Since the 1990s, scientists and businesses have been working on perfecting computer-assisted translation (CAT) processes. Nowadays, we can proudly use the fruit of their hard work and choose the kind we are most comfortable with. It is safe to say that CAT tools facilitated translation and proofreading processes, making even more efficient human translation a reality. CAT vs. machine translation First of all, the key differences between CAT translation and machine translation have to be explained. As the name suggests, computer-assisted processes use the technology available to us today, but only to help the translator. Therefore, a CAT translation is completely different from a machine translation! A good translator would never us software providing automatic translations; however, CATs are specialised software which break the text into sensible bit size chunks, ensure standardisation across the whole document and are completely controlled by the translator and/or proofreader. Before a CAT tool is
Read more →Imagine for a moment that you are a scientist who comes across a paper in a foreign language three days before submitting your own; this new piece holds information important to your research and you need to read it asap. Or perhaps you are a journalist who needs to report a foreign affair as soon as possible. In each case, you cannot wait several days for a translator to handle the content you?re interested in. What?s the solution? Postediting. The idea behind this service is that a posteditor (preferably a translator) improves the machine-translated content to make it useable. Using CAT systems for it often shortens the delivery time, so you can get your text back sooner than if you ordered a regular translation. It has to be stated clearly that the automated translation is just the first step, not the final product. Moreover, the end result may vary –
Read more →Even though the popularity of CAT tools is growing, not all translators choose to implement this software into their daily workshop. Reasons vary from financial ones to the fear of not being able to operate the tool efficiently. Moreover, the wide array of CAT tools makes it impossible for a single person to purchase licenses for them all. Companies or customers that want to have projects stored in their CAT tools may cooperate with non-CAT users or different CAT tool users thanks to the RTF format files. We would like to explain the specificity of this file format. What does a CAT-generated RTF file look like? The abbreviation means ?rich text format.? The files that you can generate from your CAT tool may look slightly different (e.g. some have colouring or logos, others are plain), but the principle is the same. It looks like a table of usually four columns,
Read more →