How Important Is It for Translators to Work with CAT Tools?
Computer-aided translation is a kind of software created to aid the translation process by utilizing various tools. Indeed, this toll can support file management, translation memories, glossaries, text review, and quality control. It is essential to recognize that the CAT is not an automated translation but a tool to facilitate the manual work of the translator.
Following are the reasons why translators need to work with the CAT tool:
• Planning
CAT tools can assist you in keeping a record of your process, revealing what portion of the translation or proofreading you have created. This can help you to organize your time for the rest of the project.
• Backup
Corrupted files, computer collisions, random deletions, we all experienced computer problems. Your CAT tool collects every text as you translate, so you have a backup even if your machine shatters mid-translation. We often have to use a TM to pre-translate a file after a file gets damaged. We suggest you export your TMs and store them in the cloud, or at least on a USB, keeping them secure should the worst happen.
• Speed
Already translated something related? You can efficiently handle repeated text if you have it in a TM. CAT tools symbolize if a section is the same as what you have translated before, either in your current document or your translation memory or if there are fuzzy or partial matches where the source text is related. The earlier source text and translation will pop up, and you can include the translation or edit it as needed. This will save you loads of time!
• Consistency
Efficiently managing repetition not only supports you to translate more quickly, but it also improves consistency. Additionally, various CAT tools offer a concordance characteristic that enables you to explore the TM for a word, word sentence or phrase. You can restrict your search to the source text, translation, exact matches only, etc.
• Reference Element
Align reference elements to add to your TM to ensure you don’t drop any fuzzy or specific matches that could improve consistency and decrease the time spent translating. SLDX Tutorial Trados 2007’s WinAlign tool can do this, or you can use other devices such as XBench, which is not a CAT
means, but which will enable you to create a TM export from an Excel file, including the source content in column A and the translation in column B.
• Formatting
At UTS, we honor when translation deliveries are available to send to the client and don’t need extra Project Management time. Using a CAT tool will assist you in keeping the formatting of all kinds of files. Instead of clicking into all the small boxes in a PowerPoint file or attempting to see all the text stored in the Excel cells, the CAT tool will put everything into the correct box, and you will only be required to tidy it up.
• Quality Assurance
CAT tool provides a variety of tools for quality checks. Spelling, punctuation, grammar, inversion of numbers, and formatting can usually be checked in real time and when mentioned by you at the end of a session.
