champollion.net > Reviews > My word it is fast

Author's product rating:   

Instructions / Help	Excellent
Ease of use	Very easy
Ease of Installation	Excellent - very quick and easy
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	works well, saves you time, cheaper alternative to Trados and similar products .  .  .
Disadvantages:	only as good as the translator using it !

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Having posted my mystery item on the site, and having illuminated the Ciaoerati on the Austrian tradition of Krampustag, I return to my usual style of ops – namely software ops – with the next lamb to the slaughter being Wordfast – from champollion.net – and a tool that I use nearly everyday professionally. Until very recently it was free to use, which represented incredible value, given the price of similar software, although this has changed unfortunately.

What is Wordfast?

Wordfast is a Translation Memory, which is one of the tools used by a translator, especially when the content of the piece being translated is either 1) similar 2) repeated on multiple occasions 3) of a similar subject to previously translated pieces, which have been put through the translation memory. It then compares sentences to ones in its memory (i.e. that have been initially translated by you and are then saved in its translation memory) and if the match is identical i.e. every single character matches then it will replace the sentence, otherwise it will make a suggestion based on the items it has in its memory. Therefore if you frequently translate similar phrases and sentences, you can rapidly increase the speed of your translations, as like sentences are translated automatically…

Technically speaking Wordfast is a little more than a macro/plug-in for MS Word – it works for all versions of MS Word although I had problems trying to install it on a system running Office XP under Windows XP, due to the problems of inserting the Word template file (wordfast.dot) in the Word start up folder – it didn’t work as it had under Windows 98 and ME. The setup process then requires MS Word to be restarted and settings adjusted – and if you are running the full latest version, then you must register – otherwise your translation memory can only contain a limited number of terms. There is now a fully functional trial version available for free, which can be used for as long as you want although not commercially. Each install has an install no. and you receive a code number by e-mail when you register to then allow you to use the package freely. Wordfast used to be free, although after several reprieves the latest version is no longer free.

To take an example of a very simple text:

The German original:

Der Hund fraß das Brot. Die Katze trank das Bier. Der Hund fraß die Katze. Der Hund las die Zeitung. Der Pfarrer las die Zeitung. Der Hund fraß das Brot.

Admittedly the software can handle much more complicated stuff than simple SVO (Subject Verb Object) sentences. Once the translation memory has been set up ALT + Down Arrow will start the translation mode. Wordfast handles the text a sentence at a time, and based on its translation memory either makes suggestions of similar sentences (i.e. greater than 75% match) lets you translate the sentence (i.e. where there is less than 50% match) or suggests a matching translation (where the match is perfect). The source text is highlighted in blue and the target text entered below in a grey box (where there is no match) or a suggestion in a yellow box appears (where the match is fairly good) or in a green box (identical match). Once you are happy with the translation then ALT+Down Arrow moves you onto the next sentence. Thus the above text would require the first sentence to be translated, as well as the second (the second is not similar enough to the first for it to offer a suggestion – Wordfast can not identify articles, cases or number (singular/plural). The third sentence would be suggested based on the fact that the third sentence is very similar to the first (the suggestion is the translation of the first sentence and you just need to alter the bit that has changed.) This continues until the final sentence, which is a repetition of the first sentence, and the translation used is then automatically translated as it is a 100% match. After you have finished translating, you should then run a quality check, and a clean-up. The clean-up gets rid of all the special tags which are inserted between each sentence to help with the translation memory and assessing the similarity of the sentences to one another.

So will Wordfast translate in front of my eyes?

Nope. Unless, of course, you happening to be re-translating a piece which you have previously translated in a nearly identical form. In which case, there is an auto-translate mode, whereby 100% matches (e.g. identical sentences) are automatically translated. However, the likelihood is that you will not be retranslating the same piece – unless of course you are translating a piece that has been made up of bits of other texts. The thing to remember is that this is a translation memory, and you teach the memory from your translations, how a sentence should be translated. It can not of course translate from scratch – but then again neither can Babelfish! Of course if you build up a large enough memory of terms, which are saved as a text file you can soon speed up your work quite considerably. For example, an instruction manual for assorted system components gets a lot easier when you see that a lot of the descriptions are very similar. Wordfast has the added advantage that it can also incorporate TMs from other software, which is great when working as a group, and you can pool resources from various TM software packages (such as Systran – see a review by zoe_page for more info on that product!, Reverso and PowerTranslator as well as Trados, versions 2,3 and 5).

What languages can it do?

Effectively it can handle any language to any language, although when defining the translation memory you need to say what the source and target languages are. Most languages are made up of two digraphs (two letter codes) separated by hyphens, with the first two letters being the main language name (e.g. EN for English, FR for French, DE for German etc.) and then the second digraph is the regional variation (e.g. DE-AT is Austrian German, DE-DE is High German and EN-GB is British English whilst EN-US is American English). Of course it is advisable to have separate glossaries (i.e. TM files) for different language pairings, as a single large glossary would become very ungainly if you use it to translate to and from multiple language pairings. Also, if you share glossaries with friends, one of the nifty features of Wordfast, your colleagues might not appreciate you sending them a TM full of terms from other languages, although this possibility of consolidating the TMs makes Wordfast a very viable solution for using as a team.

What systems will it work on?

Apart for the problems I had with Wordfast under XP using Word 2002 (shipped as part of Office XP), which seem to be a quirk of my system perhaps, Wordfast apparently works for all versions of Windows from Windows 95 onwards, and with all versions of Word from Word 97 onwards, as well as for Mac OS 7 and onwards and Mac versions of MS Word (either 98 or 2001), although some system tweaking might be necessary. For support problems, the Wordfast Yahoo group might have the answers you need to a lot of questions regarding the software. It can now also be used within other packages from the Office package, although I have yet to configure it to manage Excel, Powerpoint and Access files.

The Wordfast group is available at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wordfast/

and there is also a large amount of discussion regarding the free version and the professional version in terms of stability.

Manuals:

The manuals are also available online and are available in countless languages, thanks mainly to the fact that a team of translators happy with the system have used it to translate its own manual – that’s faith in the ability of the product, if ever I heard of it!

What’s the price to pay then?

I’ve mentioned at various points that Wordfast is no longer free, and not is the time to come clean on the prices. Bearing in mind that Trados, which has long been seen as the industry standard, retails at around EUR 700, the fact that Wordfast is available for EUR 170 (i.e. approximately GBP110) for customers from the most affluent countries is really not bad at all. Laudably there is a reduced rate for customers from other countries of EUR 50, to take into consideration the lower GDP / Capita and therefore average wage as a translator. Similarly there is a group price – akin to a 3 person site licence of EUR 340 for three licenses (which would be a saving of one third (i.e. BTGOF!) over the normal rate. When I upgrade to the full version – currently version 4.12 released on 8/12/2002 – I will probably team up with two other translators and get a group license to save about EUR 60, although I will if necessary go it alone and fork out the extra EUR 60 – as this is a cost recovered easy from a single job.

Conclusion:

This one obviously isn’t one for everyone – as I must reiterate the fact that it won’t adequately translate a letter at the drop of a hat, and that it is only a translation aid for established translators. For what it does, it is certainly more than adequate and serves a special need for translators and so I would have to endorse the product wholeheartedly.