Daniel Frisano wrote:
Two more dangerous habits you are exposed to when working heavily or exclusively with CAT tools:
1. You tend to assume that just because something is in some translation memory, it must be absolutely correct.
2. Error propagation (partly related to no. 1).
I won't deny that using CAT tools is convenient and time-saving. However, convenience and time have nothing to do with quality.
Like any other kind of tool, CAT tools are useful if applied judiciously. And like any other kind of tool, you should be careful not to become too dependent on them. You don't want to become one of those helpless drivers who can't even find their way home without GPS guidance.
The definitive killer, as far as I am concerned, when it comes to using CAT tools, is that in effect you allow some software that has no concept of "meaning" to more or less arbitrarily slice your ST in chunks ("segments") that may or may not represent "units of meaning"! That being a pretty good way to lose understanding of the rhythm of the whole ST, start ignoring the larger context and get a form of "tunnel vision" centred only on potentially meaningless or misleading "segments"!
IOW this "helping hand" can easily lead you in a blind alley ... if not handled with extreme caution!
This kind of traps shows through the fact that the most puzzling Kudoz questions seems to be generated by translators who are all too quick to accept "segments" generated by some CAT software as being the same as "meaningful parsing/analysis of the structure of the ST".
@Chris S
None of my customers requires me to use a CAT tool.
But I generally do.
So I'm about to earn £1000 for doing absolutely nothing.
Result.
You don't really need CAT tools for that - years ago I achieved the same result with just carbon copies of of a longish translation typed on a mechanical typewriter ... the left hand wouldn't talk to the right hand in the same company, at their costs ...
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