Note: This document was provided by Trados on August 21,
2000 and updated by SDL on December 2, 2000. It was further updated on June 9,
2001 from information provided by Brian Chandler of MultiLing Corporation.
Language Automation is providing this information as a service to the community
but is not responsible for its content.
Overview
There are six major competitors of TRADOS in the market
today: Atril/Berlitz/GlobalWare/IBM/SDLX/STAR. No tool offers a total solution
to all areas of translation. Detailed below is a competitive analysis which
covers company profiles, product features and pricing. Other
tools such as Translation Craft’s Help QA and QA Partner may be studied more
closely in the future.
Berlitz
COMPANY
PROFILE
Berlitz specialises
in localisation, training and language teaching.
TransWeb
Express
Berlitz
developed Trans Web Express in 1997. It
was designed specifically for the localisation of Internet pages and HTML
Help. It does not have a translation
memory/leverage facility.
The
translation environment highlights text that requires translation so that tags
are protected. The program can also be
used as an engineering analysis tool to check for inconsistencies between the
original and localised files and allows for speedy fixing of reported
differences. The testing utility of the
program allows viewing of the files on a number of common browsers in single or
multiple windows. A GIF comparison and
repot utility allows a visual comparison of the graphics independent of the
files in which they are contained and also the production of a detailed report
of each of the graphics.
GlobalWare
COMPANY
PROFILE
GlobalWare
specialises in developing translation memory software.
XL8
XL8 for
Software was the first product developed by GlobalWare. It aimed to facilitate the translation
process by providing a translation environment to engineers and translators
involved in software localisation. It
then expanded to support the help and documentation translation process and is
commonly known as XL8 TransMan. XL8
allows for most features to be executed in batch mode. XL8 also provides an interface to the Logos
Machine Translation Software. Although
XL8 is a popular tool, many users have become exasperated with the DOS environment. Users have been waiting a long time for a
WYSIWYG environment, which TRADOS can deliver on for DOC & Help.
In XL8,
the Glossary Term Replace function claims to allow users to perform a batch and
on-line search and replace operation on terms in the glossary occurring in the
XL8 file. This can be run on single or batch files easily and quickly.
Following on from this, glossary management control is a simple right mouse
click and/or a Menu option. In the string editor glossary terms appear
underlined allowing the user to access by a simple control key function. The
user is prompted with suggestions from the attached glossary in a drop down
list. Simplifying the glossary usage in this way ensures consistency in
translation and that control of the project is maximised.
XL8
allows an additional cycle prompt *HYBRID* indicating the lines containing
mixed source/target language text, after doing an automatic process (e.g.,
glossary term replace). The cycle prompt source/modification status tells
who/what changed this line and when it occurred.
In TRADOS
it is possible to ‘fuzzy match’ text from between 0 - 100%. This allows
leveraging to be carried out across products and product versions. A reporting
facility will then indicate how much text has been matched or to what
percentage it has been matched. Also available on-line, leveraged strings will
automatically set to ‘For Review’, this ensures leveraging is signed off before
hand-off. Flags attached to object
files show History information (creation and modification information) and
Memos can be attached manually containing specific file localisation notes.
These can be viewed by the users at any time on screen.
XL8 now
also includes a pick list for opening of files recently used and provides
support for additional code pages. There is also an interactive synch which
provides document alignment with Source Edit and Cut & Paste features. When
using Translation Memory through Corel CATALYST, the design forces complete and
automatic alignment. Also, as standard Windows features, Find & Replace,
Source Edit, Cut & Paste, the file Pick List, and multiple file open are
available in this tool.
IBM
COMPANY
PROFILE
IBM was
one of the first companies to begin research into computer-assisted
translation. It now markets the
following products: TranslationManager, Personal Translation Manager, Personal
Translator, Personal Translator Plus and PeTra.
TranslationManager
Ships
with a leverage expert (competes with Corel CATALYST here)It is a translation
memory system and comes with general purpose dictionaries in seven languages to
which users can add to. The source text
to be translated is imported into the TranslationManager and translation is
performed within a split-screen editor.
The fuzzy matching value is set at 40% and cannot be modified by the
user, thus resulting in poor quality matches.
IBM Translation Manager can be linked into IBM Machine Translation, IBM
Personal Translator or IBM PeTRA. See
details below.
Personal
Translation Manager
Offers
the same functionality as the TranslationManager but does not allow the user to
import or export texts.
Personal
Translator
Was
launched in 1994 by IBM Germany and v.Rheinbaben & Busch Electronic
Publishing. It is an English-German
machine translation system. The basic version, comes with the Personal
Translator technology coupled with dictionary material fromPONS . You can type
the source text yourself, open text files, or use the copy-and-paste function
to import text from your Windows word processor to send text for machine
translation.
