool won’t let you do what you need to, it’s not much of a tool.
If a translation tool makes something as important as stylistic & quality review impossible, there’s no advantage to it. Imagine a stove that wouldn’t let you adjust the flame to your purposes. Can’t imagine professional chefs would be flocking to buy it…
I use Wordfast or memoQ for every single translation, no matter how small. Can’t live without my glossaries anymore! They also prevent mistyping (I’m not a good typist).
For proofreading purposes, I hide the source segments (CTRL+,) in Word instead of cleaning up the doc. If you decide to change anything, alt+down opens that segment.
With memoQ I export the files as bilingual documents and proofread them in Word, then reimport them to implement the changes. So far, it’s working well for me.
The thing I like best about CAT-tools is the consistency I can provide for large, ongoing software translation projects. That would be nearly impossible without this tool. The glossary and termbase functions are also invaluable for projects where you have to follow client specific lingo. I particularly like the Wordfast-glossary function that highlights the glossary word in the source text and you can just add the translated word by clicking. Without a CAT-tool this would be very tedious to look up and add.
It all depends on what type of text you are translating I guess. For marketing texts it is a must to proof/edit a final translated copy in order to produce high quality texts.
PS! Just signed up for your pre-conference seminar. Looking forward to seeing you.
>> In some TM tools I’ve demo’d
>> your translated segments even
>> disappear from the screen once
>> you approve them, which makes it
>> almost impossible to create a text
>> that has a cohesive tone.
Horrible thought. Maintaining an overview and keeping the flow of a text is one reason why I’ve always favored columnar working layouts over horizontal ones in a CAT tool.
Jill’s point about combining segments is worth remembering; depending on the tool and source format you can even reorder lists, merge and rewrite paragraphs, or suppress segmentation below the paragraph level. This may require some post-editing of the format, but so what?
I’m told that Mark Twain’s writing style changed after he began using a typewriter or whatever the early machines of that type were called. And I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I have found significant differences between every mode I use to translate, whether it’s dictation, CAT/TEnT work from a keyboard, typing in a text editor or scribbling in a notebook. For that matter, I think my writing style changes a bit depending on whether I use a ballpoint pen, a fountain pen, brass nibs or swan quills. (Yes, I really do write with swan quills. After one of my idiot hunter friends shot the swans, it seemed immoral not to use the feathers.)
I think my most interesting experiences recently were from translating on paper then transcribing to memoQ, where I did my final terminology checks and other QA. Working on paper, I was much slower, but I noticed things about the text that probably would have escaped me otherwise. When typing my translation into memoQ I was shocked by some of the errors and omissions I made on paper.
I don’t usually have time for games like that, so I stick to my TEnT. But I think that for important, short advertising texts or pieces requiring some rhetorical flair (like the speeches I love to translate) this mixed approach might be interesting to use more often.
For certain types of text at least, one way to avoid the pedestrain segment-by-segment “translated” style (which, as you note, is a true drawback of most CAT tools) is to use the CAT tool for the translation, fully taking advantage of the TM benefits, then edit the translation in the CAT tool, clean it, ad do a final stylistic editing in which the translation may be changed again, reversing sentences, moving paragraphs, and so on.
Using this technique (which, of course, is not appropriate for every text type), the TM would never match perfectly the last draft, but would still speed up translation, normalize terminology, and offer the other benefits we normally associate with CAT tools.
>Since I’ve spent this year focusing on the quality of my writing<
It's great to hear that you are doing this. I did the same thing last year. It was SUCH a worthwhile effort. The focus for technical translators like me is often the terminology, and not often the style. I know my work is so much better now, and I've learnt so much about brevity and clarity in writing.
I also use a tool for everything (Trados) then clean up the target document afterwards, particularly if the text has any 'flowing' paragraphs. This isn't a common problem in my line of work. The pros outweigh the cons by far for me.
I wonder what is the percentage of translators who, like me, don’t use any translation tool, other than post-its with words in both languages stuck on the monitor screen. Has anybody any idea?
I wrote a blog about it some time ago and all the people who left a comment basically told me to get on with the program and start using Trados or some other tool. I might be tempted to look at something that cost 200 dollars or so, but Trados is out of question.
I think I will continue ignoring their advice.
If we just use “tools” to translate, aren’t we just glorified photocopiers? We still have brains but we mostly use them to do what machine tells.
As long as I can still translate 5,000 words on a good day, I think I will stick with post-its.
Thanks for your comment Steve! You’re not the only successful translator who is sticking (so to speak) with Post-It Notes…I use CAT tools but I also think that if your system isn’t broken, why fix it?
Hi,
I surfed in here looking for opinions on translation software. I do translations for a few clients that are highly repetitive and believe these tools could be of great use for me on specific jobs.
I did some research last year and almost bought Wordfast, tried Trados and hated it, and in the end didn’t get anything. From the comments above, it seems that Wordfast is well liked.
