The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2017 - 34

RESOURCE REVIEW continued
example is where a freelance translator
who did a little programming in college
took advantage of the APIs in Studio.
In just a short period he became quite
an expert on machine translation and
how it could be used in conjunction
with translation tools. So much so that
after a couple of years he transitioned
from freelance translating to a full-time
programming role with Amazon!

Are there apps that have made it into the
next version of Trados Studio? Has the
success of apps influenced the course of
development of the next version of Trados
Studio (or MultiTerm)?
I like the idea of the SDL AppStore
being an extension of the product and
providing the user with some choice,
rather than bloating it with more and
more solutions that we thought were
good ideas. We generally don't see apps
making it into the core product, but there
are a few exceptions.
A good example would be AnyTM,
which solved a problem our user base
had been forced to work around since
the early Trados days. You probably recall
the days when you tried to add your
English (U.S.) translation memory (TM)
to an English (Great Britain) project, but
received a message that the languages
didn't match. Now, any TM overrides this
and allows you to use "any TM" you like!
This app became part of the product with
SDL Trados Studio 2015.
Another example would be
InsertSymbols, which makes it much
easier for users to enter non-standard
symbols and accents without having to
use ALT codes or have a custom keyboard
installed. It's probably worth noting that
the developer in both cases was actually
an SDL developer. He was motivated
to look for solutions to things being
discussed on the SDL Community forums
that would not fit into the wider strategic
work he did in his day job.
In terms of apps that influence the
course of development, that's harder to say.
The core development teams tend to work
on larger and more strategic projects. Most
apps don't deliver the sort of functionality
we would take and put into the product.
But if I were to go out on a limb, perhaps
the Glossary plugin was influential in
34

The ATA Chronicle | July/August 2017

guiding the teams toward providing
a solution for termbase creation in
Studio. There are also solutions like SDL
MultiTerm Workflow, which is a rebranded
QuickTerm provided by Kaleidoscope and
built on top of MultiTerm Server. Here
the work delivered was so comprehensive
that when we looked at creating our own
solution it really made more sense to
partner with Kaleidoscope, which is what
we did.

Why do you think other translation tool
vendors have not followed suit? While many
have APIs, there are no developers who
have a comparable AppStore or who are
proactively selling the idea of developing
third-party tools.
I think the simple answers are either
that they don't see the value in this-
and I can recall listening to the negative
views of some of our competitors on
this several years ago-or that the effort
required to support an infrastructure
like this is too great. Many of our
competitors do have APIs, but there
is a world of difference between the
capabilities and variety of features
available through the APIs for the SDL
Language Platform and those in our
competitors' products. I think some of
the cloud-based tools have pretty good
representational state transfer (REST)
APIs, but when it comes to the desktop
tools, SDL is significantly more capable.
With all the API documentation, SDKs,
and sample applications freely available
on the web, we're also able to allow a
developer to create their integrations
without talking to us at all.
You have to be prepared to support the
developers who wish to use this platform.
Once you open it up, the resource
requirements to support it are not to be
taken lightly. We've introduced an opensource policy for the apps we develop inhouse and made this available to anyone.
We also created a developer community
that provides a great way of bringing
people together to help each other. This
community also helps us engage with
our users and to continually evolve the
platform we offer. I think many translation
vendors are just not ready for this.
A more complex way to answer your
question is to discuss the type of clients

other vendors have. SDL has some very
sophisticated customers with applications
of their own, ranging from project
management, terminology solutions,
machine translation, accounting,
content management systems, and
more. These types of customers can
have very demanding requirements
that involve heavy automation of their
systems with their translation tools. To
be able to support this requires a robust
and accessible API at many levels. Of
course, we're certainly not unique in
having customers with these kinds of
needs. The SDL AppStore is something I
see as a natural progression for any API
strategy once you have a sufficiently large
user base sophisticated enough to take
advantage of it. Many translation tool
vendors probably don't have this to the
extent SDL has.
Remember, if you have any ideas
and/or suggestions regarding helpful
resources or tools you would like to see
featured, please e-mail Jost Zetzsche at
jzetzsche@internationalwriters.com.
Paul Filkin is a client services
director for SDL Language
Technologies, where he has
worked since the end of 2006.
His main focus is helping users
of SDL technology get the most
from their investment. He can be seen regularly
on Twitter, the SDL Community forums he created,
and on many of the public forums providing advice
to anyone who needs it. More recently, he has
been working with a team focused on supporting
developers who wish to work with the application
programming interfaces for the SDL Language
Platform. He also maintains a blog addressing
many of the practical issues faced by translators
and translation companies in using technology for
their work (http://multifarious.filkin.com). Contact:
pfilkin@sdl.com.
Jost Zetzsche is the co-author
of Found in Translation: How
Language Shapes Our Lives
and Transforms the World, a
robust source for replenishing
your arsenal of information
about how human translation and machine
translation each play an important part in
the broader world of translation. Contact:
jzetzsche@internationalwriters.com.
www.atanet.org

http://multifarious.filkin.com http://www.atanet.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2017