What is CAT ??
Computer-assisted-translation (CAT) is a kind of translation process where human translation is aided by translation or related softwares. Some popular softwares include SDL Trados, MemoQ , Memsource and SmartCat etc.
What a CAT tool mainly can help with translation is to build translation memories and termbase so to ease the effort of tranlsating similar contents in the future. Translation memory can be seen as a documentation where source text and target text paired together for future reference. Termbase can be seen as a collection of important terms that occurred in previous projects. Using CAT tools, not only you can apply them for current project, you can also always keep them updated. CAT tools can also transfer certain file types to translatable texts and run QA check to detect wrong expressions, symbols or punctuations.
What I’ve Learned in this Course
This course is taught by Professor Adam Wooten. It’s great that Adam brought very cutting-edge CAT tool and technology to class and shared his industry expertise with us. From this course, I was able to have rich practices with SDL Trados through in-class exercises, independant assignments and a final group project. Now I am confident using Trados to prepare and filter different file types, such as excel, word, html and XML for translation, generate and apply translation memories, perform pseudo translation and linguistic QA etc. In addition, I learned how to use AntConc to extract terms and use Glossary Converter to prepare the termbase in appropriate format. Further more, in the group project, I had the chance to be the Project Manager and took part in every stage of a translation project, from contacting with the client to preparing the deliverables. I also learned how to coordinate with team members to perform effective translation and a pitch presentation to a potential client.
Check the project details in the below section !
Project Introduction
Below is a link directed to my final project for this course. It is a translation task for Xiangtan Government in China. The source file is in word format, containing built-in charts, comments of the mayor and tracking changes. In this project, I created a translation memory based on previous similar projects in memoQ, and properly prepared the source text, so we successfully translated the text in the chart and excluded unnecessary texts from translation.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AQEPmHRizPHVM1EvjsVDSnxLpkFxRNga?usp=sharing
Tips on using CAT tool
- CAT tools currently are not very versatile enough to handle all types of translation files. For example, the alignment rules in Trados is kind of rigid, and when creating a project, all stuff should be set correctly or you should do them all over again. This means we need to firslty really understand how Trados work and do our best to avoid those challenges by preparing the source file in a way that is more compatible to Trados’s function. This way, it will save translators and project managers a lot of time preparing the file for translation.
- Different CAT tool has their own advantages. It is crucial to leverage their advantages and use them in a collaborative way for translation projects.
- Don’t get confined by the functions of those CAT tools. There are lots of open resource tools that can assist the function of CAT tool. For example, there is a coverter that can change XLIFF to HTML, if you want to have the deliverable in html version.
