| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6] > | Does my business need a CAT tool? Thread poster: Paul Skidmore
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| It must indeed be that bump on the head! | Jan 24, 2009 |
Rod Walters wrote:
I slipped on the stairs this morning, and apart from scalding most of my face with coffee, I seem to have bumped my head rather badly. My wife says I was out cold for nearly a minute.
Personally I recommend taking plenty of time to try all the free CAT tools because after all, the best way of increasing ROI is to shave the 'I' part right down to the minimum, whatever time and effort is required to do so.
Here the important part to remember is that the "I" part consists more of effort invested than money. When testing CAT tools, compare the ease and speed of working with each. In the not-so-long run, this will dominate over acquisition price. If the most expensive tool lets you work 30% faster than all the others, then it is indeed the best investment if you make your living from translation work of most kinds. That is because - forgive me for pointing out an obvious point too often overlooked - this adds 30% to your hourly earnings. If I make $25 an hour working with Tool A, but Tool B makes me 30% more efficient as a translator, then my hourly earnings with Tool B are
$25 x 1.3 = $32.50 per hour
Translating 25 hours per week, this comes out to
(32.50 - 25) x 25 = $187.50 per week or over $9,000 per year.
So let's say you use a certain tool, AlphaGee, because it costs nothing initially and you think that's better than spending $1000 on a tool with which you have measured your personal efficiency and found it to be 30% higher. You are screwing yourself for $9,000 per year in opportunity costs. Congratulations!
Heck, even if you only work 3% more efficiently, that's $900 per year in opportunity costs.
Thus it really is important to your economic health to find out which tools offer the workflow and ergonomics that allow you to work most efficiently (i.e. fastest, and with the least time wasted on troubleshooting, etc.) If the tool that makes you most efficient is freeware - super! If it costs $2000, get a loan to buy it if you have to or put it high on your priority list. The ROI can be quick and large.
These arguments ignore other issues, of course, like access to jobs, which includes both outsourcer expectations for deliverables and file formats which it is technically possible to process. I gained a lot of clients in my early days as a freelancer because I used a CAT tool which enabled me to take on file types which the unwashed masses typing everything in MS Word could not touch. When I pointed out the opportunity to a few colleagues, I was informed that "Word files are all that I ever see" and thus CAT tools are unnecessary. Then they would start bitching about not enough work Falling ice is a serious problem here in Germany.
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Personally I recommend taking plenty of time to try all the free CAT tools because after all, the best way of increasing ROI is to shave the 'I' part right down to the minimum, whatever time and effort is required to do so.
Jokes apart (Kevin's post really got me rolling), I find that the ROI argument is best for CAT beginners; after all, the poster has been working successfully without CAT tools for so long that a month more or less shouldn't make a difference, and the fact that he hasn't checked them out by himself tells me he's really not that into the whole IT scenario.
See, a decade ago, when a friend of a friend asked me to translate a paper (my first paid translation ever!), I looked at the Word file with large chunks of repeated text but slightly different numbers and I thought to myself: "No way I'm retyping everything, specially numbers, in the same place! There *has* to be a tool that detects these similarities"... and lo and behold, I got acquainted with CAT tools, and it's been a continuous love affair ever since. But hey, that's me...
I know several colleagues who parted with hard-earned money for the latest SDL Trados build (and a lot of money that is for our local economy) only to find out later it's a complicated tool you need to learn thoroughly in order to use it effectively, and to this day their copies are sitting on a self gathering dust since they don't have the computer skills to put them to good use. Having seen that firsthand, I hesitate to recommend him to purchase a commercial solution that may or may not be used in the end. All of these tools share common elements (TMs, fuzzy matching, etc.) he can learn for free, and with this new information he can download demos for more advanced tools and test them out himself now it's not basic Chinese. Otherwise, how can he compare? And I think he should compare, because only he can determine whether he'd use the tool effectively or at all (mind you, now it's an informed decision).
I don't see how I can recommend an expensive commercial tool knowing so little about his translation approach and IT skills (if I had to, it's no secret that my preference lies with Deja Vu X, which I hold to be vastly superior to the current market leader... but then again, scores of angry people would say numbers say otherwise, and that makes for an entire topic for another thread).
