In our daily activities we find it necessary to use a software application to speed up and organize our projects. Today we will look at SDL TRADOS, which is one of the programs specifically designed for translators.
The Advantages of SDL TRADOS
The big advantage of this program is that it allows for cost savings, as it recognizes repetition within a document and within a set of documents sharing the same memory. This allows for a word count that takes into consideration new and repeated phrases, determining the percentage of the document that would have to be translated from scratch and the percentage that may be reused. Clearly, being able to reuse some parts of already translated documents saves time and therefore costs, allowing the translator to offer a significant discount.
How this Software Appeared
1984: Jochen Hummel and Iko Knyphausen founded the TRADOS GMBH translations agency in Stuttgart, Germany. By the end of the eighties they were concentrating on the design of automatic translation software.
1992: MultiTerm Appears
1994: Translation Workbench Appears
1997: Mictosoft decides to use Trados for its internal localization needs, and TRADOS becomes the leader in computer assisted translations market.
2005: TRADOS is bought by SDL.
The Different Parts of TRADOS
The software package comprises several applications:
1. Translator’s Workbench: this is the translation memory and allows for automatic translations of repeated text from previous translations appearing appearing in a database. Interacts with Microsoft Word, TagEditor and MultiTerm.
2. TagEditor: a special program that makes it easier to translate documents with HTML and XML tags.
3. MultiTerm: is a terminology base that incorporates the client glossary as well as that compiled on the basis of all the work done by a translator.
4. WinAlign: allows the alignment of original documents with their translations when such were not done using Trados, and produces bilingual documents which are suitable for use in this software environment.
Compatibility with Original Documents
TRADOS processes original documents in the following formats: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Open Office, InDesign, QuarkXPress, PageMaker, Interleaf, Framemekaer, HTML, SGML, XML, SVG.
TRADOS in Action
If you would like to see how we use this software application, please click here.
Free Quote
If you would like to obtain a free per-word quote from TRUSTED TRANSLATIONS, please click here.
