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1. Trados: The
Mega Service Pack
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Last week SDL released another Service Pack for Trados
Studio. Now, "Service Pack" used to refer to a hodgepodge of bug
fixes, but in the last few years, and especially in our sector, it has
increasingly morphed into full-fledged free interim releases. I
remember the old days when Trados (that is, pre-SDL) released
full, paid upgrades with so few new features that many of you asked,
ehhh, why would I even think about upgrading? So the new version of FrameMaker
was supported and there was better support for Indic languages? Big
deal! (Mind you, it was a big deal for those who needed it, but it
still didn't warrant a paid upgrade if you ask me.) And it always
seemed like a slap in the face for Trados users considering
that Star Transit, Déjà Vu, and Wordfast
users had enjoyed improvements like that for years at no cost.
But now things are different. For the past
several years, SDL has introduced fairly major changes in its Service
Packs, and the same is true with this one: SP2 for Trados
Studio. Again, it's free for users of Studio (if you don't
pay for download volume -- downloading both the updated MultiTerm
and Trados leaves you with about half a gigabyte of data).
The actual functionality changes/improvements
include things like preview for PowerPoint, automatic
propagation of fuzzy matches, support for Quark files (which
have to be processed with CopyFlow),
and support for the InDesign .idml format.
The added Quark feature means that the
decoupling from the old version of Trados is almost complete
(up till now you still needed a copy of Trados 2007 to process Quark
files), and the support for the .idml format instead of .inx means that
Trados is the first tool to directly support this
superior XML-based InDesign export format (I've written about
this in a past edition of the newsletter and in the latest edition of
the Tool Box book).
Also, the machine translation capabilities have
been significantly expanded. Until now there was a time-limited license
for the integration of SDL's own very language-combination-limited MT
engine, but this time limitation has been lifted and two new machine
translation engines have been added. One is -- surprise, surprise -- Google
Translate, and the other is Language Weaver. With LW
you should be able to expect relatively good results if your language
combination includes Arabic. In recent articles for the ATA
Chronicle and the Translation Journal, I've mused on the
remarkable phenomenon that MT is integrated so unabashedly in so many
TEnTs. I'm not sure whether this reflects actual usage among
professional translators or whether this is done because a) it's
relatively cheap and easy to implement and b) it might seem attractive
to some folks on the outside fringes (or maybe project managers?). Be
that as it may, one way that this Trados implementation is
different from most other tools is that it allows the translator to use
customized versions of the SDL or the Language Weaver engine if
the client is able to supply one (and then it indeed might become a
useful tool).
These are the functionality changes that are
coming about with this Service Pack. However, arguably the two
most important changes that are associated with it have to do with
SDL's strategy. The first is the beta release of SDL OpenExchange
-- a forum that allows developers to get access to SDL Studio's
application programming interface (API -- they need to own a license of
Trados Studio Professional for that) and develop
applications for and around Studio. The second is the release
of a new edition of Trados Studio: The Starter Edition.
Let's talk about the OpenExchange first. This is a potentially huge step for Trados
because it could create a whole new infrastructure around the Studio
product that, if attractive enough, might be sufficient reason for
users to either decide to purchase Trados Studio or actually
start using it (which I believe is still not happening to any
remarkable degree). While there are not many applications offered in
the OpenExchange at this point, I would not be surprised to see that change
quickly. And if that were to happen, competitors may well respond in
kind.
And then there is the Starter Edition. This is a version of Trados whose
annual license fee costs 99 Euro and comes with several handicapped
features (no MultiTerm, no Trados 2007, no possibility
to create projects, translate only single files, limited TM size, no
AutoSuggest, no MT plug-in -- you can find all the restrictions in a
table under the link above). During a phone conversation with Trados
a couple weeks ago I admitted to being a little skeptical about this
product. True, 99 Euro a year is not that much money -- but if I were
to wait for a special offer (and there are plenty right now), I could
get something very similarly priced (averaged out over a period of
three years or so) with full functionality. And other vendors' similar
"dumbed down" versions have not fared especially well. So my prediction
is that SDL will either give this version away for free in the near
future or discontinue it altogether.
