What is Reddit's opinion of OmegaT?

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I've been running a business for 10 years using only FOSS. A language service provider, meaning, essentially, I translate and edit documents for clients (I speak 4 languages). Clients overwhelmingly send me work in MSOffice® formats (about 85% of the work, most .doc and .docx, but some .xls(x) and .ppt, while another 10% comes as pdf files and another 5% as html for website localization and a few other formats, like Trado® .ttx files). I use OpenOffice.org (and OmegaT CAT software).

In 10 years, there have been no compatibility problems.

Hey,

It's a free/libre computer-aided translation software project developed in java.

The contact people are here.

It supports open document formats which allow TM and TB transfer/sharing between other software.

You can:

• donate
• contribute code
• translate documentation (if not, already)
• provide training for translators
• set up a server so that your translators can share TBs and TMs while doing the translation work.
• you can even start your own CAT-tool project based on OmegaT codebase.

Also, here's a quote from the website:

> OmegaT's developers, who are all volunteers, may be more willing to implement an RFE if the development work is funded by the requester. Sponsorship of development has already resulted in the addition of certain features. If you are willing to finance the work of implementing your desired feature, please contact the development team privately for a quotation. It may also be possible for developments commissioned from external developers to be implemented within OmegaT.

Professional translators use CAT tools (computer-aided translation), also known as translation memory tools. You could try one of the free ones, like OmegaT or Across.

As far as I know though, none of them handle PDFs natively, since PDF is not supposed to be an editable format, but a format that you export to, to preserve the same look across various platforms.

You would first need to convert the PDF into an editable format, e.g. a Word document. Here's a comparison of various conversion solutions: http://www.freewaregenius.com/how-to-convert-pdf-to-word-doc-for-free-a-comparative-test-2/

Professional translators use CAT tools (computer-aided translation), also known as translation memory tools. They provide a useful interface and usually a database of your existing translations that allow you to recycle them if you come across the same or a similar sentence again. You can even pre-fill your database with freely available translations like those from the EU.

I have worked with Trados and an online one called Lingotek, which used to be free. Trados was pretty much the industry standard up until some years ago, but there are many more alternatives these days. You could also try it with a free one first, like OmegaT or Across.

I use memoQ as well and I couldn't agree more. Also it's much cheaper and more stable than Trados.

An alternative to Google's Toolkint is definitely OmegaT. It's open source and completely free. You have to set everything up yourself but it's definitely doable and surely better than nothing. A good starter I guess.

If you're looking for cloud-based programs, I'd recommend Wordbee.

Are you looking for Machine Translation, or a Translation Memory-based system?

MemoQ and Trados are translation memories. They're basically databases of your existing translations that allow you to recycle them if you come across the same or a similar sentence again. You can even pre-fill your database with freely available translations like those from the EU.

I have worked with Trados and an online one called Lingotek, which used to be free. Trados was pretty much the industry standard, but there are many more alternatives these days. You could also try it with a free one first, like OmegaT.

Here's an introduction to TMs that I recently bookmarked: http://linguagreca.com/blog/2014/05/translation-memories-overview-benefits

I think "computer assisted translation" is what you're thinking of, in particular translation memory software. This sort of thing remembers how you've translated words or phrases in the past and helps fill those in for you elsewhere in the text. The most popular programs for this aren't free, but OmegaT may be a viable, free alternative, though I haven't tried it myself.

in case OP knows the person behind this translation project, here is a pointer to a nice Computer Assisted Translation software which might help : http://www.omegat.org/

EDIT: there are other softwares that might be better, didn't test them all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-assisted_translation#Comparison_of_various_Translation_Memory_tools

I think of doing this frequently, but when I do, I have nightmarish visions of looking down the throat of a deadline on a huge project, while some update just borked mission critical software, or something. I understand testing doesn't regularly break stuff, but I also understand that it does sometimes break. In my experience, so far, I have not broken anything on stable, ever, which is pretty well why I love and use it.

I had used RH/Fedora for about 8 years, and really got really tired of yum breaking stuff. Spent some time with ubuntu, not any better, and their release schedule with leapfrogging LTS or whatever was dizzying. Tried PCLinuxOS, not too bad, but still had issues, and finally settled on Debian Stable in about 08...haven't had a single software problem since, other than wishing I had newer versions of stuff (I do install somethings "by hand" to keep them updated, like OmegaT (I'm a translator, run a language services agency), since Debian is still on v. 1.8.1, and the current stable release is 2.3, with vast improvements and added features).