A comparison between open-source and commercial translator tools

Abstract

When staring to analyze the tools used for translation, I have chosen Pootle as the first tool to consider is an open source tool that performs translation by means of analyzing the whole sentence first before parsing for translation. This tool is used by Ubuntu, leading distribution of Linux, and because it is open source, it can easily be modified to one’s own language and hence be extended. Then for studying a commercial translation tool, the popular tool that I have found and studied is Trados. Despite being closed –source it has a good tutorial and documentation for use. It works by creating a project and keeping the file to translate then translating it. However, the creation of project is only available to the software that is bought with a certain price. Performance wise, Trados has a different way for translating, it translates each word before going for grammatical parsing. This might give rise to certain difficulties or even inconsistencies in the translation process and eventually lead to grammatically complex or incorrect sentences. However, Trados has ways of correcting for these issues but doesn’t document how they do it as they are closed-source. Now, which method to use is a debate that needs to be resolved in a scientific way. Hence this project is concerned with the analysis between the two leading yet distinct tools for translation.