Pages in topic:   < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11] >
What is your opinion on XTM Cloud CAT tool?
Thread poster: WolfestoneGroup
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:22
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Have changed our expectations? Jan 31, 2020

Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:
Emma Goldsmith wrote:
It is also devastating to wait for 5-10 seconds and then see 10 segments just with numbers or crosses (from a table), or with the contents of a set heading that has been translated many times before and turns out to only contain 100% matches. Not being able to scroll through the document was desperate for me.

Wow, was it really that tragic? I never heard anybody talking about a CAT tool in such dramatic way!

I am using XTM Editor for the first time and bumped onto this post dated back to 2011.

I wonder whether our expectations with online/cloud CAT tools have changed and everybody would find that a refresh time of 5-10 seconds between segments is really inacceptable?

(Personally, I would consider it totally unacceptable that, today in 2020, it took longer than 1 second to change segment, or 2-3 seconds to change page/file.)


Kaspars Melkis
Pichamon S.
Mohamed
 
Riccardo Schiaffino
Riccardo Schiaffino  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 07:22
Member (2003)
English to Italian
+ ...
Worst CAT tool I've ever worked with Jan 31, 2020

A customer of ours recently switched from using Memsource (a decent enough online CAT tool) to XTM.

Our productivity immediately plummeted. We find XTM to be slow, buggy, and utterly lacking the features one would expect from a professional tool (for most of our client we work using either memoQ or Studio).

I've been using CAT tools for over twenty-five years (I was one of the very first users of DV, back in the early '90s), and I've never seen a worse tool than XTM.... See more
A customer of ours recently switched from using Memsource (a decent enough online CAT tool) to XTM.

Our productivity immediately plummeted. We find XTM to be slow, buggy, and utterly lacking the features one would expect from a professional tool (for most of our client we work using either memoQ or Studio).

I've been using CAT tools for over twenty-five years (I was one of the very first users of DV, back in the early '90s), and I've never seen a worse tool than XTM.

I imagine it must be cheaper than competing tools for translation companies, because I cannot otherwise explain why they are adopting it:

Cons:
- Terrible interface
- Buggy
- Slow
- Lacking most of the features that a professional CAT tool should contain

Pros:
"free" for translators (who, however, will not be able to use their own translation memories, and will generally not be able to download a bilingual file for work using their own CAT tool)
Collapse


Mirjam Spekking
Vickie Dimitriadou
Nicolae Zarna
Niels Barfoed
Natalia Potashnik
Jakub Mędrek
Rostyslav Voloshchuk
 
Nicolae Zarna
Nicolae Zarna  Identity Verified
Romania
Local time: 15:22
Spanish to Romanian
+ ...
Same issues here, and more Apr 10, 2020

Riccardo Schiaffino wrote:
Cons:
- Terrible interface
- Buggy
- Slow
- Lacking most of the features that a professional CAT tool should contain

Pros:
"free" for translators (who, however, will not be able to use their own translation memories, and will generally not be able to download a bilingual file for work using their own CAT tool)


I was looking to post my opinion under the same title ... but I found it was taken!
Working for over 20 years with CAT tools, using almost all CATs available on market, I also believe XTM i by far the worst one.

Apart from what you already mentioned, it kicks user out after 5 or 10 minutes of inactivity for security reasons.
So avoid thinking too much on what you are about to translate, just do it and go next segment


Cecelia Murphy
Stepan Konev
tz7
Ari Iskander Krohn Berle
 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 14:22
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
New version of XTM Apr 10, 2020

There is more than one version of XTM, and these versions have different features. Which version you're working on, depends on your client. Basically, if the version you're working on loads about 60 segments at a time, and then dynamically loads new segments when you move to the bottom, or to the top, then you've unlucky enough to be using the new version. If you can view 100 segments at a time and easily jump to specific "pages" of segments, then you're in luck: it's the older, better versio... See more
There is more than one version of XTM, and these versions have different features. Which version you're working on, depends on your client. Basically, if the version you're working on loads about 60 segments at a time, and then dynamically loads new segments when you move to the bottom, or to the top, then you've unlucky enough to be using the new version. If you can view 100 segments at a time and easily jump to specific "pages" of segments, then you're in luck: it's the older, better version.Collapse


 
Stepan Konev
Stepan Konev  Identity Verified
Russian Federation
Local time: 16:22
English to Russian
Try Translation Workspace (aka Logoport) XLIFF Editor... Apr 10, 2020

...before you curse any other CAT tool. The worst sinning translators will work with it in hell.
XTM is not good at all but still far from XLIFF Editor.


