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How much does Trados cost, is it worth it?
Thread poster: Brian Joyce
Brian Joyce
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Feb 20, 2020

Is Trados worth it?

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dkfmmuc
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Thanks to the moderator Feb 20, 2020



[Edited at 2020-02-20 15:38 GMT]


 
Thomas Pfann
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  Feb 20, 2020

 

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Gitte Hovedskov (X)
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Go to SDL website for price/offers Feb 20, 2020

A little bit of googling will give you an idea of the cost of SDL Trados.

Whether it is worth the cost, depends entirely on how you intend to use it. Some professional and highly experienced translators never use CAT tools, others think of CAT tools as a natural part of their toolbox.

Some will tell you that it depends on the subject area, where CAT tools are considered particularly useful if you can build up a solid translation memory that will assist you in translatin
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A little bit of googling will give you an idea of the cost of SDL Trados.

Whether it is worth the cost, depends entirely on how you intend to use it. Some professional and highly experienced translators never use CAT tools, others think of CAT tools as a natural part of their toolbox.

Some will tell you that it depends on the subject area, where CAT tools are considered particularly useful if you can build up a solid translation memory that will assist you in translating texts with similar content (for instance, technical, legal, financial and medical texts). Others will tell you that for very creative translations (such as marketing and fiction), CAT tools may even be considered a hindrance, as you don't want your creative flow to be hampered by suggestions from the translation memory.

Pricewise, it will only take you a couple of good translation jobs to earn back the cost of investing in SDL Trados, or any other CAT tool for that matter.

Most CAT tools have trial versions that you can access online, why not give them a go and see for yourself whether you think they will help you in your translation work.
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Thomas Pfann
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Rocio Palacios (X)
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TGB offer for SDL Trados Studio Freelance 2019 Feb 20, 2020

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to let you know that there's a ProZ.com TGB offer available until February 29 for new SDL Trados Studio 2019 Freelance for $505 / €415 (includes free eLearning) and you can check this offer here: https://www.proz.com/tgb/1253 and 40% off on upgrades from your current
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Hi everyone!

I just wanted to let you know that there's a ProZ.com TGB offer available until February 29 for new SDL Trados Studio 2019 Freelance for $505 / €415 (includes free eLearning) and you can check this offer here: https://www.proz.com/tgb/1253 and 40% off on upgrades from your current version, more information is available here: https://www.proz.com/tgb/1256

Let me know if you have any questions, or if there is anything I can help with, you can reach out to me or email the TGB team at [email protected]
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Samuel Murray
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@Brian Feb 20, 2020

Brian Joyce wrote:
How much does Trados cost, and is it worth it?


How much does Trados cost? GBP 835 (you need the "Freelance Plus" license). There is a new version of Trados roughly every 2 years. Unfortunately, the folks over at the Trados company decided to redesign their web site so that it no longer shows how much an upgrade costs, but AFAIK you can expect to pay about GBP 250 every 2 years. So, it's GBP 835 now, plus GBP 250 in 2021, plus GBP 250 in 2023, etc. However, you are not required to upgrade (you can continue using the 2019 version for as long as you want).

Sometimes you can get Trados cheaper when it's on special offer. There is currently a special offer at the "Translators' Group Buy" (TGB) here on ProZ.com -- https://www.proz.com/tgb/1253 -- which gets you the non-Plus version for about GBP 400, but you only get your license in March 2020. Then, after you bought it, you should upgrade to the Plus version (which currently costs GBP 140).

Trados is very expensive. Other expensive tools include MemoQ, Wordfast and Dejavu. Trados not really worth it unless you are sure that you're going to get lots and lots of work that require Trados or if you're sure that using Trados will result in more money than you would otherwise earn, and that depends on your rate, how many clients you currently have, how much work you get, etc.

Using a CAT tool increases your speed by about 10-20% (if you don't take into account fuzzy matching). So, do the calculation -- if your current annual earnings is more than GBP 4200 (or more than GBP 2700, if you use the TGB special offer), and you're not using a different CAT tool at this time, then it's worth buying Trados.


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Heinrich Pesch
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SDL TRados is worth its price Feb 21, 2020

Read here, what Jost Zetsche (very experienced guy) wrote in his newest newsletter:
" ... I've always maintained that the cost of a tool, whether it's a monthly usage fee or the cost of a perpetual license, is really only relevant in relation to the gain in productivity. A free tool that doesn't make me more productive can end up "costing" me much more than one with a seemingly high price tag that radically increases my productivity."

Think about that.


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Brian Joyce
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French to English
TOPIC STARTER
free flow writing Feb 21, 2020

First of all I would like to thank you Gitte Hovedskov for your response and I think you have absolutely hit the nail on head. I do not want to work a translation program that thinks it knows more about French literature then I do. I would like to see what Trados makes of Houellebecq, or how Trados would translate slang terminology.
I am new to this world of online translating, and I think for the time being whenever anyone asks me what CAT tools I use? I w
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First of all I would like to thank you Gitte Hovedskov for your response and I think you have absolutely hit the nail on head. I do not want to work a translation program that thinks it knows more about French literature then I do. I would like to see what Trados makes of Houellebecq, or how Trados would translate slang terminology.
I am new to this world of online translating, and I think for the time being whenever anyone asks me what CAT tools I use? I will say Word, that is enough.
Funny thing I have just seen a post on translators café asking for a medical translator "sans logiciel". Translation with pen and ink is still a reality.
"

[Edited at 2020-02-21 14:24 GMT]
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Natalie
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Hi Brian Feb 21, 2020

Brian Joyce wrote:
I do not want to work a translation program that thinks it knows more about French literature then I do. I would like to see what Trados makes of Houellebecq, or how Trados would translate slang terminology.