In some discussion groups, questions were raised
about whether this move with the Starter Edition was a response
to Lionbridge's upcoming (and already much criticized) Translation Workspace offering. But the more I looked into it, the
more I am convinced that it's not. For instance, it is neither possible
to connect to server-based TMs nor to open packages that clients might
send you, so it has little in common with what the Lionbridge offering
intends to do: be a cog in the larger workflow picture.
Oh, and lastly, there is now a free and time-limited
trial version for Trados
Studio (the full edition).
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2.
Ending the News Cycle
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You know how it is. A major disaster happens and
news outlets report about it non-stop -- for about two weeks. Then
either our attention span has faded away or another major event has
happened, as was sadly true in the earthquake in Haiti followed shortly
after by the earthquake in Chile.
Of course, the needs have not been met by those
few weeks of attempted helpfulness, and so it goes.
There are better stories than this, though, and
one is how language technology can make a difference -- not just in a
short burst of helpfulness, but by implementing resources that will be
helpful for a long time to come. This story of how many members of our
industry are coming together to help has been eloquently told in the pages of
MultiLingual, so there is no
reason for me to retell it here.
However, one person whose story is particularly
interesting is Jeff Allen. Many of you may have heard his voice on
sites like Translators Café
and elsewhere promoting a different kind of use for machine translation
technology. Jeff had been collecting data for an English <>
Haitian Creole MT engine through his association with Carnegie Mellon
University, but he had never been able to utilize it because there was
not enough (commercial) interest in that kind of machine translation
engine -- until the earthquake struck.
His data has now been used in powering the
Haitian Creole machine translation engines of the Bing
Translator/Microsoft Translator, Google Translate, Windows Messenger (also supported by Trillian and Easy
Message), and various other MT engines that are presently in
development.
Today
(March 10, 2010) he set up a translation management system that will
allow for the management of ongoing translation needs. If you are
interested in participating, feel
free to contact him.
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3.
This 'n That
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All right, let's get the faux pas of the last
newsletter out of the way first: I mentioned that you need a separate
license for Windows XP to run the Windows XP Mode on Windows
7 Professional and higher. I was mistaken. The license is actually
part of the download from Microsoft. So that's good.
Also, I was reminded that there had been a
fork-off with the development in OmegaT a few years ago. In
2005 Raymond Martin split off and continued the development of his own
product, OmegaT+, and he is very confident about his
application. In his words: "I can guarantee that in spite of some
missing features -- some of which are being worked on for the next
release -- OmegaT+ is a better application overall." Apparently
the "+" in the name is supposed to communicate its superiority as well.
(In my computer pioneer days I was also convinced that WordPerfect
was the perfected version of Word.) To be really honest, I have
been aware of this application for a while and have tried to stay out
of the conflict by kind of ignoring it, but I guess that's not really
fair either. So there it is.
Kevin Lossner also reminded me of the TTX
compatibility of OmegaT (now without the +) through an external
tool called TOXIC (I had mentioned that in a previous
newsletter). There is an interesting write-up on the OmegaT site about compatibility
with all kinds of tools and formats beyond the ones that are supported
directly.
Wordfast Pro has just released version 2.4. (Has anyone else
thought that it might no longer be appropriate to call the Pro
incarnation of that tool Wordfast? After all, the Word
interface is fortunately a thing of the past for that tool.) This was
announced in a number of advertisements in this newsletter in the past
few months. Some of its new features have also been mentioned,
including support for FrameMaker MIF and Trados 2007
TTX files, an alignment module, and (here we go again) Google
Translate integration. These features are now all on board and seem
to work fine (note that I have not tested the alignment feature), but
there are some other surprising new and fine features as well. These
include a real-time (squiggly-underline) spellcheck (nice!), support
for the segmentation exchange standard SRX, and, perhaps most
surprisingly, PDF support.