Would anyone offer other opinions on other tools? Has anyone used TransStudio?
Amy
Dear Amy,
If you are starting as a freelance translator, you will soon discover that your life will most probably drift away from the romantic image of the mostly free for adventurous challenges, around-the-world-travelling and life-enjoying person, and that the so-called “trandslation industry” is getting more and more a fast-paced and stressful work environment, in which you don’t count the hours spent even at night and during week-ends on urgent-to-deliver jobs, while getting paid less and less per word, due to the fierce competition of a growing mass of more-or-less-polyglots and self-called-translators, driven to this “globalization” gold mine by lack of other job perspectives, in times of crisis.
If you want to succeed in this business and get a decent life out of it, you must work a lot and/or fast, to counter the growing tendancy of low rate per word.
A lot ? Many hours in a row ? On the long run, this will affect your health and quality of life.
Fast ? To work fast, you definitely need to invest in technology, in some efficient tools to do your work better and faster.
And for us translators, the minimal set of these tools are : 1) a good PC, preferably with plenty of memory; 2) a good translation memory tool; 3) a good and preferably permanent internet connection, for terminology lookup (to be honnest, paper or even CD dictionnaries are getting more and more repalceable by the Internet, if you know how/where to search it for trustworthy material).
Optionally, you could also want to use a Voice Recognition tool like Dragon Naturally Speaking, to dictate instead of typing, and which I read here and there is really a productivity booster, once it is duly trained and adapted to correclty recognize your voice.
Dear Steve,
The same goes to you.
Whereas you seem to do quite well and earn some decent money with your work, I am pretty sure you owe this to your very specialized and rare niche market : technical patents to be translated from Japanese into English.
And, of course, because you have proven to be good at it 🙂 Well done, congratulations 🙂
But once again, I really think you would gain a lot from using an integrated translation environment, combining translation memory, terminology management, and a user friendly translation editor.
If not to be able to take more jobs and earn more money, this at least would leave you with more spare time to take care of your lovely garden and/or have a nice and relaxing walk on the beach 🙂
So, after these fisrt depressed and depressing words about our community, dear Amy and Steve, I hope this does not come too late, and that you did not (yet) do the wrong choice as regards to CAT tools.
Apparently, from what I read and hear all around the Internet, I was lucky enough not to have enough money to spend on Trados at the time I started looking for a way to increase my translation output per day, when under time pressure I had to translate dozens of highly repetitive user manuals about very similar pieces of telecommunication equipment.
A friend of mine gave me a copy of a pirated version 6 of that software, which looked nice and useful when she was using and explaining it to me, but that I did not manage to put to work again, when back home.
Luckily, my research led me per chance to some freelance translators’ blog mentionning CAT tools, and I then came accross MemoQ, that had just been released with one of its first commercial versions, back in 2006 I think.
At that time they let us use the full version for a 90 days evaluation period, which would be more than enough for me to finish the job.
I got it up and running in a couple of hours, and finished the job in no time, leveraging all those “click here / click there” sentence repetitions to their full extent.
As Kevin and Val, I use MemoQ.
I use it exclusively, and for each and every translation, recycling all my previous work everyday, and enriching my TM everyday too with new bits of text, sometimes based on a first automatically fed to me GT MT draft that I then only need to correct.
I could not imagine myself without a translation memory system, and I must admit I am specifically addicted to MemoQ 🙂 which is actually the only CAT tool I really know, and that’s enough for me, as it lets me do 100 percent of my translation work.
So Amy and Steve, have a look at Kilgray’s website for the full list of features and supported file formats of MemoQ, but just to mention a few, I would say that MemoQ is :
– powerful
– versatile
– easy to use and learn
– very user friendly and intuitive
– has an unlimited number of language combinations, at no extra cost
– deals easily with an enormous set of “exotic” alphabets
– allows connecting to a central server for real time simultaneous online collaboration among several partners working on the same job for translation, proofreading, terminology, project management, task reassigning if needed, all at once and in parallel
– …
(the list could go on and on…. I will stop here or fill up the page…. 😉 )
By the way, Kilgray is currently offering a 40% discount on MemoQ, via a ProZ group buy.
Only until the 28th of March and only for a limited number, so… hurry if you want to tak ethat opportunity to have your own copy at this discounted price !
Enjoy!
Martin
I’m finding that translation tools help if you need to keep the format of something like a brochure or a flyer or maybe a birth certificate.
They suck when they freeze up and won’t even upload your document in the first place. I’m finding that I have to re-do the original document in the original language before I can even load it up into the “tool” in the first place.
Part of the problem may be that I’m on the newest version of Mac OS High Sierra and a lot of the tools are only compatible with Windows or Linux and not even fully compatible with those, if you are just starting out and can’t afford to buy the full version. I’m talking about OmegaT, FluencyNow in the “trial” version, and WordFast in the “demo” mode. But what can I do, until I get paid I can’t be paying for software.