While we have many feuds with TRADOS, we are the first to acknowledge that it comes with a great and flexible API. Not only did it enable bringing MultiAnalyze to life back in 2007, but it also gave us a jolt to widen the scope of the potential applications.
It may appear to you that analysing a large amount of files is our pet peeve, this being the second post about such an oddity. Anyone in the language industry is lucky enough to be exposed to an unhealthy dose of files, and we are happy to report having not only cooked up a remedy when it comes to Trados, but memoQ as well.
The year is 2007. memoQ is in its infancy; Trados rules the LSP world. At that time, one of espell’s biggest localization partners cranked up the volume, and started to localize their software products and related documentation into 42 languages with high-frequency updates. As a result, we had to deal with copious amount of files, robust version control and maintaining 42 translation memories. Every time a new project arrived, the project manager had to empty the bitter cup and open every single TM by hand, do an analysis on the prepared files and export the results for each. After having wrapped all this up, it was also necessary to copy the results into an Excel file with more than 42 sheets, one for each language plus the summary pages. With no automation tool available, this process took up many unnecessary hours and required manual work, which was not only tedious and unproductive, but also prone to error.