The other side: "Commercial" translation memory tools

[Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net>]

Dear All,

I am a subscriber to both the gnome-i18n/gnome-docs and FreeCATS (
https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/freecats/
) mailing lists and I am cc:ing to all.

>From what I can see in the discussions in both lists, the FreeCATS
project has strong background in actually using 'commercial' translation
tools, what are their advantages/disadvantages and what facilities an
open-source tool should provide while in the gnome-docs/gnome-i18n lists
there are experienced developers/translators with extensive experience
on gettext that could implement it.

The following are a grouping of 'Prior work'. I am sure Henri (FreeCATS
project leader) is able to provide a better summary than this. Sorry. :(

First of all I would like to say that there is a strong market of
commercial translation tools that do quite a good job in translating
documents. A good collection of such tools where someone can get a demo
and test it is:
http://www.translatum.gr/dics/translation-memory.htm

Almost all of these are for Windows. There is a notable exception,
JCAT(tm) that is a server-based translation tool running on Linux.
Translators connect through the browser in order to carry out the
translation. Three links are of interest:
Product info and description of functionality:
http://www.translate.com/shared/jcat_info.html
Usage FAQ about some technicalities:
http://www.translate.com/shared/jcat_faq.html
Article about using XML properly for localisation purposes.
http://www.translate.com/shared/savourel.html

As a sidenote, there is also a magazine (partly supported by the EU) on
localisation that is free for translation professionals, available at 
http://www.localisation.ie/publications/locfocus/index.htm

Indeed the open-source community is lacking translation tools that work
directly with *ML formats and make use of the tags efficiently.
Some projects exist such as
1. OmegaT:
http://www.marcprior.de/OmegaT/OmegaT.html
(Review of an early version of OmegaT:
http://www.accurapid.com/journal/23linux.htm)
OmegaT can work with the OpenOffice format.
2. RBManager
http://oss.software.ibm.com/icu4j/demo_tools/RBManager.html
(short review posted to the FreeCATS/gnome-i18n/gnome-docs lists).
3. ForeignDesk
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-i18n/2002-April/msg00009.html

OmegaT and RBManager are written in Java.

ForeignDesk has been reported to the gnome-i18n list last year. From
discussions with other lists, it's heavily dependent on Windows features
(database support, etc.) and no good to port.

Sorry for opening a new thread without the first closing up.
It looks that I will need to open a Wiki with summaries of what have
been told until now in order to make ammends.. :)

simos

-- 
Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net>