Studio 2011 is coming

A new software version often means new features, new improvements and problem resolutions. I had the opportunity to work with SDL as beta tester and I can announce this: I had more fun working with Studio 2011 as with the precedent version.

Translate to Fuzzy and Perfect Matches revival

Compared to Trados 2007 and the good old TagEditor and Workbench, Studio 2009 lost very important features which couldn't be implemented quick enough in the new environment. To me and for a lot of my colleagues, the greatest lost for translators was the Translate to Fuzzy function. Now it is back...

The most important feature for project managers and important customers and the reason why we didn't upgrade some of our projects to Studio 2009 was the Perfect Matches. They are back too...

The only reason you can invoke to postpone the migration of your Trados 2007 projects is: you do not have the time now!


2 brand new features kept also my attention:

Reviewing and learning effect

Translation reviews can now be done with "Track changes". The feature works like in MS-Word: the reviewer enters its corrections which appear underlined red or stroke blue and the translator can quickly see which segments have been modified, and in case he has to take himself the final decision: he can accept or reject the reviewer propositions with a single click.


Pseudo-translation: better prepare your translation

The second new feature is the so called "Pseudo-translation": implemented in the batch task collection, helps you to generate a "pseudo" or "dummy" translation to check eventual problems who generally appear far too late: after the translator terminated his job. Check for example that the file can be converted back or check that the whole document will be correctly converted and no "jpg text" is left untranslated. Because it is a batch task, it can be easily included in a task sequence. For the OpenExchange developer, this is good news to improve automated workflows.


If you want to learn more about Studio 2011 and its new features, you can also take a look at the SDL Blog and Videos.


Time to migrate

I already told my conclusion to my IT colleagues at DSC: let's install Studio 2011, when it officially comes out, let us take the time to do it. We'll get this time investment back very soon. I'm not saying Studio 2011 is flawless. It will come out with old bugs which have not been seen yet and new bugs connected to the new features. It will also come out without possible improvements that translators ask for years but which couldn't be seriously programmed to satisfy the software performance and stability.

But indeed, that's exactly the most important fact (at least on my personal computer): Studio 2011 is more stable and is faster. As project manager, translator or reviewer, you have the opportunity to do your job quicker. Just take the time to learn your tool.