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This trend of agencies deciding which tools the freelancer should use...
Thread poster: Alison High
PENN TRANSL8 Budd
PENN TRANSL8 Budd
Local time: 11:09
German to English
+ ...
CAT Tools and Agencies May 2, 2018

Some insights into required CAT tools and agencies from the thread.
1) There are three CAT tools I have available, two through agencies. I work only with those three. You cannot waste time learning a tool you may not be using three months later.
2) When working with a server-based CAT tool. I always work offline and upload/download. It saves a lot of time. If they insist on working online, it's not worth the time to be spent waiting unless they're paying by the hour, and in that cas
... See more
Some insights into required CAT tools and agencies from the thread.
1) There are three CAT tools I have available, two through agencies. I work only with those three. You cannot waste time learning a tool you may not be using three months later.
2) When working with a server-based CAT tool. I always work offline and upload/download. It saves a lot of time. If they insist on working online, it's not worth the time to be spent waiting unless they're paying by the hour, and in that case it won't be worth to them the time spent waiting they have to pay. Also, though I see the advantages of the cloud, my translation work is never saved on someone else's server. It is all on my system, backed up on an external hard drive.
3) You learn in Software Programming 101 about "garbage in, garbage out". The CAT tool is only as good as the translators that loaded the TM. The rub is that agencies will weigh the job against previous matches. Some project managers will pay extra for previous "matches" you had to redo that turned out to have been mistranslated, emphasizing "some". Approach CAT tools with the understanding that the TM will likely be only as good as the translators that used the TM before you.
4) I will not buy a license for a CAT tool to have an agency's business. The cost is too often greater than what will be earned. However, there's nothing hurt by learning something if it does not require much time to learn, the agency is cooperative and the opportunity cost of losing other jobs is not too great.
5) There are certain jobs where a CAT tool is a necessity, and others where it is a waste of time. Knowing the difference is key. It's like knowing when it makes sense to use a calculator and when it makes more sense to use the math tricks that existed before calculators came along, including fingers.
6) If you don't mind me going off topic a bit, a major issue I am encountering is opaqueness among teams where the project manager is the only one that knows everybody involved in the job. And there are an increasing number of cases where you know nothing more about the project manager than the first name. From playing sports and working in industry, I have learned that when you are working in a team, you should have an idea about the team members, their weaknesses, strengths and even something about their backgrounds. it works in virtual teams, too. The best teams anywhere I have discovered are the ones where everybody knows each other and anticipates each other, and in exchange they honor each other.
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John Speese
John Speese  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 06:09
German to English
+ ...
CAT tool trend May 2, 2018

I'm glad I'm not the only one here who doesn't like CAT tools! I generally find all of them difficult to learn, not particularly user-friendly, and I think that they cause as many, if not more, problems than they supposedly solve. Managing those tags/codes/placeables can be extremely difficult. And then there is the cost for the ones for which you have to buy a license. I have accepted jobs from companies who want you to use their own online CAT tool, but always under the condition that I need t... See more
I'm glad I'm not the only one here who doesn't like CAT tools! I generally find all of them difficult to learn, not particularly user-friendly, and I think that they cause as many, if not more, problems than they supposedly solve. Managing those tags/codes/placeables can be extremely difficult. And then there is the cost for the ones for which you have to buy a license. I have accepted jobs from companies who want you to use their own online CAT tool, but always under the condition that I need to try it first to see if I can use it. And I do have a license to Wordfast 5.0 because I have a couple of long-standing, good clients who insist on a CAT tool. But given the choice, I'd rather work without CAT tools altogether!Collapse


 
Elena Kharitonova
Elena Kharitonova  Identity Verified
Russian Federation
Local time: 14:09
Member (2016)
German to Russian
+ ...
Why not? May 3, 2018

Dear Alison High, I appreciate you for this topic. It inspired me to think about highlights of my own „CAT-tools evolution“:

Year 2001: I am 18 years old. I learn how to turn on/off my PC, how to type in a .doc file and how to save this file.

