This morning, one of our users asked whether Cattitude also supports Smartcat, another CAT tool that has become quite popular because it’s free.
It turned out Cattitude didn’t support Smartcat yet. Now it does however, and the implementation took less than 10 minutes, which shows that Cattitude’s code — while far from perfect — is slowly improving to accommodate to the ever-changing and quickly evolving world. A prime example of how fast the world is moving these days, is ChatGPT. Until a few weeks ago, Google was resting on its laurels. Now it has a huge problem and may even face extinction if it doesn’t adapt very fast to the crazy new developments in the world of AI.
Adapt and survive has always been one of Cattitude’s mottos. We believe there’s a reason why dinosaurs went extinct and why our little kitten is still very much alive.
The proof is in the pudding
Just like all other filters, Cattitude’s Smartcat filter also offers full support for Proofreading. This is a unique functionality that cannot be found in any other CAT tools. Instead of the familiar two-column view the user is presented with a three-column view: the left column containing the source text, the middle column containing the current translation and the right column containing your final version of the same translation (after proofreading).
This enables you to fully leverage all functionality of Cattitude while proofeading: you can simply copy the current translation to the right column and work from there, but if the quality is hopeless, you can also opt to use a combination of your favorite machine-translation engine, Cattitude’s own translation memory and your sane brain to come up with an entirely new translation yourself. Meanwhile Cattitude’s extensive QA functionality will kick in to make sure the final version still adheres to all terminology.
You decide what approach is best for each segment. Meanwhile your translation memory does not get polluted by the translation you need to proofread. It only contains the final result.
So why not use Smartcat straight away for processing Smartcat files? The answer is simple. Cattitude offers far more possibilities and flexibility to the translator when it comes to editing and creating translations, because it is being dogfed 24/7; also Cattitude has automated far more things that require manual operation in other tools.
Most clients use certain CAT tools because they are locked in, made a choice a few years ago they’re now stuck with, spoke to better sales people (we don’t have any) or because they think multilanguage projects are easier to manage with other tools (which is not true). However, that is their problem and not yours. You should opt for the tool that enables you to work fastest. For me that is Cattitude. It has raised my translation speed two- to five-fold.