SDL is the industry leader in CAT (Computer Aided Translation) software. SDL Trados is perceived to be the best in its class among its peers of Translation Memory software. But is it worth the money? According to the results of a poll that GTS has conducted recently among a group of independent professional translators in several countries, the answer is NO. Many translators have stopped using Trados, have not upgraded their product or have found much cheaper alternatives such as Wordfast. Google’s foray into the Translation Memory space, with their Google Translator Toolkit, may also be driving translators away from SDL Trados and into the cloud concept that Google offers.
SDL prices its products in Euro, which is making it a very expensive proposition to users in the US as well as to users in other non-Euro block countries such as Canada, Japan and Latin American countries.
Additionally, SDL Trados has not come out with significant new features in the last few years. The Trados Workbench still uses the same outdated GUI which has not changed much in a while. And the product has a number of well-known bugs which SDL has not bothered to fix.
Maybe the people at SDL should descend from Olympus and address the needs of their customers and potential customers. But first and foremost they should ask themselves if the very high price tag is not pushing translators out of their market.
Related posts:
Comments