Dondika's blog experiment: Variations of Translation Softwares

1. Trados : SDL Trados is a computer-assisted translation software suite, originally developed by the German company Trados GmbH and currently available from SDL International, a provider of translation management software, content management and language services. It provides translation memory and terminology management.

· Advantage: Translator immediately sees which parts of the text are to be translated, which makes it simple to concentrate on the essential. Anyone who has attempted to translate a text in electronic format knows how difficult it is, since each time the already translated source text must be deleted. As an alternative, one must work with two texts side-by-side, or open the original text on the screen again and then return to the already translated text.

· Disadvantage: Careless mistakes and increases the risk of skipping a sentence or a word, it is more difficult if received as hard copy. If the translator does not have the possibility of converting the text into an electronic format by using optical character recognition, they must constantly shift the focus between the paper and the screen.

2. Ginger : Ginger Software is an Israeli start-up company that has developed language enhancement technology that uses statistical algorithms in conjunction with natural language processing, aiming to improve written communications, develop English speaking skills and boost smartphone productivity. The company was founded towards the end of 2007 by Yael Karov and Avner Zangvil. Ginger Software differentiates itself by recognizing words in the context of complete sentences.

· Advantage: You learn the topics that are most relevant to you, those that cause most of your writing mistakes. You practice by correcting your own sentences, instead of textbook learning examples that are not necessarily relevant for your specific use of English. You learn faster because the learning program is personalized to meet your needs. No need to practice topics that you already know, or that are too advanced for you. Whenever you write an email, an essay, or a status on Facebook, you can, in a single click, get corrections from Ginger, as well as explanations on how to avoid repeating those same mistakes in the future.

· Disadvantages: it has a disadvantage that it slows down the speed of your PC to some extent, but when you stop it from working on the browser the speed is improved.

3. Systran : SYSTRAN, founded by Dr. Peter Toma in 1968, is one of the oldest machine translation companies. SYSTRAN has done extensive work for the United States Department of Defense and the European Commission.

· Advantage: Supports unlimited user access and millions of real-time and batch translations per day as demonstrated by the leading search engines, global corporations, and governments. Scalable, open and robust, SYSTRAN solutions use standard APIs, support universal file formats and are easy to integrate with third-party applications. SYSTRAN delivers the highest translation speed available for machine translation solutions. SYSTRAN also delivers the largest breadth of machine translation software products in the market which offer fast and cost-effective customization.

· Disadvantage: you have to buy particular language combinations. For example, it costs more to have software that will translate both French and Spanish into English.

4. Sdl : SDL plc is a company providing software and service solutions for language translation purposes including interpretation services. It is based in Maidenhead, England and is listed on the London Stock Exchange. SDL is an abbreviation for "Software and Documentation Localization."

· Advantage: it can reduce the number and severity of vulnerabilities in software. In order to measure the extent to which these goals are met, security experts analyzed public vulnerability counts in "pre-SDL" and "post-SDL" versions of the same product in the 12 months (or more) following the release.

· Disadvantage: SDL include poor efficiency of the generated code and inadequate support for complex data type, algorithm, concurrency and hardware interface descriptions.

5. Wordbee : A web-based application that allows interaction between the project manager, translator and proofreader in real time as well as simultaneous translation

· Advantage: Simultaneous translation means you can translate a source text into different languages simultaneously. Wordbee enables proofreading and approving of translation memories (or previously translated files), in order to build new translation memories or export translation memories from other software.

· Disadvantage: spell checker for QA turned out be buggy, not finding all errors and especiailly not finding accidentally entered 'second letter' caps.

Screenshots of the software in order :

1.Trados