The makers of Wordfast Pro have decided
to travel a very similar PDF path as the folks from Trados Studio.
Rather than reinventing the wheel, they use a third-party tool (in
their case BCL's easyConverter) that converts PDFs to Word files in
the background to make them translatable. The results are also
comparable to those of Trados Studio. Relatively simple and
short PDFs convert seamlessly, and you can convert the resulting Word
file after its translation without a terrible amount of extra
formatting into a PDF again. (You'll need an extra PDF writer, but
those are easy to come by.) But when it comes to more complex PDF
files, the results are messy, to the point of being unusable (bad line
and page breaks, oddly placed text snippets, many formatting markers,
etc.). Is that Wordfast's fault? No, it really is the fault of Pretty
Darn Frustrating PDF files, which just were
not made for translation.
Anyway, I'm glad to see that there is movement
in a positive direction on Wordfast Pro.
Recently I had promised the folks from Payoneer who have started to target our industry that I
would mention their product. It's a payment system that does not
collect the high fees levied by other systems like PayPal or
international electronic transfers. The idea is that vendors have
prepaid MasterCard credit cards on which, in our case,
translation agencies can make payments. The money can then be withdrawn
through ATM machines or the card can be used just like a normal credit
or debit card. There is a small cost involved in signing up and getting
the card but no cost afterward (except ATM costs). In general I like
the idea -- if I were working for an agency with small jobs here and
there -- but I am not sure that I would like this system for one of my
major clients where more substantial payments might be made. Still,
it's a very interesting concept, especially in an industry that is
international by nature and where payments are often accompanied by
large fees.
Also, I would be remiss not to mention Langmates, a networking site for translation
professionals. I am not sure that I would completely agree with their
opening statement that this is "the first social network for
translators and translation agencies," but they are right that other
sites have other priorities (such as jobs). And with one of the larger
of those being in an apparent constant state of conflict with its
users, this might be a nice reprieve. Plus, I know the folks behind it
-- the same guys who also develop Translation Office 3000 and
many other tools -- and I know they are real straight-shooters. (Though
I had one of them recently tell me that I look fat -- but I guess
that's also a kind of straight-shooting. ;-)
And
lastly, I have agreed with the
ATA to sell my computer primer for translators to ATA members at a reduced rate of $30
(instead of $50). This should be enough incentive to join the ATA. And
if not that, then at least to buy the book. Just mention that you are
an ATA member in your order through PayPal.
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4.
Throw Enough Mud at the Wall and Some of It Will Stick! (Premium
Edition)
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I had myself some fun yesterday (I believe
that's redneck English!) and went through the last few years of Google
announcements of new products to see where they are today. Anyone
out there who has ever used Google X-File, Google
Catalog, Google Video Player, Google Web Accelerator,
Google Answers, Google Coupons, or Google
Voice Search? Maybe you have in the past, but not in the last
little while -- these are all projects/products that were announced
with a certain fanfare and then at some point quietly withdrawn. And
what about Google Checkout, Google Viewer, Google
Health, Google Calendar, or Knol? These are still
around. Gotten much use out of those lately? (I am sure that you
have, and there is no reason to let me know about it. ;-)) And then
there are products like Google Wave, the Nexus One,
and, yes, maybe even Google Buzz. No one really knows whether
any of those will ever be a truly big success. And the same is true for
the Google Translator Toolkit (you knew where I was going,
right?).
. . . you can find the rest of this article in
the premium edition. To subscribe, you can pay $15 for an annual
subscription at www.internationalwriters.com/toolkit
($10 if you are an ATA member) or you can buy the highly acclaimed Tool
Box computer primer at www.internationalwriters.com/toolbox
for $50 ($30 if you are an ATA member) (new and existing owners of the
book will automatically receive a year-long subscription).
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The
Last Word on the Tool Kit
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placing a link on your website, I will in turn mention your website in
a future edition of the Tool Kit. Just paste the code you find here into the HTML code of your
webpage, and the little icon that is displayed on that page with a link
to my website will be displayed.
©
2010 International Writers' Group
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