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

[Stanislav Visnovsky]

On Wed, 5 Feb 2003, Gudmund Areskoug wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Stanislav Visnovsky wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> I've been using DejaVu from Atril as my "everyday tool" for some 
> years now, so I can provide some input. It should rather be viewed 
> as a toolbox than as a single tool.
> 
> In short:
> 
> It is project oriented and uses three distinct data sources 
> (databases), that are/can be built up "on the fly" during translation.
> 
> They're handled differently according to intended purpose: MDB for 
> whole segments, TDB for terminology and shorter segments suited for 
> assembly, and Lexicon, for temporary glossaries, project specific 
> glossaries/resources that can be built and edited (making n-grams, 
> sorting and filtering on e. g. frequency etc.) from all the files in 
> a project according to your settings, and for language pairs that 
> should override any other matches.

I see. But does that need to be that complicated? How hard is to manage 
all these databases? You only need to setup reasonable thresholds etc
to identify the particular purpose of the text to be stored in a correct 
database?

> 
> How these data sources are used is fairly highly configurable.
> 
> One decisive thing that DV has is subject hierarchy handling for 
> improving selection of found matches. Along with the client setting, 
> it's used for selecting what match is most likely to be correct, and 
> offered as first alternative.
> 
> Another thing it has, is its assembly feature, that puts together 
> suggested translations from the (mostly) smaller snippets in the TDB 
> and Lexicon.

We have single words only, which is pretty unusable IMHO.

> 
> Add a terminology and figures check feature, and you've got the 
> overview, although lots more could be said.

What is a terminology check? We do not work with figures, so this one is 
out of question.

> 
> Taken by themselves, these features don't seem impressive, but put 
> together and including the rules that can be set for how they're 
> used and interact, they make a substantial difference in speed and - 
> above all - translation quality and consistency.
> 
> Unfortunately, they don't want to port to Linux until there's a 
> demand. That app (along with business bookkeping and tax software) 
> is the major reason I can't switch completely to Linux any time soon :(.

I've checked out their web page and the new version seems to support PO 
files.

> 
> > 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.

According to atril.com, it seems like KBabel is MAHT tool 
(Machine-Assisted Human Translation), right?

> 
> The major showstopper for professional translators in OpenSource 
> CAT's, is lack of support for oodles of file formats, many of them 
> proprietary monsters.

> 
> I'm trying to remedy that now by starting a project for a general, 
> freely customizable non-lossy two-way file filter with exchangeable 
> filter profiles (for sharing and spreading filtering improvements) 
> in the local LUG.  Lack of time has prevented it from taking off 
> long ago.
> 
> Any pointers to existing projects of that kind are welcome :).

What about po4a project? https://savannah.nongnu.org/mail/?group=po4a

Thank you for information. Still, I'm missing the big picture how these 
tools really work. Looks like a cultural mismatch. :-(

Stanislav