2003-2011: I translate in Word.

2011-2013: I learn how to use Trados, make first translations in this program.

2013-2016: I try other CAT-programs (Deja Vu, Across, Memsource, MemoQ, SmartCAT, SDL Worl
... See more
Dear Alison High, I appreciate you for this topic. It inspired me to think about highlights of my own „CAT-tools evolution“:

Year 2001: I am 18 years old. I learn how to turn on/off my PC, how to type in a .doc file and how to save this file.

2003-2011: I translate in Word.

2011-2013: I learn how to use Trados, make first translations in this program.

2013-2016: I try other CAT-programs (Deja Vu, Across, Memsource, MemoQ, SmartCAT, SDL World Server etc.) offered by my clients. Actually, the CAT-tools have the same principles, similar posssible issues (tags, QA checks) and very similar functions. All I need is just to write down, learn and use 7-10 basic shortcuts for each of these programs and to agree the way of rush communication (Skype or phone call) with my PM to solve possible issues, when I translate in a new program or on a new platform.

2016-present time: Just using a definite CAT-tool is not enough for some agencies. Such agencies create online platforms for the whole cooperation process: I create my account and fill in a questionnairy about my experience and services, accept projects, translate, communicate with PMs, run QA checks, issue invoices on these cloud-based platforms. I use my own translation memories for rush and excellent translation of contracts, I translate in the CAT-tools of my clients the updated versions of previously translated manuals and descriptions of goods using TMs created by me earlier. It is convenient both for my clients and me. I just prefer not to give discounts for fuzzy matches.

Some agencies demand not only using a particular CAT-tool. They create the whole workflow and invite me to become the part of it, I try these workflows and in most cases (not in all the cases) I accept their way of work.
I think of my „CAT-tools evolution“ and reply to you: my choice is to try new ways of cooperation offered by clients. Why not?
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thalassia
thalassia
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:09
Italian to English
Technological advances and intellectual property May 3, 2018

Alison High wrote:

I'm increasingly getting jobs for which agencies specify I need to an online version of their preferred CAT tool i.e. use their tool or don't get the job.

I have a long list of points on what I think about that, but I'm interested to hear what other translators out there think about this trend.


There are two issues here: technological advances and privacy.
Online tools only make sense if your hard disk is 2 gb, and space is limited as it was 30 years ago when a CD-ROM was almost as large as the hard disk. As disk size has increased exponentially, you can now have all your resources, dictionaries, glossaries, memories and huge files to translate on your disk and you can work quickly and efficently, going online solely for research, mailing and file transfer purposes. Technological advances and the associated business/advertising practices, and the increased number of users, have also made the internet congested - spam, preponderance of graphics, mobile phone usage, etc. This slows the internet down and makes it inconvenient/inefficent to use online CAT tools where segment confirmation, etc. takes much longer than the actual translating. I have tried it once (about 10 years ago using Trados) and have never again accepted a job using online tools.
The other issue is intellectual property. When I translate something I like to have it in a memory to be used again, if possible. Online tools deny you this possibility, by making the memory created and glossaries read-only and exporting the files for alignment impossible, and, as mentioned by another commentator, the memories and glossaries can be quite simply wrong and therefore any machine-operated quality control will be wrong.
I like to have complete control of the translation process and I insist that the original document, in whatever format, be provided. That is what I am translating, after all. Any memories are probably not the intellectual property of an agency, they are merely a middleman. SDL (the owners of Trados) is an agency!
As an aside, do you really want to store your data on a site that you do not control, even though it promises privacy? I am thinking here of cloud storage, etc. which is mainly owned and controlled by large corporations based in the United States, where personal privacy is of no great concern to the legislature. The privacy of such sites is questionable.
I do not want to into the CAT tool (whether Trados,MemoQ or others) or not debate, They are generally extremely useful, but sometimes it is better not to use them.


Christine Andersen
 
Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL
Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:09
Member (2004)
English to Italian
I try them... May 3, 2018

if I don't like them, I decline... nobody is forcing me to do anything.