[Edited at 2009-01-24 03:59 GMT]
| | | | Rod Walters 
Japan
Local time: 02:37
Japanese to English
| Missed meme? | Jan 24, 2009 |
Lest anybody think I'm really recommending buying the cheapest product, I was extending Kevin's meme about bumping your head and then recommending the opposite of the wisest course.
Spending even a big wad of money on something that covers all eventualities and offers a very quick and extensive ROI is obviously the smart thing to do (at least it was before the blow to my head this morning). When I stopped translating at companies and went freelance, the first thing I did before I g... See more Lest anybody think I'm really recommending buying the cheapest product, I was extending Kevin's meme about bumping your head and then recommending the opposite of the wisest course.
Spending even a big wad of money on something that covers all eventualities and offers a very quick and extensive ROI is obviously the smart thing to do (at least it was before the blow to my head this morning). When I stopped translating at companies and went freelance, the first thing I did before I got even one job was to buy Trados with saved money. Within a month, it had repaid its own cost, with a manual job I wouldn't have got without Trados. (Unfortunately at that time Deja Vu didn't support Japanese so it was out of the running.)
Some of the free or cheaper options may be fine in themselves, I don't know. I can only speak for the surefire ROI of the more expensive tools. (I also use expensive, highly engineered shears in my garden because they're much cheaper in the end than a succession of cheap ones.) ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Recommendations & comparisons | Jan 24, 2009 |
Rossana Triaca wrote:
I don't see how I can recommend an expensive commercial tool knowing so little about his translation approach and IT skills (if I had to, it's no secret that my preference lies with Deja Vu X, which I hold to be vastly superior to the current market leader...
Well, the point is don't recommend a specific tool if you want to avoid the Holy Wars. Recommend an actual test (or testing period) for a number of reasonable tools. For a quick, passive overview the $30 or so for access to Jost Zetzsche's "Translator's Training" site (I think that's what it's called) is worth the money and can get you oriented a bit on "look and feel", but NOTHING can replace experience with your own fingers, eyes and mind.
Every commercial CAT tool I know of except Trados has an easily-found, fully functional demo version, and one for Trados (limited to a TM of 200 segments or so) can be found with a little effort and asking around. You can translate some small files with these, test the terminology features, and see which one is easiest to work with. In fact, for the test it might be a good idea to translate the same text in each one for test purposes. Since the content is already known, the limiting factors will be mostly related to the ergonomics. Compare the commercial stuff and the free stuff and settle on whatever you work best with. However, once again, be aware of opportunity costs and market access: if your chosen tool isn't Trados, you might want to learn how to work with the other tool to do Trados projects if possible. There is lots of information on this in the forums, some guidelines for doing this with Déjà Vu X on the "How To" tab of my profile and someday there may even be a book or two on the subject if someone gets around to writing.
When I first started freelancing I was fanatical about tracking the time it took to do various jobs with the CAT tools I used. My productivity with DVX turned out to be so much higher that I really could not justify doing actual work with the other tools like Trados or Star Transit, but these continued to play a role for pre- and post-processing jobs. In fact, I have found that the most effective project workflows often derive from a combination of tools. DVX can be a nightmare for large, graphics-laden MS Word files, for example. Although I have other means of handling the problem, the "quick" solution which I share with others is to make a TTX file with Trados. This TTX will import blazingly fast and not bloat my project file.
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Eric Hahn (X)
France
Local time: 18:37
French to German
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| Reasons not to use CAT | Jan 24, 2009 |
To return to the initial question :
I think the only reason not to use a CAT tool is when you receive faxes or illisible pdf files ...
| | | | Rod Walters
Japan
Local time: 02:37
Japanese to English
| OCR > Trados | Jan 24, 2009 |
Eric Hahn wrote:
To return to the initial question :
I think the only reason not to use a CAT tool is when you receive faxes or illisible pdf files ...
In those cases, I still find it worth the effort to use OCR and translate with my CAT tool. I value the stored data so highly that I would regret/resent not having access to it in the future. In the present, I also resent being unable to leverage what I already have in my glossaries.
