[Freecats-Dev] Trados/other CAT, Python/Java, German/English

[Henri Chorand]

Charles Stewart wrote:
>   - If what we build is good enough, people will switch
>   tools and come to us, especially if we are nice enough
>   to provide 2-way migration tools.  So the fear of Trados
>   and wordfast gaining too much momentum is illusory, not
>   real.

Whatever the fear - major translation agencies don't give a damn about 
Trados per se. Like other categories of software users in their 
respective fields, they mostly selected Trados because it looked like 
the best software in town - that begun before MS took a share in Trados. 
Now, it's more a de facto standard than anything else. DéjàVu, SDLX & 
Wordfast are definitely NOT soon-to-be-extinct beasts.

Just a remark about Dave's point of view: Trados compatibility IS a must 
with translation agencies for technical translation & localization 
project - not Trados itself, at least not quite as much.

I expect these translation agencies to get interested in our tool if it 
comes into existence, only because it will be free and Trados-compatible.

Note that, to the best of my knowledge, e.g. Berlitz (now part of 
Bowne), or Lionbridge (except for the projects for which they request 
and provide their baby, Foreign Desk), did NOT massively upgrade to 
Trados 5, for reasons like cost and lack of new, essential features.

>   - I am more worried about lock-in, especially wrt. the
>   Python programming language.  It is an excellent tool
>   for doing quick hacks that need OO, but it behaves almost
>   completely unlike any other programming language in its
>   semantics.  If the reference implementation is Python,
>   we will find it difficult to support programmers who loathe
>   Python (and they do exist).

Of course - that's the trouble with having to choose a language ;-)

>   - I am all for a Java implementation.  Java has excellent
>   libraries, and many PLs can target the JVM, including
>   python, tcl and Scheme.

Well, I'd say the one with skills & availability makes the choice, then. 
At least, here we go with portability, and we can stop worrying about OS 
X zealots: they'll drink from the same barrel as the other team members.

Even through poor folks like me (with rather limited coding skills & 
availability) would not dare to begin coding in Java, maybe we'll be 
able to do a few things once the code's overall structure is nicely laid 
out by any volunteer. Whatever I believe - and who cares anyway ;-) - 
Java IS a possible, reasonable option.

> The recent brouhaha about "java is inefficient, even Sun
> says so" applies *only* to Sun's own JVM.  IBM's JVM is
> better, and we can compile to native C using gcc+CLASSPATH.

Do you mean we can convert Java code into native C code? That would be 
even better then. Please correct me if I missed the target here.

I'll wait for the project team to vote. Mind you, there weren't that 
many votes around for now, so maybe (especially if OmegaT's Keith 
Godfrey invites us to join him) your votes will make the decision.

Of course, I will only accept votes from people who can and WILL provide 
SOME coding effort ;-)))
Even though I knew from the start that the Chief Software Architect's 
cap is too large for my little head, still, I hope I can contribute to 
code, even 1%.

Seriously, though, IF we start from Keith's OmegaT project, then we're 
all heading to Java then (warm & sunny island).

Also, even more seriously: we do need a charitable soul to build our 
project's framework in order to start moving ahead. Once a true 
programmer has built it and is available to provide explanations and 
some setup help to week-end programmers like me, those week-end 
programmers will be able to concentrate on small bits of code and 
possibly improve it or write similar things.

So, Charles, if you do code in Java and want to start something, please 
do it and we'll follow. Of course, the same is true for Keith or whoever 
else.

Note that I haven't subscribed Keith to our dev-list yet, as I strictly 
follow an opt-in policy, but I'll CC: him this message.

Keith, just FYI: today was the most busy (some might say a bit heated) 
day our little Dev-list has known yet - see the archive on Savannah if 
you want. We'll also warmly welcome you on freecats-dev list.

Part of the story is about wether KDE's KBabel:
- is a nice candidate from which to build Free CATS' future interactive 
translation client (answer: quite possibly, still a lot of work to do)
- is portable (answer:not quite yet, uses KDE-specific libraries)
- as a free software team, wants the whole bunch of us, including the 
non-coders & barkers, to distract them from a purely KDE approach and to 
invade them ;-)

Stanislav & other readers, please correct any blatant (and inadvertent) 
mistake above.

Of course, we're asking ourselves more or less the same questions about 
OmegaT. To date, KBabel & OmegaT are the two only projects of interest 
which we heard about.


Coming back to Charles' other stuff:
>   - I am assembling an argument that we will need to handle
>   hierarchical structure to get results with German->English
>   translation.  More to follow, not necessarily all that soon.

Great - at least somebody kep working today while all of us talked.

I'm not sure what you mean with "hierarchical structure" here, but I 
suppose I'll just have to wait a little and I'll see it. I hope it 
nicely fits in the picture as a clever indexing feature on top of raw 
segment storage in a TM.


Cheers to all,

Henri