Personal
Translator Plus
Provides
additional features which increase convenience for frequent users and further
enhance translation quality. The dictionary is 25% bigger. In addition to nouns
and proper names, verbs and adjectives can also be entered in the user
dictionaries. Pronouns are generally correctly matched with the noun they
replace, even across sentence boundaries.
The integrated translation archive allows you to store post-edited translations
in the form of sentence pairs. During subsequent translations this archive is
searched for similar or identicalsentences, which are then used as the basis
for new translations. You can either use Personal Translator plus from within
your Word environment (interface to Word for Windows 2.0, 6.0, and 7.0) or
carry out all work on your document using the new integrated Personal
Translator plus word processing functions, and then go straight to print. The
export and import function allows you to exchange formatted text (RTF) with all
mainstream word processors.
IBM Machine
Translation
This is
an English-French, Italian, Spanish, German machine translation system. This system has a longer history. The idea
of having written language automatically translated by the computer has been
pursued in various applications developed in IBM Software Laboratories. With
this idea in mind, the IBM Machine Translation component was integrated into
the LotusNotes Global Designer (NGD) application to support automatic
translation of standard terminology contained in glossary files that are used
by NGD to create multilingual Notes database layouts. At a click of a button,
English source terms and phrases are automatically translated into one of the
following selectable target languages: French, German,Italian, Spanish.
PeTra
Is an
English-Italian machine translation system which was developed by SYNTHEMA in
co-operation with IBM. PeTra includes an automatic grammar and parser for
English and dictionaries. It can
translate documents either created in word processors or in the form of
Electronic Mail. In the case of documents dictated through speech recognition
programs, the text can be imported and translated by PeTra.
SDLX (SDL’s CAT Tool)
COMPANY PROFILE
SDL International is a leading globalization solutions provider with a unique combination of products and services which provide the customer with the complete solution. With employees and offices throughout the USA, Asia and Europe, SDL provides business to business globalization solutions with state-of-the-art technology and a full range of in-house translation services.
Clients include multinational companies such as Microsoft, Adobe, Corel, eBay, Goodyear, Hewlett Packard, Seagate, STAC and 3Com.
SDLX
SDLX is an innovative and user friendly Computer Aided Translation tool which improves speed, quality and consistency by allowing the re-use of previously translated phrases and terms. SDLX was originally developed for translators in the localisation department of SDL International. The system designers worked closely with translators and project managers to develop an intuitive tool which meets the needs of both freelance translators and in-house translation departments.
SDLX has been developed using the latest Microsoft 32-bit development tools and runs on any Windows 32-bit operating system. SDLX has many innovative features to improve efficiency e.g. Project Wizard for automatic file pre and post processing, Segment Locking to prevent editing of segments and Translation Preview which allows the translator to see how the finished document will look at the click of a button. SDLX was also the first CAT tool to support bi-directional languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.
SDLX has a fully integrated single user interface which provides fast and convenient access to a suite of tools without the need to open separate applications. SDLX includes a unique colour coded editing environment, an analysis module for leverage statistics and SDL TermBase, a terminology database management system.
SDLX supports the industry standard Translation Memory Exchange (TMX), making Translation Memories easily portable between products. Also supported is OpenTag, a standard for extracting text for translation and enabling cross leveraging of different file formats. SDLX is also fully compatible with Windows 2000, Office 2000 and XML/SGML.
STAR
COMPANY
PROFILE
STAR
specializes in multilingual processing and development including translation,
terminology management, technical publishing, software localization and
internationalization, software development and multimedia systems
engineering. The first office was
opened in 1984 in Stein am Rhein, Switzerland. The organization now has 12
offices around the world, employing over 150 people. STAR markets the products
detailed below.
TRANSIT
TRANSIT
is a Translation Memory System with an Associative Network. It also includes TermStar - see details
below. Transit is networkable. The
Transit translation environment is not within a wordprocessor but instead within
a split-screen editor. This product
competes directly with TRADOS However unlike TRADOS Transit tends to wrongly
calculate fuzzy match values when the object formatting is changed.
Brian
Chandler of MultiLing Corporation replies:
“This comparison describes Transit's fuzzy matching
feature as being problematic. This is a very subjective observation. I have
several articles that actually show Transit's fuzzy matching as being superior
to Trados' fuzzy matching. Also, we own both Trados and Transit, and the fuzzy
matching can differ significantly depending on the file type. Though Trados may
have superior fuzzy matching on RTF documents, Transit has far superior fuzzy
matching on QuarkXPress, FrameMaker, and PageMaker documents.”