Having a CAT tool is surely a major driver behind learning to use OCR well too. This feeds back into the questions of customer education and marketing. Crappy faxes are a disadvantage to the client too...
| | | | | More reasons not to use CAT | Jan 24, 2009 |
Eric Hahn wrote:
To return to the initial question :
I think the only reason not to use a CAT tool is when you receive faxes or illisible pdf files ...
illisible ? I think you mean illegible. Obviously if it's too bad to use OCR, CAT tools are utterly out of the question. Faxes, however, are often perfectly good candidates for CAT tool use if they are of relatively good quality. It helps to have a electronic fax receipt configured on a computer; I did that through most of the 90's and used OCR on the files (for purposes other than translation at the time).
Handwritten stuff is obviously not suited to CAT If I could read in my great-great grandfathers handwritten sermons by OCR my plans to translate them some day would be greatly simplified. As it is I can barely read the old handwriting.
I personally wouldn't use a CAT for poetry translation, and if I decided to starve and do literature, I would use it in a very different way if at all. My partner was using DVX for a novel last year, but I never looked very closely at the project to see whether it was a help or a hindrance. I think she did it mostly for the convenience of side-by-side text comparisons. I would have turned off the usual segmentation rules at least, but I don't think she did, though I think segments were combined freely wherever larger sections were being completely restructured.
Obviously it is perfectly possible to be a successful translator without CAT tools. However, if one's time is valuable, I think it's important to have the skills to use one where it makes sense and to have the good judgment not to use one where it would be silly to do so.
| | | | Eric Hahn (X)
France
Local time: 18:37
French to German
+ ...
| Yes, but ... | Jan 24, 2009 |
Kevin Lossner wrote:
illisible ? I think you mean illegible. Obviously if it's too bad to use OCR, CAT tools are utterly out of the question. Faxes, however, are often perfectly good candidates for CAT tool use if they are of relatively good quality. It helps to have a electronic fax receipt configured on a computer; I did that through most of the 90's and used OCR on the files (for purposes other than translation at the time).
... I think it depends also on the language.
For me, it would be too tiring to post edit japanese textes after the use of OCR.
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Rod Walters
Japan
Local time: 02:37
Japanese to English
| All the help we can get | Jan 24, 2009 |
Eric Hahn wrote:
For me, it would be too tiring to post edit japanese textes after the use of OCR.
Japanese texts are inherently tiring. That's why Japanese people are so delighted to have mobile phones and word processors to take the legwork out of it. A lot of them can barely write with pens any more. My wife gets angry with our son for 'making up kanji', but it's a losing battle. I'm sure that my kanji entry is more careful than that of a lot of Japanese people, simply because it cost me more tiredness to learn it.
Sometimes however, OCR software can make out a faxed kanji that looks like a space invader or just a blob better than my strained eyes can, so if I didn't take the OCR > CAT route, I wouldn't be able to translate the text anyway.
| | | | | Bad faxes or copies | Jan 24, 2009 |
BTW, I think it is worth noting that really bad copies for official purposes subject to JVEG rates can be billed at more than triple the base rate.
Keep that in mind, people, the next time someone asks you to strain your eyes with bad copy. Apply appropriate surcharges.
| | | | Taija Hyvönen
Finland
Local time: 19:37
Member (2008)
English to Finnish
+ ...
| This only makes sense based on the assumption... | Jan 24, 2009 |
Kevin Lossner wrote:
Thus it really is important to your economic health to find out which tools offer the workflow and ergonomics that allow you to work most efficiently (i.e. fastest, and with the least time wasted on troubleshooting, etc.) If the tool that makes you most efficient is freeware - super! If it costs $2000, get a loan to buy it if you have to or put it high on your priority list. The ROI can be quick and large.
... that you have more work than you can do AND you will have no problems with the software. If you have more time than work and/or you will spend more time fighting with the software than actually working, the equation changes.
| | | | Eric Hahn (X)
France
Local time: 18:37
French to German
+ ...
| It makes sense ... | Jan 24, 2009 |
... if you want to increase you income by increasing your productivity, which means, when you can't increase your rates.
