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Best CAT tool for Mac users?
Thread poster: Richard Serban
Richard Serban
Richard Serban  Identity Verified
Hungary
Local time: 00:14
English to Hungarian
Mar 27, 2019

Dear colleagues,

I know this question has been asked before, but so far I couldn't find a suitable answer for my case.

I have been a Trados user on Windows machines for years. Recently I bought a MacBook Pro and so far I couldn't find any CAT tools that would suit me.

Here's what I've tried so far:

At first, I installed Trados using Parallels, but the experience wasn't satisfying. I've always found Trados to be unnecessarily complicated and lit... See more
Dear colleagues,

I know this question has been asked before, but so far I couldn't find a suitable answer for my case.

I have been a Trados user on Windows machines for years. Recently I bought a MacBook Pro and so far I couldn't find any CAT tools that would suit me.

Here's what I've tried so far:

At first, I installed Trados using Parallels, but the experience wasn't satisfying. I've always found Trados to be unnecessarily complicated and littered with features I hardly used if ever, so I was ready to experiment with some different software anyway. But the fact that the Mac's keyboard layout and shortcuts are awkward at best to use in a Windows environment, the graphics of Trados appeared to be very weird (those who tried using Trados through Parallels on a Mac would surely know what I'm talking about).

I tinkered a bit with WordFast Pro too, but it didn't really like that one either - for instance, most of my clients and agencies send out the projects with TMs in an sdltm file format which WordFast can't handle and converting them to a tmx file on a Mac is quite a hassle.

A few weeks ago I finally purchased CafeTran and was extremely happy with it at first - it seemed that I'd found just what I'd been looking for.

However, using it turned out to be a nightmare. Long story short, I'm right now in the middle of negotiating with Igor, the developer/vendor of CafeTran about a refund because despite all of Igor's kind instructions and help, it kept crashing on me, resulting in the loss of projects, clients and income on more than one occasion.

I know that a lot of Mac-using Proz members are delighted with CafeTran, so I'm not here to bash that product or Igor who has really been trying to help me to solve the issues (but sadly in vain). For reasons unknown, CafeTran caused me problems regularly despite:
- being installed on a brand new laptop
- being allocated 8 GB of RAM (out of 16)
- not being tinkered with updates, setting changes etc.
- being used with a legally obtained full licence

On many occasions, CafeTran crashed on me while trying to create an sdlrpx return package after finishing a translation. It became irresponsive, created a return package over 13 GB in size (which couldn't be opened anyway) etc. And after each crash, I couldn't even quit or reopen CafeTran; sometimes it even forced me to restart the laptop.

So I'd be really helpful for any input on which tool would be the best and most reliable CafeTran/Trados alternative to use on a Mac.

Thank you all in advance. ▲ Collapse
 
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