Home » Compare Comparing LogiTerm Pro and Wordfast Pro 3 Which software is better? Here is a rundown of features and reviews to help you make your decision. | |  |  | | Name | LogiTerm Pro | Wordfast Pro 3 | | Review breakdown | | | | Most helpful review | Very powerful, flexible and user-friendly Logiterm is not a translation memory software in the strict sense insofar as it doesn’t memorize segments as you translate them. However, it is a very powerful and intuitive tool for leveraging past translations, documentation, glossaries, etc.
PROS
- The most accurate alignment engine out there.
- The most flexible and effective tool for accessing past translations that I have tried. You can add the most relevant and/or reliable previous translations and glossaries to the TM you use to pretranslate a doc but still access your entire corpus of past translations, related documents and glossaries in another window when editing and confirming the translation. You can search your entire corpus or specific parts of it, search full text or translation pairs, use search parameters, etc.
- Very easy to learn and easy to work with, especially when translating in Word. For Word, Logiterm installs a toolbar instead of forcing you to work in another environment. Past translation pairs with highlighted differences appear in a pop-up window for editing and are then entered directly in the Word document. I find it a much more natural and flexible way to translate than working in a TEnT. You can use the Logiterm pop-up window where you want, switch back to translating directly in Word where it makes more sense, continue accessing Logiterm’s search functions whenever you want. There are no formatting glitches caused by exporting the finished translation from the TEnT back to Word (except that inline codes must be added manually in Word). At the same time, Logiterm doesn’t have the severe limitations of the Wordfast Word add-on.
- The almost-free Logiterm toolbar makes it easy to share output with collaborators who don’t own Logiterm and lets them use and edit pretranslation results as effectively as owners of the software.
- Tech support is fast and helpful.
CONS
- Not nearly as good as MemoQ or other conventional TMs for translating a document with many internal repetitions but no similarity to past translations. Logiterm will identify 100% matches within a document and propagate your translation throughout the file but it can’t find internal fuzzy matches within a document.
- No QA function. If you want QA, you have to use a separate error-checking software. I use Verifika and in a way I don’t mind, since I find Verifika is much better than the built-in error checkers in other CAT tools anyway, but it is definitely a more cumbersome process.
- Terminotix is very slow to fix bugs. For example, Logiterm doesn’t process end-of-segment punctuation, just leaves it as is. So if a segment ends with a space followed by a colon or semi-colon, there is no way to remove the space in Logiterm. If a segment ends with a bracket, Logiterm leaves it there, even if you have moved the parentheses to inside the segment. You have to edit out unwanted end-of-segment punctuation in Word. This is not a huge problem since you have the Word screen in front of you as you translate in the Logiterm pop-up window, but Terminotix has known about this bug for years and definitely should have addressed it by now.
BOTTOM LINE
I have been using Logiterm as my main CAT tool for about 10 years and, despite some irritants, I still find it to be the smoothest CAT software to work with. After trying others periodically, I keep coming back to Logiterm because of its flexibility and ease of use.
UPDATE
Since I wrote this review, a new Logiterm release has fixed the bugs and added the ability to find and process fuzzy matches within a document.
So, at this point, the only situation in which I would still prefer memoQ to Logiterm is a large project with many internal repetitions that has to be divided among several translators. Logiterm has nothing comparable to the capabilities of memoQ's server edition. But for any one-man job, I think Logiterm is the cleaner solution now. 7 out of 7 found this review helpful.
Read more reviews → | Quite good, especially for the young translator I started with the demo version of this tool and later on bought the licence. It's quite easy to use and has the basic functionalities needed by a young translator. Compared to other CAT tools, there are a lot of improvements to make. It is however worth its price.
It is a good entry level tool for those new to the translation industry, especially its demo version. Unlike other cat tools, you can import and export TMs even with the demo version. The only limitation is the size of the TM.
Wordfast still has a long way to go in order to match other CAT tools. You will soon feel the need to buy other CAT tools: Trados which seems to be the most used by agencies, MemoQ which a good number of freelancers enjoy, Deja V, etc.
NB: for those living in developing economies (Africa, India, etc.), you don't need to buy Wordfast through Proz TGB. A 50% discount is offered through their website. On TGB, you only have 40% discount, and will wait for weeks for the buy to close.21 out of 22 found this review helpful.
Read more reviews → | | Product description | A COMPLETE TRANSLATION SOFTWARE COMBINING A FULL-TEXT SEARCH ENGINE WITH TRANSLATION, TERMINOLOGY, DATA CONVERSION AND ALIGNMENT TOOLS | THE #1 TRANSLATION MEMORY SOFTWARE FOR ANY PLATFORM
Wordfast Pro (WFP) is a standalone, multiplatform TM tool designed to change the landscape for every stakeholder in the translation process, from project manager to freelance translator | | Price | $795 | €400 | | File formats | No data | MS Word MS Excel MS Powerpoint HTML XML ASP/JSP/Java INX (InDesign) MIF (FrameMaker TTX PDF | | License type | Perpetual | 3-year license | | Operating system | Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 | Linux, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Mac OS X 10.4 and higher | | System requirements | 1-GHz processor; 512 MB of RAM; 200 MB of available disk space | No data | | Compatibility | No data | No data | | Support and upgrades offered/included | 1 year of free support and upgrades | Free upgrades for duration of license/Subscription | | Support and tutorial links | No data | No data | | Free trial | No data | No data | | Languages supported | No data | Wordfast Pro supports any language that is supported by Microsoft Word. This includes Eastern European, Cyrillic, Asian, Right-to-Left, and various other languages. | Looking to buy one of these tools? Save when you buy through ProZ.com Translator Group Buying Translator Group Buying → | | | | X Sign in to your ProZ.com account... | | | | | | |