But if you can get more work with Trados, there's no shame ...
[Edited at 2009-01-24 17:32 GMT]
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Taija Hyvönen
Finland
Local time: 19:37
Member (2008)
English to Finnish
+ ...
| Time doesn't matter, if you have a lot of it for every translation | Jan 24, 2009 |
... if you want to increase you income by increasing your productivity, which means, if you can't increase your rates.
What I was trying say was that productivity as in translated words per hour is not an issue, if you don't have work lined up. It becomes an issue if you are overworked. Not all of use are.
| | | | | In a business, every minute counts | Jan 24, 2009 |
Taija Salo wrote:
... if you want to increase you income by increasing your productivity, which means, if you can't increase your rates.
What I was trying say was that productivity as in translated words per hour is not an issue, if you don't have work lined up. It becomes an issue if you are overworked. Not all of use are.
Taija, even in your example, every minute can be used for something better.
Following your example, imagine that, you have, let's say, 5,000 words to do in a whole week.
You are saying that, it is not worthwhile increasing your productivity because you have plenty of time, anyway.
I think that,when you are running a business, every minute counts. If you don't have much work, a productivity gain might give you more time to get more jobs (looking for new customers, learning new skills, etc.)
Daniel
| | | | | If you're short of work, stop paying opportunity costs | Jan 24, 2009 |
Taija Salo wrote:
... that you have more work than you can do AND you will have no problems with the software. If you have more time than work and/or you will spend more time fighting with the software than actually working, the equation changes.
No, the equation doesn't change as much as the reason for acquiring and learning the CAT tool does.
If you are starved for work, then selection of an appropriate CAT tool (not just any CAT tool) can lead to a considerable increase in your workload. In 2000 I was faced with a need to improve the productivity of a translation department whose worker bees could do little more than bang around in MS Word (taking their own sweet time about it too). One guy knew a bit of FrameMaker I think and struggled with one of the help file editors. There was little or no leverage of material; in fact, in the course of one month I watched three people sitting in the same room all do the same translation. (They didn't talk much on some days I think.) There were lots of formats to deal with: all the Office Suite, PageMaker, Quark, FrameMaker, HTML, RC files, WinHelp and a bunch of others I've forgotten.
About the same time I had started to moonlight (that's freelancing while you still have a day job in this case) doing IT translations mostly. Initially everything was done in MS Word, but as I saw the SNAFU with the translators in the company and started to research alternatives, I found that the right choice of CAT tool would mean that all these formats could be handled well in a uniform environment. Not only did this result in a huge productivity improvement in the company I worked for, it suddenly meant that I was technically capable of taking on jobs that most translators here on ProZ and elsewhere couldn't touch. Demand for my services exploded to the point where I was making far less in my job as a systems consultant for the time invested.
Now I am a good translator, and some of the growth of my business was due to quality and having special knowledge that was in demand. But a very large part of my new business then was because I had the technical capacity to do things that other translators with better language skills and better subject knowledge could not.
I recently discovered a superb translator in my language pair. His qualifications are nothing short of amazing for science and business; I don't have half his knowledge nor are my language skills probably as good. He also has an MBA and decades of business experience, so he knows more about marketing than I probably ever will. But up to know he has apparently had a tough time selling himself as a translator. I was shocked at some of the rates such a qualified man accepted. But when I started to recommend him with enthusiasm to some of my best customers, I quickly discovered why he hasn't tapped the main vein of the market yet. He doesn't use CAT tools. Yet.
As for "fighting with the software", a bit of training never hurt anyone. If you aren't willing to invest in your career and learning the skills to be competitive in it, then it is appropriate that you enjoy the fruits of the processes of natural selection.
Testing software before it is purchased costs nothing and is part of due diligence. As has been suggested repeatedly, try a number of tools and see what makes you most productive. Anything else is rather foolish. And learn about interoperable workflows with leading tools - it's not that hard, and there is much to be gained from doing so.
If you have time on your hands, there are much better ways to fill it than inefficient translation.
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