The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2022 - 33

GEEKSPEAK By Jost Zetzsche
case of SDL/RWS, they might
well also be buying language
services from you.
The All-New Trados
I had a conversation about the new Trados with Daniel Brockmann, the
principal product manager at RWS, and his colleague Andrew Thomas, the
senior director for Trados marketing. Before the conversation I felt pretty
sure we would be talking about Trados 2022, which was released at the
end of May. It turns out we did talk about that, but really only very briefly.
The rest of the considerable time we spent together was devoted to the
new Trados, as in a " newly recalibrated Trados product offering. "
T
rados is the market
leader among individual
translators and noncloud-based
installations
at organizations, including
translation agencies and
translation buyers. This
has been the case for a long
time. The fact that there's
a qualifier ( " non-cloudbased " )
in here has been
somewhat of a stumbling
block for the RWS Trados
team. Accordingly, we talked
a lot about being an underdog
versus being the " top dog "
during our conversation-a
topic that never would
have come up in any of the
previous discussions we've
www.ata-chronicle.online
had over the many years that
Trados and I have been in
conversation.
Let's start by looking at
the language technology
situation at RWS. After they
took an inventory of what
they had available, they
organized the many different
parts into one business unit
with a more or less coherent
strategy and goal.
As you likely know, the
Trados brand used to be
owned by SDL, which, along
with Trados and all the
other SDL technology puzzle
pieces, was bought by RWS.
The other puzzle pieces
related to the translation
technology that came with
SDL were either acquisitions
SDL made over the years
(Trados itself was an
acquisition, as were Idiom
with its WorldServer product
and MultiTrans via Donnelley
Language Solutions, not to
mention a barrage of other
non-language-related
products) or a number of inhouse
solutions (e.g., TMS,
GroupShare). Most of these
are products directed toward
similar customers on the
high and high-ish end of the
market. These are customers
you don't want to frustrate
by discontinuing any of those
products because, as in the
On top of that, none of
these products is a newgeneration
cloud-based
product. (And I'm being
kind when I say " new
generation " -it's really
not that new anymore!)
All these products employ
a server-client-based
infrastructure-the kind of
infrastructure that was en
vogue in the " noughties "
(2000-2009) and early
2010s. This infrastructure
allows for collaboration and
centralized data hosting, but
is not in the less strenuous
cloud environment that even
the more cautious customers
are now requesting. So, let's
take a closer look at some of
these products.
Trados Enterprise: With the
ongoing integration of the
Language Weaver machine
translation system (another
technology purchase, and
incidentally the only one that
hasn't been grouped in the
newly formed translation
technology unit), a language
cloud product was introduced
in 2014. This language cloud
product was built upon and
eventually became its own
full-fledged and stand-alone
translation management
system in 2019. This is now
being marketed as Trados
Enterprise, the cloud-based
translation management
solution RWS is offering to
translation buyers.
While RWS has not " endof-lifed "
(the fact that you
can come up with constructs
like this is one thing I love
about the English language!),
any of its other translation
management systems will still
American Translators Association 33
http://www.ata-chronicle.online
The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The ATA Chronicle - July/August 2022