 
Alxgor
Alxgor  Identity Verified
Russian Federation
Local time: 15:09
English to Russian
+ ...
An agency is not a customer. May 7, 2018

Kay-Viktor Stegemann wrote:

The customer is always right. The agency is my customer. When the agency wants me to use MemoQ, Trados, Memsource, Across, Transifex, Crowdin, MotionPoint, Qordoba, Smartling, GTT or any obscure or selfmade platform, I will do it, as long as the thing works and does not hamper me in my work, and as long the agency pays me a professional rate. It's their call. I just need to know the basics, like how to confirm a segment, how to copy source to target, how to do a concordance search or insert tags, and some other keyboard shortcuts, and then I'm all set.

Do you still use the same tools that you used ten or twenty years ago? I don't. You have to be prepared to learn something new every other day, this is particularly true for a translator.


An agency is a dealer reselling my services. Relationships with dealers are not quite the same as with a customer. Part of it, they are not always right.


 
Kay-Viktor Stegemann
Kay-Viktor Stegemann
Germany
Local time: 11:09
English to German
In memoriam
95% of my customers are agencies May 7, 2018

Alxgor wrote:

An agency is a dealer reselling my services. Relationships with dealers are not quite the same as with a customer. Part of it, they are not always right.


That is probably different for every translator. In my case, 95% of my projects come from agencies and 5% from direct clients. Therefore I consider agencies my customers and treat them as such. I deliver my services to agencies. Of course I have the end customer in mind when I create a translation, but in most cases, I do not communicate with end clients, I communicate with agency managers. I try to deliver my best service to them and to accommodate their wishes. I try to build strong relations with them and to raise awareness about me and what I can do for them. In other words, I am marketing my services to them. Exactly what any businessperson tries to do with their customer base. And the phrase "the customer is always right" should be understood in this sense. Of course there are cases where the wishes of customers (agencies) are inappropriate and need to be discussed or refused, but this should be an exception. Using the CAT tool or whatever tool of the customer's (agency's) choice is not such an exception. It is part of going the extra mile for your customer, of delivering premium service to them.


 
Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:09
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Could not have put it better myself May 7, 2018

Kay-Viktor Stegemann wrote:
... I consider agencies my customers and treat them as such. ... I communicate with agency managers. I try to deliver my best service to them and to accommodate their wishes. I try to build strong relations with them and to raise awareness about me and what I can do for them. In other words, I am marketing my services to them. Exactly what any businessperson tries to do with their customer base. And the phrase "the customer is always right" should be understood in this sense. Of course there are cases where the wishes of customers (agencies) are inappropriate and need to be discussed or refused, but this should be an exception. Using the CAT tool or whatever tool of the customer's (agency's) choice is not such an exception. It is part of going the extra mile for your customer, of delivering premium service to them.

I am in a very similar situation and I basically take the same approach. It works.

Dan


 
Alison High
Alison High  Identity Verified
Switzerland
Local time: 11:09
French to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks for your opinions May 22, 2018

Thanks to everyone who shared their opinions.

Sometimes I think maybe we assume a lot about other people. I am paid per word, not per hour. I am a fast translator so this model works for me... until I'm asked to use a system that slows me down, either because of internet connection speed or a translation interface that is not optimised for my use, or that has shortcuts I cannot customise so they are different to the ones I normally use, slowing me down at the start of the job in que
... See more
Thanks to everyone who shared their opinions.

Sometimes I think maybe we assume a lot about other people. I am paid per word, not per hour. I am a fast translator so this model works for me... until I'm asked to use a system that slows me down, either because of internet connection speed or a translation interface that is not optimised for my use, or that has shortcuts I cannot customise so they are different to the ones I normally use, slowing me down at the start of the job in question and the start of the next job when I switch back to my usual system, or by requiring me to click on a highlighted term to see the TB item for that term, meaning I have to move from keyboard to mouse multiple times per segment or not clearly highlighting the differences for fuzzy matches or not automatically populating segments that are 100% matches, not to mention the fact that comments are linked to a segment not to a word in the segment. I use a lot of customisation options on my PC (to reduce eye strain etc) and I use scripts where I can to make things faster.... all of which do not work, or take time to be tweaked to work on a web-based interface.