It looks to me that you think that Trados is a machine translation software. It is not. Machine translation software provides you an automated translation, while Trados only assists you, providing sentences and phrases from translation memories that you create yourself (or sometimes receive from your clients) and terminology from your glossaries. The purpose of using Trados (as well as any other CAT tools) is to keep consistency and work faster. CAT tools are only useful when you translate texts with plenty of repetitions, similar sentences, and need to use consistent terminology. CAT tools are absolutely useless when you translate fiction or poetry.


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Dan Lucas
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Computer-Assisted Literary Translation Conference Feb 21, 2020

Brian Joyce wrote:
I will say Word, that is enough.

Like some of the other practitioners in this forum, you haven't had extensive experience of a CAT tool, which means that your opinion (like theirs) cannot said to be informed. CAT tools will suit some and not others, but I suggest that giving them a try before dismissing them is a sensible approach for most new freelancers. And if you did decide to purchase, then a few hundred pounds is neither here nor there in the greater scheme of things.

Having said that, for translators who work (unlike myself) predominantly in literature, the received wisdom certainly has been that CAT tools are neither necessary nor helpful. Not everybody agrees, however, hence the Computer-Assisted Literary Translation Conference.

CALT is held in Swansea, so perhaps of interest to UK translators in particular. The organisers and participants seem to be taking a constructive approach to the topic. To quote from the site:

Anything ‘machine’ is traditionally anathema to literary translators, but times are changing fast. In our 2019 workshops, presenters and trainers convincingly demonstrated the value of computational assistance at various stages in a literary translation process, from source text analysis to quality control. Some literary translators are already improving their productivity, job satisfaction, and output quality by using CAT tools and Translation Memories, and/or various text and corpus analysis tools (e.g. SketchEngine, WordSmith, Voyant), and/or Machine Translation.

Still, the topic often provokes anxiety. Many literary translators fear having technologies imposed upon them, as already happens in non-literary and even some popular-literary translation. Can translators retain autonomy by selectively making digital tools their own?


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Roy Oestensen
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Translators of fiction may gain from CAT tool, but need to be careful Feb 24, 2020

Natalie wrote:
It looks to me that you think that Trados is a machine translation software. It is not. Machine translation software provides you an automated translation, while Trados only assists you, providing sentences and phrases from translation memories that you create yourself (or sometimes receive from your clients) and terminology from your glossaries. The purpose of using Trados (as well as any other CAT tools) is to keep consistency and work faster. CAT tools are only useful when you translate texts with plenty of repetitions, similar sentences, and need to use consistent terminology. CAT tools are absolutely useless when you translate fiction or poetry.


I agree that a translator of fiction (and especially poetry) gain much less from using a CAT tool than a translator of technical literature. But absolutely useless? I am not so sure. Even a translator of fiction can be helped with the term database of a CAT tool - re. the Harry Potter series, for instance, where there are a lot of names both of persons and placed that are being translated. A term list will, therefore, be helpful for the translator. But if the help is sufficient to warrant the investment in a CAT tool is a totall different type of fish.


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Natalie
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I agree Feb 24, 2020

Roy Oestensen wrote:
But absolutely useless? I am not so sure. Even a translator of fiction can be helped with the term database of a CAT tool - re. the Harry Potter series, for instance, where there are a lot of names both of persons and placed that are being translated. A term list will, therefore, be helpful for the translator. But if the help is sufficient to warrant the investment in a CAT tool is a totall different type of fish.


Hi Roy, I agree, of course. But it depends if you are translating a huge saga or short stories


 
Tusino Mukti
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Version of 2017 and 2021, what the different May 30, 2021

It is a bit different topic, I just wondered that somebody can advise me what is the difference between version 2017 and 2019. As I just upgraded from 2017 to 2019, because I got news from trados mass email that for version 2017, the customer support will no longer after this Jun, 2021. Honestly, I feel that they seem the same. Same function and same speed. Then what the advantage for us to upgrade in every 2 years?

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Roy Oestensen
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No sure, but why upgrade to 2019 and not the latest version? May 30, 2021

Tusino Mukti wrote:

It is a bit different topic, I just wondered that somebody can advise me what is the difference between version 2017 and 2019. As I just upgraded from 2017 to 2019, because I got news from trados mass email that for version 2017, the customer support will no longer after this Jun, 2021. Honestly, I feel that they seem the same. Same function and same speed. Then what the advantage for us to upgrade in every 2 years?


Many feel you at least can skip one upgrade and wait until the the next in line, since usually the changes are incremental, and, therefore, only minor. I would think that the difference between 2017 and 2021 is more noticeable. Though it may be that the main difference is the cloud based version of 2021, which really isn't worth the upgrade since I never use it. (I hate cloud based CAT tools in general as they invariably are inferior in functionality and speed compared to the offline CAT tools.)

There is one thing regarding the upgrades, though. My favourite tool, Deja vu suffers from not having a similar payment structure as Studio, with the result that it doesn't have the resources for development as other CAT tools. I then think it's better to pay for the upgrades to support the further development, at least if you don't have a different CAT tool you prefer.

Roy


 
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