
I was pretty happy to open the slides on the new CAT, and everything seemed to be working just fine, until I couldn't convert the translation back into the original PPT format. Well, it turns out that the project I needed to work on included a PowerPoint presentation. Before that, these older CATs only worked on Word documents. Microsoft Word) in order to run. The fact that it was a stand-alone version meant that I could finally use it to translate Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides, while using/updating our translation memories just the same.
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I then tried their competitor, which had just released a stand-alone version, meaning a piece of software that works inside its own window and doesn't need another program (i.e. Needless to say, I started to pull my hair out, because I had a deadline around the corner and needed to work on a new project. The company had decided to use a new standard and format that weren't aligned with their own previous release.

In a nutshell, the translation memories and glossaries I had been building for a few years were now almost useless.
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In other words, I was very frustrated that I needed to pay for the upgrade of a tool I already had and, on top of that, they had changed some parts of the software that didn't make it compatible with older versions. A lot of stuff "broke down" because of compatibility issues. The project went ahead and, during a two-year collaboration with that client alone, the investment had paid itself eight times over.Įverything was going fine until that CAT tool was acquired by another company and they came up with a new version of the program. I had two weeks before the project started. Once I got the program installed, I worked hard on that steep learning curve. Then I started negotiating with a client that demanded that I used a CAT, so I remember calling my husband right away to let him know I'd be putting $1,000 USD on our credit card to buy a license―just so he wouldn't think it was an identity theft issue or anything. I had already been working as a translator for seven years, but never had a need to add such software as part of my work process.

I started using one of the most well-known CAT tools in the market back in 2004.

User testimonial: How I started using Swordfish on 99% of my translations