Transit
Light
This is a
translation editor for additional workstations . It is the same as Full Version,but without import/export
features, this competes directly with TRADOS Freelance Edition.
TermStar
This is a
Terminology Management System for Windows.
The product has an easy-to-use, "WYSIWYG" dictionary
appearance. TermStar is networkable.
This product does not compete directly with Corel CATALYST. Corel CATALYST instead provides a glossary
option whereby translators can attach a glossary to a TTK.
TermStar
Light
This the
same as the full version but with import/export features.
TermStar
ViewStation
This is a
subset version of TermStar that can be installed on any networked Windows PC
allowing the user full reading access to your database. A single mouse-click
starts a terminology search directly from within Microsoft Word, WordPerfect or
AmiPro.
Logos
Interface
This is
an interface from Transit to the Logos Machine Translation Software.
PackTerm CD
This is a technical dictionary for the
packaging industry.
TRADOS
COMPANY
PROFILE
TRADOS
specialises in terminology management and translation memory software. TRADOS was founded in 1984 to provide
translation services to IBM. Two Trados
developers developed a translation project management system for IBM. The
system, which is still known under the name TOS (originally PARS), runs on IBM
Mainframes under VM/CMS and allows the planning of translation projects by
time, volume, and money. In 1987 TRADOS released its first version of TED, a
split screen translation editor, that worked together with the INK Texttools.
In 1989, TRADOS split up into two companies: INK Deutschland GmbH, where all
translation activities were moved to, and TRADOS which concentrated on the
development and marketing of translation tools. In 1990,Trados developed the first version of MultiTerm, a
memory-resident multilingual terminology manager for DOS. In 1992, TRADOS ships MultiTerm forWindows
and Translator's Workbench 2 for DOS, introducing linguistic fuzzy-matching on
translation meories. In 1994, TRADOS
introduces Translator's Workbench for Windows, MultiTerm for Windows
Professional, andMultiTerm Dictionary, a read-only dictionary lookup module
plus a dictionary compiler to be used for corporate dictionary publishing. In 1995 Trados shipped MultiTerm '95. In 1997, Microsoft decided to use TRADOS
software as its internal translation memory system. Microsoft also acquired a
minority share of 20% in TRADOS. TRADOS now markets five products: Translators
Workbench, MultiTerm Dictionary, MultiTerm ‘95 Plus!, WinAlign and the
S-Tagger.
Translator's
Workbench
The
Translator’s Workbench is a professional translation memory system. It can be fully integrated into a word
processing environment (either Microsoft Word or Corel WordPerfect). The Translators Workbench also includes
MultiTerm. See below for details. The
Translators Workbench is networkable.
MultiTerm
Is a
concept-oriented terminology database.
MultiTerm is primarily geared towards those translators and
terminologists who want to store and manage their terminological knowledge in
flexible, customizable databases.
Almost all MultiTerm features can be accessed from within your word
processing environment. TRADOS also
provides a Web Interface to this product. MultiTerm is networkable.
S-Tagger
Converts
files back and forth between FrameMaker MIF format/Interleaf ASCII format and
an SGML alike format that can be processed by TRADOS Translator's Workbench
WinAlign
Allows
users to create a translation memory from translation material from previous
projects. The program examines the
source- and target-language texts to determine which sentence pairs belong
together, and creates a file for re-use by the Workbench.
MultiTerm
Dictionary
This is
an electronic dictionary publishing software that allows you to compile and
distribute online dictionaries in your organization or to commercially publish
terminological data. MultiTerm Dictionary can be combined with ready-made
dictionaries
Competitive Analysis
|
Competitive Analysis |
Atril Deja-Vu |
TRADOS Workbench |
STAR Transit |
IBM
TM |
Globalware XL8 Transman |
SDL SDLX |
Berlitz Transweb Express |
|
Translator
Assistance Tools |
|||||||
|
Spell Checker |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
Thesaurus |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
No |
No |
|
Glossary |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Terminology Database |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
Dictionaries |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
MT Interface |
No |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
File
Types |
|||||||
|
DLL, EXE |
No |
No |
No |
No |
No |
No |
No |
|
RC |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
RTF (Win 95 Help) |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
RTF (Text) |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
TXT |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
DOC |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Framemaker |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Ventura |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
HTML |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Software
Leveraging |
|||||||
|
Fuzzy Matching |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Perfect Matching |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
From same object type |
No |
No |
No |
No |
No |
No |
No |
|
Text Only |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Co-ordinates Only |
No |
No |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
No |
|
ID based |
No |
No |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
No |
|
Text based |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Help/Doc
Leveraging |
|||||||
|
Fuzzy Matching |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|||