| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Poll: Which CAT tool offers the best (fast, accurate, friendly, etc.) official support in your experience? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Which CAT tool offers the best (fast, accurate, friendly, etc.) official support in your experience?".
This poll was originally submitted by Philippe Locquet. View the poll results »
| | | | Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
| John Silva
Brazil
Local time: 09:38
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Actually I don't know, since I haven't use all of them, especially the paid ones. ButI know that Trados and MemoQ are mostly used and required by clients, so it must be good.
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I don’t need support. I don’t use CAT tools…
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Baran Keki 
Türkiye
Local time: 15:38
Member
English to Turkish
| All this talk about CAT tools and other techy/nerdy stuff | May 18, 2022 |
kind of reminds me of people on bass guitar forums who would talk about pedals, amps, humbuckers and other technical stuff all day... I had the feeling that a good number of them didn't even know the notes on the fretboard, let alone playing the major and minor scales, but they loved their pedals, and seemed to know every minute detail and technicality in a pickup...
It seems to me like some people are far more interested in CAT tools than the translation itself.
| | | | Marjolein Snippe
Netherlands
Local time: 14:38
Member (2012)
English to Dutch
+ ...
| Can't compare | May 18, 2022 |
I only use two cat tools regularly and it has been ages since I last needed support. In any case, I have only ever asked official support from Wordfast and MemoQ. Both were good. I wouldn't be able to compare the support of any of the others.
| | | | Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
But what is there to talk about in relation to the pure translation topics? Rates? Economic crisis in Brazil? The impending MT doomsday? Feels like we’ve been there before.
Baran Keki wrote:
It seems to me like some people are far more interested in CAT tools than the translation itself.
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Baran Keki wrote:
It seems to me like some people are far more interested in CAT tools than the translation itself.
... I'm sorry, but I believe that some colleagues are just proud that they are able to manage at least one CAT which can be a real challenge sometimes when it comes to handling terms, tags, regexes, language variants, licenses, remote or local file locations, etc. Let them share their opinions, it could be useful for you, too. I love these background noises and I often could catch very useful pieces of information here.
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| Open to other options | May 18, 2022 |
I’m happy with Trados 2021, but would willingly try ABBYY, if only this CAT tool was available in my language pairs (primarily Slavic languages).
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Please pardon my ignorance, but I wonder how many of you CAT-savvy people have had the opportunity of comparing them all in order to say which one offers the best support?
| | | | Matthew McKay
Switzerland
Local time: 14:38
Member (2022)
Chinese to English
+ ...
| For non-tech translators! | May 18, 2022 |
I'm slowly transitioning to CAT, due to some client demands.
Having compared various CAT platforms online, Trados seems to be the most comprehensive, but can also be a bit tech-heavy.
Memsource (the other CAT I'm looking at, not necessarily the second-most popular) seems to offer the most important features, but with an easier interface—possibly more convenient for solo freelancers.
Thoughts?
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 14:38
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
| Probably nobody. | May 18, 2022 |
Teresa Borges wrote:
Please pardon my ignorance, but I wonder how many of you CAT-savvy people have had the opportunity of comparing them all in order to say which one offers the best support?
Probably nobody. This is a stupid poll question.
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| Can´t compare | May 18, 2022 |
As others have observed, probably very few of us have enough experience of support from more than one or two CATs.
I voted for Trados, because that is the only CAT I have ever had support from. I would like to say, however, that their support has always been fast and effective.
Best of all is that I have barely needed it in recent years. 
I thought Trados was a pain when I first started, more than 2... See more As others have observed, probably very few of us have enough experience of support from more than one or two CATs.
I voted for Trados, because that is the only CAT I have ever had support from. I would like to say, however, that their support has always been fast and effective.
Best of all is that I have barely needed it in recent years.
I thought Trados was a pain when I first started, more than 20 years ago, with Workbench - was it 3.1? But my employer insisted.
When I started freelancing, I advanced to 5. something, and really had trouble. Back then it took a while to establish that it was not me being stupid: I had a faulty dongle. It would suddenly freeze into demo mode for no good reason, and then my TM was too large. I would shut down, restart, pray... and then it would sometimes work again for a while, which of course, it did, the first time SDL sent a test!
Finally they found the problem and sent an apology and a new dongle, and things looked up!
Some of us will remember Jerzy Czopik, who provided an incredible amount of help and support on this site. THANK YOU, JERZY!! His advice was often even quicker than going through the official channels.
There was a glitch with a new version of Workbench that was said to include a lot of improvements for Hindi and non-European scripts... but it had trouble with the extra letters in Danish! (Æ, Ø, Å, æ, ø, å.) I dare not think what it might have done with Polish or other languages with diacritics...
And at one point I actually installed Wordfast to get a rushed job delivered on time, because my new Trados update would not install properly.
When I had a moment to call Trados support, they sorted it immediately.
I have never forgotten a service engineer who spent more than an hour remotely uninstalling Studio 2009 and installing Studio 2011 for me. He said that was the quickest way to get over my problem! He then reorganised my setup and explained what was wrong... AND I was able to deliver my job on time!
As I said, I have not needed support much lately - only once in about five years, but it sorted my problem with a multilingual Excel file that would not export a target.
Paul Filkin at SDL and Emma Goldsmith's blog have also provided a lot of good advice.
Whenever I have tried other CATs, I have given up and gone back to Trados before I actually needed support, so I cannot really answer the poll question.
It takes time to learn to use Trados to full advantage, but I think it is worth the effort. MemoQ did not exist when I started with Trados, and when I tried it, I was too set in my ways - I stayed with Trados, but I understand why others like MemoQ.
[Edited at 2022-05-18 13:27 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Ana Vozone
Local time: 13:38
Member (2010)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
| I use several CAT tools | May 18, 2022 |
and either find support on online discussions, in forums, etc., or from Project Managers.
I don't think I ever contacted any of the suppliers/"manufacturers" of the actual CAT tools I use.
| | | | Alex Lichanow
Germany
Local time: 14:38
Member (2020)
English to German
+ ...
| Bass-playing translator | May 18, 2022 |
Baran Keki wrote:
kind of reminds me of people on bass guitar forums who would talk about pedals, amps, humbuckers and other technical stuff all day... I had the feeling that a good number of them didn't even know the notes on the fretboard, let alone playing the major and minor scales, but they loved their pedals, and seemed to know every minute detail and technicality in a pickup...
It seems to me like some people are far more interested in CAT tools than the translation itself.
As a bass player, I am quite fond of certain effects that are "necessary" for the kind of music I play. Cannot imagine playing doom/stoner metal with just the clean amp sound and without a proper fuzz pedal and the occasional octaver. Still, I know my notes on the fretboard and my scales (not only minor and major; played a lot of Phrygian in my last band).
Same goes for CAT tools. Sure, I can translate on paper or in a Word document. However, CAT tools just (usually!) make life easier for me and I would not want to do without them.
That said, I never had contact with any support teams. The one time I would actually have needed support for Trados Studio, they would not reply at all because I had no support contract. Awesome business model there! Luckily, some savvy user on the SDL forums was able to help me out.
[Edited at 2022-05-18 13:51 GMT]
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