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[Freecats-Dev] Trados/other CAT, Python/Java, German/English
From: |
Henri Chorand |
Subject: |
[Freecats-Dev] Trados/other CAT, Python/Java, German/English |
Date: |
Wed, 19 Feb 2003 22:46:56 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20021003 |
Charles Stewart wrote:
- If what we build is good enough, people will switch
tools and come to us, especially if we are nice enough
to provide 2-way migration tools. So the fear of Trados
and wordfast gaining too much momentum is illusory, not
real.
Whatever the fear - major translation agencies don't give a damn about
Trados per se. Like other categories of software users in their
respective fields, they mostly selected Trados because it looked like
the best software in town - that begun before MS took a share in Trados.
Now, it's more a de facto standard than anything else. DéjàVu, SDLX &
Wordfast are definitely NOT soon-to-be-extinct beasts.
Just a remark about Dave's point of view: Trados compatibility IS a must
with translation agencies for technical translation & localization
project - not Trados itself, at least not quite as much.
I expect these translation agencies to get interested in our tool if it
comes into existence, only because it will be free and Trados-compatible.
Note that, to the best of my knowledge, e.g. Berlitz (now part of
Bowne), or Lionbridge (except for the projects for which they request
and provide their baby, Foreign Desk), did NOT massively upgrade to
Trados 5, for reasons like cost and lack of new, essential features.
- I am more worried about lock-in, especially wrt. the
Python programming language. It is an excellent tool
for doing quick hacks that need OO, but it behaves almost
completely unlike any other programming language in its
semantics. If the reference implementation is Python,
we will find it difficult to support programmers who loathe
Python (and they do exist).
Of course - that's the trouble with having to choose a language ;-)
- I am all for a Java implementation. Java has excellent
libraries, and many PLs can target the JVM, including
python, tcl and Scheme.
Well, I'd say the one with skills & availability makes the choice, then.
At least, here we go with portability, and we can stop worrying about OS
X zealots: they'll drink from the same barrel as the other team members.
Even through poor folks like me (with rather limited coding skills &
availability) would not dare to begin coding in Java, maybe we'll be
able to do a few things once the code's overall structure is nicely laid
out by any volunteer. Whatever I believe - and who cares anyway ;-) -
Java IS a possible, reasonable option.
> The recent brouhaha about "java is inefficient, even Sun
> says so" applies *only* to Sun's own JVM. IBM's JVM is
> better, and we can compile to native C using gcc+CLASSPATH.
Do you mean we can convert Java code into native C code? That would be
even better then. Please correct me if I missed the target here.
I'll wait for the project team to vote. Mind you, there weren't that
many votes around for now, so maybe (especially if OmegaT's Keith
Godfrey invites us to join him) your votes will make the decision.
Of course, I will only accept votes from people who can and WILL provide
SOME coding effort ;-)))
Even though I knew from the start that the Chief Software Architect's
cap is too large for my little head, still, I hope I can contribute to
code, even 1%.
Seriously, though, IF we start from Keith's OmegaT project, then we're
all heading to Java then (warm & sunny island).
Also, even more seriously: we do need a charitable soul to build our
project's framework in order to start moving ahead. Once a true
programmer has built it and is available to provide explanations and
some setup help to week-end programmers like me, those week-end
programmers will be able to concentrate on small bits of code and
possibly improve it or write similar things.
So, Charles, if you do code in Java and want to start something, please
do it and we'll follow. Of course, the same is true for Keith or whoever
else.
Note that I haven't subscribed Keith to our dev-list yet, as I strictly
follow an opt-in policy, but I'll CC: him this message.
Keith, just FYI: today was the most busy (some might say a bit heated)
day our little Dev-list has known yet - see the archive on Savannah if
you want. We'll also warmly welcome you on freecats-dev list.
Part of the story is about wether KDE's KBabel:
- is a nice candidate from which to build Free CATS' future interactive
translation client (answer: quite possibly, still a lot of work to do)
- is portable (answer:not quite yet, uses KDE-specific libraries)
- as a free software team, wants the whole bunch of us, including the
non-coders & barkers, to distract them from a purely KDE approach and to
invade them ;-)
Stanislav & other readers, please correct any blatant (and inadvertent)
mistake above.
Of course, we're asking ourselves more or less the same questions about
OmegaT. To date, KBabel & OmegaT are the two only projects of interest
which we heard about.
Coming back to Charles' other stuff:
- I am assembling an argument that we will need to handle
hierarchical structure to get results with German->English
translation. More to follow, not necessarily all that soon.
Great - at least somebody kep working today while all of us talked.
I'm not sure what you mean with "hierarchical structure" here, but I
suppose I'll just have to wait a little and I'll see it. I hope it
nicely fits in the picture as a clever indexing feature on top of raw
segment storage in a TM.
Cheers to all,
Henri
- [Freecats-Dev] Re: Interface/vote, Charles Stewart, 2003/02/19
- [Freecats-Dev] Trados/other CAT, Python/Java, German/English,
Henri Chorand <=
- Message not available
- [Freecats-Dev] Re: Trados/other CAT, Python/Java, German/English, Henri Chorand, 2003/02/24
- [Freecats-Dev] Re: Trados/other CAT, Python/Java, German/English, Keith Godfrey, 2003/02/26
- [Freecats-Dev] Standalone client editor / OO integration (from Keith), Henri Chorand, 2003/02/26
Re: [Freecats-Dev] Re: Interface/vote, David N. Welton, 2003/02/19