[Kbabel] [Fwd: [l10n-dev] [Fwd: [Freecats-Dev] The other side: "Commercial" TM tools (cont.)]]

[Stanislav Visnovsky]

On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, Dwayne Bailey wrote:
> Sorry if you've seen this already.  They're attempting to create a set 
> of tools that would eventualy allow a translators using commercial 
> translation products to work with our free software translation formats.
> 
> Interesting to me is the discussion around features and needs of the tool.

I'm quite puzzled about the features. I've never seen a commercial CAT 
product, but the web pages for the commercial tools do not seem that great 
to me.

Probably the key area is a large-project management features support. But 
I'd like to hear more on this topic. At least, KBabel should be able to 
work as a GUI client for their server.

One point I don't like is that they want to define their own format, even 
worse, based on XML (just look at the sizes of current PO files!).

Stanislav


> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [l10n-dev] [Fwd: [Freecats-Dev] The other side: "Commercial" TM 
> tools (cont.)]
> Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2003 22:31:28 +0000
> From: Sander Vesik <sander_traveling@yahoo.co.uk>
> Reply-To: dev@l10n.openoffice.org
> To: dev@openoffice.org, dev@l10n.openoffice.org,	discuss@openoffice.org
> 
> 
> somebody want to volunteer to be a contact? It is in my opinion very 
> important
> to see that that would be applicable to OpenOffice.org and able to use our
> file formats.
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [Fwd: [Freecats-Dev] The other side: "Commercial" TM tools (cont.)]
> Date: 02 Feb 2003 22:10:14 +0000
> From: Simos Xenitellis <simos74@gmx.net>
> To: GNOME I18n <gnome-i18n@gnome.org>,	GNOME Documentation List 
> <gnome-doc-list@gnome.org>
> CC: Henri Chorand <henri.chorand@kemperdoc.com>
> 
> -----Προωθημένο Μήνυμα-----
> 
> From: Henri Chorand <henri@xtradoc.com>
> To: Free CATS Dev list <freecats-dev@nongnu.org>
> Subject: [Freecats-Dev] The other side: "Commercial" TM tools (cont.)
> Date: 02 Feb 2003 23:02:45 +0100
> 
> Hi everybody,
> 
> As I'm not sure I can post to GNOME l18n & documentation lists before
> subscribing these, I hope Simos Xenitellis will kindly forward them.
> 
>   > 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.
>   >
>   > (...) I am sure Henri (FreeCATS project leader) is able to provide
>   > a better summary than this. Sorry. :(
> 
> So, it's my turn now :-)
> 
> First of all, a big hello to the GNOME team. Let me briefly, as Free
> CATS' (Free Computer-Aided Translation Software) project coordinator,
> give you some background info about us and Free CATS.
> 
> This project recently started up from end-user requirements. Our project
> team started around:
> - a small group of technical translators who have a quite good
> experience of commercial CAT software and who are getting tired of
> buying expensive, Window$-only commercial software which still lacks
> features
> - several other people interested in developing a full-fledged free tool.
> 
> Some of us have coding experience, but not always related to free
> software's tools (like me for instance). As a whole, our knowledge of
> software development & coding is still higher than technical
> translators' average.
> 
> As mentioned by Simos, a number of free CAT software projects were
> launched since some time now, but none of them convinced us enough to
> decide to join it and follow. Of course, the more teams from different
> projects can cooperate, the better. This is not a harsh judgment in our
> minds - the scope of most of these projects was quite restricted from
> the start (e.g. Java-only files) or still at the design stage after more
> than one year's existence.
> 
> We want to build a portable, end-user friendly set of tools which, thanks
> to its modular architecture, can gradually become a comprehensive tool,
> as good as (and even better than) existing proprietary software. Here
> are the modules we want to build (starting from the first one):
> - Translation Memory server with HTTP-access
> - Remote administration client
> - Interactive translation client
> - Input / output file conversion tools for a lot of file formats
> - Terminology database features
> - Legacy translations alignment client
> 
> We also want to enable translators to work on as many different file
> formats as possible. In order to do this, the translation client will
> always work on our internal (tagged) bilingual document format. So,
> we'll build a pair of input/output converters between any native file
> format and our working format.
> 
> We presently work on specifications, not code (yet), but we have
> selected a number of tools (e.g. Python language & bits of C++ later
> where necessary) based on the features and performance we want.
> 
> As we (still) lack coders, we are especially eager to obtain some help
> in order to achieve our goals faster. This is not to say we want to find
> people to write it for us, but we're dealing with a variety of topics
> for which experienced free software developers should be able to guide
> us and help things go smoothly, with an interest in seeing it succeed.
> 
> We see this project as a win-win situation if translators & free
> software developers can cooperate on it:
> 
> - Probably more than one million professional translators in the world
> still lack the free software tools that will enable them to get rid of
> proprietary software if they want to. Helping them is therefore a Good
> Thing.
> 
> - The very existence of a successful free product, in itself, should do
> a lot to bring more help to free software & documentation translation
> projects, as translators will feel the benefit of free software for
> themselves. Even if free software developers are gradually putting up
> some tools that help them (for instance KBabel & similar), these are far
> from offering the same benefits as full-fledged CAT software. As soon as
> professional translators will be able to use their favorite CAT tool to
> participate in free software translation projects, much more will come
> to help than presently, and as they will have better tools, they'll work
> faster and produce higher quality work. I believe any free software
> advocate can agree with this.
> 
> - More than that, if today, a translator wants to use his/her CAT tool
> in order to work on a free software translation project, most of the
> time, it's not possible, because this CAT tool knows nothing about the
> lots of file formats common in free software: custom resource files (.po
> & similar), Open Office / Latex / etc.
> 
> - As soon as we have realized a first version of our server and that we
> have a client running (even if restricted to basic file formats, e.g.
> text-only and resource file), or even sooner, of course, I hope we can
> convince free software developers to come and help us, if only to help
> making these import/export filters between their own software's native
> file format and our universal working format.
> 
> We intend to publish our specifications document on our project's page
> on Savannah within a couple of weeks. Presently, all our project's
> activity is happening within our discussion list.
> 
> 
> Well, I don't want to be too long, and I hope my little speech sounds
> convincing enough. Please feel free to provide any feed-back you feel
> appropriate.
> 
> Henri
>