Learning one or two web-based tools and tweaking what I have to use them? I may be OK with that, under certain circumstances, but there are way more than one or two out there, and they are being forced on us more and more. I can understand that agencies want to manage who has what translation, so a translation management system. I'm just not so happy about being told "use our online tool or don't get this job".

One important point that no-one has brought up (maybe because I work differently to everyone else?) is my ability to see where I'm at in a translation whilst not releasing draft translations to the shared TM, thus confusing or annoying other translators potentially working on the same project. I complete the translation of a segment so it changes status to translated, but it is not yet my finished translation.... that comes after I have translated the entire document and re-read it. But the web-based interfaces I have seen all seem to think its OK to release that first-draft translation to others, which I don't think is a good thing for quality. We often find a better match for the translation of a specific term used throughout the document when we get to the end of a document, so I would want a "release TM" option before anything I've translated is sent to others.
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Stephanie Busch
Nadja Balogh
 
Dimitar Dimitrov
Dimitar Dimitrov
Bulgaria
Local time: 12:09
English to Bulgarian
+ ...
Generally,no Mar 27, 2019

Not in my case. To me this happens only occasionally.

 
Yuu Andou
Yuu Andou
Local time: 19:09
Member
German to Japanese
+ ...
The usage of Cat-Tool does to harm to translator and end customer May 31, 2019

Kay-Viktor Stegemann wrote:

The customer is always right. The agency is my customer. When the agency wants me to use MemoQ, Trados, Memsource, Across, Transifex, Crowdin, MotionPoint, Qordoba, Smartling, GTT or any obscure or selfmade platform, I will do it, as long as the thing works and does not hamper me in my work, and as long the agency pays me a professional rate. It's their call. I just need to know the basics, like how to confirm a segment, how to copy source to target, how to do a concordance search or insert tags, and some other keyboard shortcuts, and then I'm all set.

Do you still use the same tools that you used ten or twenty years ago? I don't. You have to be prepared to learn something new every other day, this is particularly true for a translator.


I've used several Cat-Tools such as MemoQ, SDL Trados and Across according to agencie's insructions and realized that
the usage of Cat-Tool is against my interests as well as end customer's interests.

I think that each sentence should be translated depending on context. In order to achieve it, I must understand the meaning of
the sentences before and after this one. Despite this, the usage of Cat-Tool forces me to ignore the meaning of context,
when it comes to so-called "fuzzy match" segment.

In addition, it seems to me that most of translation agencies with which I collaborated can't (or won't) manage and
maintain the quality of TM (Translation Memory).

My conclusion: Cat-Tool is beneficial for translation agencies with poor management skill who want to get rich quick effortlessly.


Kaspars Melkis
Tradupro17
Gareth Callagy
 
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 11:09
Member (2003)
Danish to English
+ ...
I refuse to work with clients' CATs May 31, 2019

Of course I am not still using the same tools as I was ten years ago, for better or worse.

I really Windows XP a lot better than the current version, but I've got used to it.
Thank heavens the latest Trados Studio is a very different beast from the Workbench and TagEditor I used back then. Studio 2009 was on the way, and it had its teething troubles, but Studio has come a long way.

I insist on using my own CAT because having to mess about with client software thr
... See more
Of course I am not still using the same tools as I was ten years ago, for better or worse.

I really Windows XP a lot better than the current version, but I've got used to it.
Thank heavens the latest Trados Studio is a very different beast from the Workbench and TagEditor I used back then. Studio 2009 was on the way, and it had its teething troubles, but Studio has come a long way.

I insist on using my own CAT because having to mess about with client software throws me back to the beginner stage. If I can't attach my own glossaries and a TM or two, I am not interested. I respect other ways of storing your notes and experience, but I have put quite a lot of work into updating TMs to use with my CAT, and if I can't do that, it slows me down.

