![]() It’s especially relevant that HTML and XML are missing, and neither InDesign, FrameMaker nor any other software development formats are supported. While it’s impressive that PDF files and graphic files can be processed, some other important formats are not yet supported. The recognition of graphics works fine when regular fonts are used (see Figures 1-3), and not so great when very creative fonts are involved, which is not surprising. Of course, this doesn’t mean that you won’t have to do some amount of formatting to the resulting Word document when finalizing it, but you can expect the quality that you’re already familiar with if you’ve used ABBYY’s stand-alone OCR and/or PDF conversion tools in the past. SmartCAT’s solution is most likely the best PDF workaround offered among translation environment tools. This means that graphic files can be internally OCRed and turned into Word documents, and PDF files can be read no matter whether they are text- or image-based. Since ABBYY already owned a sophisticated optical character recognition (OCR) solution, it integrated that right into SmartCAT. The supported file types presently include Microsoft Office files (of the -x variety as well as the earlier format), OpenOffice/LibreOffice files, PDF, text, Trados TTX, XLIFF (including SDLXLIFF), and a huge variety of graphic formats. ABBYY uses Microsoft Azure servers in Ireland and the United States and its own servers in Moscow it’s also possible to install SmartCAT on your own servers. Files are uploaded to a server where they are processed and presented to the translator in the typical tabular translation interface (source on the left, target on the right). ![]() ![]() What is SmartCAT? It’s a completely cloud-based translation environment tool with a wholly browser-based interface. As a result of this and other projects, approximately 5,000 active users are presently using the tool. If even one of those items was in place, I usually continued talking to them.īut when a company such as ABBYY - with more than 1,200 employees worldwide, a proven track record in language technologies (ABBYY FineReader, PDF Transformer, Lingvo, Aligner, Compreno) and past investments by the Russian government - enters the translation environment tool market, it’s time to sit up and take notice.ĪBBYY, by the way, is Proto-Tibeto-Burman and means “keen eye.” ABBYY SmartCAT was officially launched a few months ago, though before that it had been in use for some time by ABBYY Language Services, ABBYY’s language service arm, in particular for the ongoing massive volunteer crowdsourcing project of Coursera MOOCs into Russian. With a small number of exceptions, I ended my consultancy after a meeting or two because I could not see how a) the technology they envisioned was all that different, b) their business plan was sustainable and c) support and development could be maintained in the long run. In the past few years I’ve consulted for a good number of developers (often former translators) who have hatched ideas on how to garner one of those pieces of the pie. Oh, yes, and then there’s the free market where many want a piece of the pie. Cloud-based tools such as Memsource, XTM, Wordbee, and - more recently - MateCat are well established, and tools such as memoQ and Across are including an all-cloud-based approach as well. In addition, the translation exchange format XLIFF has had more of an impact on the concept of exchangeability than other previous standards, making workflows a lot less tool-centric.įinally, the general notion of faster response times, real-time collaboration through the cloud, and minimal onboarding has taken hold. While SDL’s products still take up a large share of translation technology products, other vendors such as Kilgray and Smartling continue to chew away at SDL’s previously almighty position, opening the market to their own products as well as others. ![]() Why? Well, compared to ten or 15 years ago, the market is a lot less homogenous. You might even think that the market is flooded with tools.Īfter a second, closer look, however, it would become apparent that there is always room for new solutions. If you didn’t know any better, a cursory examination of the translation technology landscape, particularly in regard to translation environment tools (CAT tools), might easily convey the impression that there’s already plenty to choose from.
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