Poll: Will CAT tools still be essential in the future? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Will CAT tools still be essential in the future?".
View the poll results »
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| they may become unnecessary | Mar 15 |
I do hope they become unnecessary, because I’m a happy dinosaur…
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Michael Newton 
United States
Local time: 15:49
Japanese to English
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| CAT tools essential? | Mar 16 |
Will CATS ever supersede DOGS?
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Daryo
Local time: 20:49
Serbian to English
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Daryo wrote:
for WHO exactly?
Yes, I missed that at first reading and had already checked my answer when I realised that the answers don't match the question, because of that sneaky "essential" and the even sneakier "still".
It's like the old chestnut, "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
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Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 21:49
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
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| At least for another while | Mar 16 |
Since their main reason of existence is storing translations for future reference and re-use I see no reason to believe that CAT tools will become less important, at least not in the near future. Apart from my single direct client all my agency customers work with CAT tools or expect me to use one.
Perhaps CAT tools aren't essential as such, since it's obviously perfectly possible to translate without them, but they are definitely one of the reasons why I still manage to make a dece... See more Since their main reason of existence is storing translations for future reference and re-use I see no reason to believe that CAT tools will become less important, at least not in the near future. Apart from my single direct client all my agency customers work with CAT tools or expect me to use one.
Perhaps CAT tools aren't essential as such, since it's obviously perfectly possible to translate without them, but they are definitely one of the reasons why I still manage to make a decent living out of translation today. ▲ Collapse
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Daryo
Local time: 20:49
Serbian to English
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| You know why the speed camera was invented? | Mar 16 |
So they can be put on perfectly safe open stretches of road and used to collect money from drivers fed up with nonsense speed limits?
Ahem ... No.
If my memory is not playing tricks on me, the inventor wanted to help racing drivers to improve their driving.
OK, I know, it's just a silly digression, no parallels whatsoever with dogs or cats nor with translating.
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Zea_Mays
Italy
Local time: 21:49
English to German
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If you want consistency and less effort with lengthy, repetitive copy - yes. AI bots are very bad in working on longer copy, they quickly miss the point, disregard TMs and glossaries and make up stuff to obfuscate these facts. NB: even when integrated into CATs.
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| Badly worded question | Mar 16 |
CATs are not and never have been essential. They are sometimes helpful, often not.
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Mario Chávez
United States
Local time: 15:49
English to Spanish
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I love rhetorical/existencial questions.
I recall our hospital's IT director saying, ever so smarmily, that CAT tool makers will all use AI and change accordingly.
MC
Daryo wrote:
for WHO exactly?
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Mario Chávez
United States
Local time: 15:49
English to Spanish
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| Define “essential” | Mar 16 |
As everyone knows, we call something essential as an article, object, tool, feature, etc. we cannot do the job without. Translators have been doing translations from time immemorial without the need of digital or computer tools. Sometimes I think poll writers are very young and think that non-digital tools or means of writing or production aren't worth the bother to look up, learn about or study.
It reminds me of the time a localization manager said something during an online meetin... See more As everyone knows, we call something essential as an article, object, tool, feature, etc. we cannot do the job without. Translators have been doing translations from time immemorial without the need of digital or computer tools. Sometimes I think poll writers are very young and think that non-digital tools or means of writing or production aren't worth the bother to look up, learn about or study.
It reminds me of the time a localization manager said something during an online meeting a few years ago. He remarked something about localizing user interfaces, I believe, but in a categorical way, as if only videogame-related user interfaces were the main object of software localization efforts. I pointed out to him that there are complex user interfaces found in several software applications.
I hope my memory is serving me well; I'm paraphrasing my own anecdote above.
Digital or software tools to translate or to do almost anything else are not essential per se. Of course, NASA (for instance) may consider some software tools essential and mission-critical to perform calculations and other space-related operations. So, it's about the scope and the work to be done in question.
MC ▲ Collapse
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