Translation Memory Software

September 27, 2006 5:14 PM

Are there any recommendations for commercial computer-aided translation programs? More detail inside.

I'm a Ph.D. student working on medieval history in Asia, so I use a variety of languages. I'd like to be able to utilize translation memory modules at a reasonable (or low) cost to faciliate my research. I'd be particularly interested in any commercial (or free) software that does alignment since I often work with a text extant in 3-4 languages.

posted by AArtaud to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Google Language Tools is free and pretty accurate
posted by apple at 5:37 PM on September 27, 2006 [1 favorite]

Oh, I should clarify. These languages are dead. Very dead, so modern translation tools won't be of much use.
posted by AArtaud at 5:40 PM on September 27, 2006

For free translation tools the Okapi framework has some cool applications. I don't think there is alignment functionality though. The guy who has done most of the work is called Yves Savourel and he is amazing when it comes to the amount of time and energy he's put into that project. He is also very accesible and may be able to point you in the right direction. The Yahoo group for discussion of those tools and to get in touch with Yves is here.
You might be able to use Trados (the most popular of the commercial TM tools) by faking the target and source languages for your dead languages. The yahoo group for Trados also has a lot of information about other tools and can be a great resource.
posted by Wolfie at 9:52 PM on September 27, 2006

If you just need a basic translation memory tool, it seems like OmegaT could be pretty much what you are looking for. I have only toyed with it a little bit, but it was looking pretty good last time I checked.

Please note that it doesn't support Microsoft Office file formats directly, but you can always convert them to Openoffice format (which is supported) and back into Office when you're done.
posted by doctorpiorno at 2:01 AM on September 28, 2006