I use the advanced features on my CAT and especially AutoSuggest, AutoCorrect and the Concordance. Those are cumulative, so if you have been using a CAT for several years, it is MUCH better than starting from scratch.

I am not technically minded, so I do not find it easy to switch from one CAT to another, and the mechanics distract me if they are different from the short cuts and routines I am used to. (I had the same problem when the family had two cars - I was not good at driving my husband's car...) If I am distracted, I can't concentrate on translating, and it affects the quality of my work.

Apart from all that, I have enough clients who use Studio or no CAT, leaving me free to decide for myself how to set up their projects. I am semi-retired, so I can afford to be fussy!

I have tried several different CATs over the years. Some were OK, some were a real pain. I have used client CATs, but always ended up strongly preferring my own. So my advice is: if you can get on with the CAT and like the client, then fine - if, like Dan Lucas, you can make it a good business for you.

I once spent a holiday weekend - unpaid - learning to use a client's CAT. They never sent any work, just a new version of the CAT a couple of years later, and an offer of a lot of low-paid work. They said lots of other translators liked their CAT, but it was online and I could not attach my own TMS etc. (That was the whole idea. They said it was to ensure consistency, but what they meant was that they did not want people like me who look things up and think what they are writing to go criticising their dubious terminology!)
Nothing ever came of that offer.

MemoQ was not too bad, but I have always persuaded clients to let me use Studio anyway. If I had started with MemoQ instead of Studio, I might have gone for it, but it did not exist when I first started using CATs.

It's a free world, but I explain to clients why I like them or why I don't! Of course, I have lost clients that way, but the positive feedback has secured me some of the best. And then they can accept a little constructive criticism if it is necessary! Clients don't even imagine they are always right. Go into a healthy dialogue with them, and often there is a solution that suits both sides.
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DZiW (X)
Gareth Callagy
Stephanie Busch
 
Robert Rietvelt
Robert Rietvelt  Identity Verified
Local time: 11:09
Member (2006)
Spanish to Dutch
+ ...
Ask more Jun 2, 2019

I didn't read the whole forum, but I have a price for translations with my prefered CAT (= Studio), and for all the slower offsprings, for which I ask more, time is money.

Actually I think that we as professionals should have/be able to work with more CAT's. Regretfully I do have to admit I don't, but I am flexible.

Studio, for example, can handle formats of other (slow) Cat's. Last month I received a big project to be done in Wordbee. A little research learned me that
... See more
I didn't read the whole forum, but I have a price for translations with my prefered CAT (= Studio), and for all the slower offsprings, for which I ask more, time is money.

Actually I think that we as professionals should have/be able to work with more CAT's. Regretfully I do have to admit I don't, but I am flexible.

Studio, for example, can handle formats of other (slow) Cat's. Last month I received a big project to be done in Wordbee. A little research learned me that XLF was compatible for both systems. The question is if PM's are willing to import the files in their system (mostly not).

[Edited at 2019-06-03 09:20 GMT]
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gauloise
gauloise
United States
Local time: 11:09
Member (2020)
Italian to English
+ ...
I prefer online CAT Tools Jun 26, 2019

I may be in the minority but I prefer online CAT tools, they are pretty easy to use.

I did a job in SDL Trados recently, and I felt like pulling my hair out. It was the most recent version but it felt like I was using a program from 1998. Nothing intuitive about it at all.


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 11:09
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
It's the ribbon... Jun 27, 2019

gauloise wrote:
I did a job in SDL Trados recently, and I felt like pulling my hair out. It was the most recent version but it felt like I was using a program from 1998. Nothing intuitive about it at all.


It's the ribbon. Developers don't realise that for complex utilities with multiple stages of use, a ribbon (which offers only very limited room for buttons etc) is not the most ideal way to let the user communicate with the program. So the reason why you could not figure out what to do "next" was because there wasn't any room on the ribbon for that next function, and it was probably somewhere else where you could not see it unless you already knew where to find it.


 
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