What is the Translation Editor?

Translation Editor

In Wordbee Translator, the Translation Editor is the part of the system that is commonly referred to as a CAT Tool. It is used to view the document broken down into manageable segments for simple translation and review when performing a job for a project. 

The Translation Editor interfaces with linguistic resources such as assigned translation memories and glossaries to reduce the time and cost of translations while increasing output quality. This particular CAT Tool is accessible online in a web browser. This allows multiple vendors to work on translation projects in a collaborative way.

What is a CAT Tool?

A CAT Tool (Computer-Assisted Translation) is a computer program designed as an aid for text translation of documents and revision of work. The tool first segments source text and then presents these segments through an easy to use platform for translation, revision, etc.

This way, the translator only has to fill in the translations of these text segments in the program window, not having to worry about manually recreating the original layout and style: the cat tool will take care of everything related to formatting, from indentation to footnote placement, from tables to page headers and footers.

Computer-assisted tools are often being confused for fully automated translation software. In fact, the two have quite different approaches to translation, which however do not exclude, but rather complement each other; indeed, CAT tools make it possible to fix errors in the output of a machine translation after it has been completed. In many cases, a machine translation is not capable of producing high-quality results without some human intervention. For this purpose, CAT tools generally offer an interface that allows machine translation of one or more segments, which can be later edited and perfected by the human translator. This way, he or she will take the most advantage of what machine translation has to offer, while at the same time not sacrificing the magic that only the human tongue is able to create.

As important as machine translation may be in a CAT tool, however, it is not the main feature for which a professional tool of this kind stands out. Translation memories and terminology management are in fact what makes the difference. With translation memories (TMs), the user is able to store previously completed translations from other documents, so as to eventually use them again, just as they are or edited accordingly, in new translations. This makes translating technical, often repetitive texts a breeze since large chunks of repeated wording can be re-translated in a split second, without manually having to go through the fatigue of doing the work all over.

With terminology management, the user is able to maintain a consistent, easy to read and use database of terms in the languages he or she works with. When you have a good collection of terms which you frequently use in your field of specialization, it is thus no longer necessary to crawl through hundreds of websites or huge paperback dictionaries: one quick search and the term pops up in a split second, ready to be inserted into the target text.

Finally, with a CAT Tool, processes such as revision, proofreading, etc. can be performed from one location. Users may also leave comments or perform quality checks from the same tool.

Learn more

CAT Tool User Guide