Can you give me a quick overview of what translation memory tools do?

Computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools include a wide variety of software programs that are employed to facilitate various aspects of the translation process. However, often the term CAT tools is used as a synonym for translation memory programs. These are programs that store previous translations; when you translate new texts, they offer translation suggestions based on material stored in a translation memory.

What are terminology maintenance tools?

Terminology maintenance tools are applications that help to maintain and build complex multilingual glossaries which contain translations as well as a variety of other information, including grammatical, contextual, or other descriptive attributes. Good terminology maintenance tools often allow users to interactively view and use existing content and add new information as they translate or prepare for translation.

Is Déjà Vu X a translation memory tool, a terminology management application, or neither?

It's both, and then some. Déjà Vu X is made up of a number of components, including translation memories and very advanced terminology databases. But what makes Déjà Vu X unique in this respect is its ability to dynamically use both of these components to automatically repair matches that are not perfect.

What are the main differences between machine translation and translation memory?

Translation memory is merely a very advanced way to help translators remember things and to share their memory with others. The computer assists in making suggestions (which it bases on the material it's been fed in the past), but it is the translator who performs the actual translation. Machine translation, on the other hand, attempts to perform not only lexicological matching and translation, but also grammatical, stylistic, and syntactical. Very few—if any—machine translation implementations have been successful so far.

What's example-based machine translation, and why do you mention it so frequently on your website?

We use the term example-based machine translation to describe Déjà Vu X's unique ability to self-repair fuzzy matches from the translation memory by deleting the incorrect part of the sentence and replacing it with the correct one. As long as Déjà Vu X has sufficient terminology databases, it is able to do this process through the close association of the memory matching and assemble processes.

Can I use Déjà Vu X when my client or co-workers use competing tools?

Déjà Vu X is able to handle a great variety of external formats, including Trados Workbench RTF/DOC files or Trados BIF and TTX files. Furthermore, you can process any file that is based on the SGML/XML standard, including many Star Transit files. Translation memory exchange is facilitated through the latest implementation of TMX (the widely supported Translation Memory Exchange format) and other interchange formats, including the Trados Workbench text format.

So, the answer is: yes.

Is Déjà Vu X hard to learn?

Well, that's a difficult question for us to answer. There's a learning phase for any new tool, but we've tried to ease the process by including Wizards to guide you through virtually every aspect of the program. And we have spent intense effort to make our documentation user-friendly and informative (no, this does not have to be an oxymoron!).

A great strength of Déjà Vu X is the fact that every file type is processed in the same interface, which we believe makes it much easier to work with than the tools of some of our competitors.

Does Déjà Vu X rely on any other program?

Yes and no. Déjà Vu X does not need any other program to run for most file formats. Remember that all the translation is done in the same interface. There are some file formats, however—including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—for which Déjà Vu X needs the original application to export and import the files.

What languages does Déjà Vu X support?

Déjà Vu X supports every language as both source and target language that is supported by the Windows system you work on. Because everything is done in Unicode, there is no limitation, even when it comes to complex languages such as East Asian double-byte languages, or right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew.

There is naturally a limit to the number of spellcheckers that Déjà Vu X provides, but a link to the corresponding spellchecker in Microsoft Word allows you to use that if it's installed.

Does Déjà Vu X come with any existing language material?

No. This is really important to understand. The language knowledge of Déjà Vu X depends entirely on what you teach it, either by translating, importing third-party material, or aligning existing translations.

How fast can I benefit from my investment into Déjà Vu X?

Obviously that depends on your particular situation. We know many users who report a complete return-on-investment in less than a week.

What are the differences between the several versions of Déjà Vu X?

For a chart that outlines the differences between the Editor, Standard, Professional, and Workgroup editions, click here.