Re: [Freecats-Dev] First review of Free CATS specification docs by Yves Savourel

[Marc Prior]

Here are some disjointed comments on the comments by Yves.

> One think I would suggest for the TM is to take in account a possible
> third type of match. 

Trados may possibly have done something similar. I heard recently that Trados 
its method of calculating the similarity of a document, now recognizing 100% 
matches as such only if they are in a longer passage of identical text. 

I am sceptical, incidentally, that a computer will be able to tell the 
difference reliably between exact and perfect matches. I have experienced 
whole chapters which were identical but for which the context was different. 
One particular example was the safety instructions for construction 
machinery. The instructions referred to the "Gerät" (equipment), which is 
quite common in German, but in English it is usual to refer to the item by 
name, e.g. "excavator". When the same instructions were used for a cement 
mixer, of course, the translation was not correct, even though the entire 
chapter was supposedly identical.

> An updater
> module would be a huge step forward: a way to compare source doc version
> 1, source doc version 2, translated doc version 1, and create the
> translated version 2 with the delta left to edit or translate (and then,
> at that point the translator+TM takes over).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this what propagation is? My comments 
above about identical matches still apply, though.

> You seem to look into XML-databases
> with XML-based indexing engine. It's certainly a possibility, but don't
> discard more simple classic database as well.

Another reason for a modular solution. 

> Related to fuzzy matching: I've also attached an old article
> (Waikoloa.zip) that explains one way to create a simple TM engine. 

Waikoloa is a good example of something else: portability, or rather lack of 
it. Waikoloa is, I think you'll find, written in C++, but there is no Linux 
version of it, and the project owners, when I contacted them, weren't 
interested in porting it.

> This actually made me think about a possible problem of open source
> projects. Many are a little bias toward Linux, Java, etc. in reaction
> against Microsoft often. But the mainstream of possible users are on
> Windows, and expect Windows-like applications.

This comment actually addresses a very serious issue here, namely: what is 
the intended user group of Free CATs? Is an open-source project necessarily 
aimed at open-source users? 

OmegaT faces a similar question. It is an open-source project, but most users 
use Windows or the Mac. They are not really interested in the fact that it is 
open-source. The Mac users use it (or try it) because there is very little 
else available (apart from Wordfast, of course). The Windows users tend to be 
those who want to try translation memory software without at some stage 
having to pay what they think is a lot of money for it.

Neither of these groups are likely to support the open-source concept in the 
long term. Conversely, most translators I have come across who support 
open-source (by which I mean those who use Linux) actually use Deja Vu.

Marc