 
Niels Barfoed
Niels Barfoed  Identity Verified
Local time: 14:22
English to Danish
+ ...
Totally agree! Apr 16, 2020

Riccardo Schiaffino wrote:

A customer of ours recently switched from using Memsource (a decent enough online CAT tool) to XTM.

Our productivity immediately plummeted. We find XTM to be slow, buggy, and utterly lacking the features one would expect from a professional tool (for most of our client we work using either memoQ or Studio).

I've been using CAT tools for over twenty-five years (I was one of the very first users of DV, back in the early '90s), and I've never seen a worse tool than XTM.

I imagine it must be cheaper than competing tools for translation companies, because I cannot otherwise explain why they are adopting it:

Cons:
- Terrible interface
- Buggy
- Slow
- Lacking most of the features that a professional CAT tool should contain

Pros:
"free" for translators (who, however, will not be able to use their own translation memories, and will generally not be able to download a bilingual file for work using their own CAT tool)



I always refer to XTM as 'a sub-optimal' tool compared to 'the industry standard tools' for precisely the same reasons that Riccardo and Nicolae state. Just one point to be aware of: XTM does indeed have functionality to export xlf (and tmx) to allow translators to work in their preferred 'industry standard tool' BUT, whether or not the function is available depends on the agency. Perhaps that's the reason why Riccardo says it is 'generally' not possible? I work for two US based agencies who both use XTM, one allows me to download the material and use SDL Trados or MemoQ, which are my favorites, but the other doesn't allow this. Let's hope this tool will soon be a thing of the past.

By the way isn't Lionbridge's Logoport thing both dead and buried? I thought it was, but perhaps it's just that I am in the lucky situation not to have clients using that surely even worse tool.


 
Stepan Konev
Stepan Konev  Identity Verified
Russian Federation
Local time: 16:22
English to Russian
Don't even hope Apr 16, 2020

Niels Barfoed wrote:
By the way isn't Lionbridge's Logoport thing both dead and buried?

Not only is it not 'dead and buried', but also I had to update it with build 2020-01-24T17:39:16.673000 recently.


 
Dalibor Skalník
Dalibor Skalník  Identity Verified
Local time: 14:22
English to Czech
The new version Workbench Jun 12, 2020

I have been working with the new version of the XTM online tool and I will be short, If you can, stay away from it. It is better than the old version but still it has horrible flaws that drive me crazy and lower my productivity.

 
XTM Intl
XTM Intl
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:22
XTM Workbench Jun 12, 2020

Dalibor Skalník wrote:

I have been working with the new version of the XTM online tool and I will be short, If you can, stay away from it. It is better than the old version but still it has horrible flaws that drive me crazy and lower my productivity.


Hi Dalibor,

thank you for your message. I am XTM Cloud Product Manager and it would be great if you could share a couple of details about your user experience and what makes it so bad.
We are here to help and improve based on your feedback, so feel free to share any concerns with us.
What I can say is that the initial workspace configuration is quite critical and influences the entire user experience. I encourage you to go through the Workbench settings and adapt any shortcuts or navigation settings according to your preferences.

I also encourage you to take a look at our Knowledge Base https://xtm.cloud/knowledge-base/xtm-workbench/
or register to our upcoming Workbench webinar: https://xtm.cloud/webinar/xtm-workbench-introduction-and-updates-2/1218820202005/
Or watch one of our past webinars: https://xtm.cloud/the-new-xtm-workbench/

And of course in case you should find the system slow or notice any bugs, feel free to reach out to [email protected]

Thanks,

Sara Basile
Product Manager
XTM International Ltd.
www.xtm.cloud


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 14:22
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Thanks for the video Jun 12, 2020

XTM Intl wrote:
Or watch one of our past webinars: https://xtm.cloud/the-new-xtm-workbench/


Thanks. FWIW, the video is here:
https://youtu.be/g7qTkRAGK7w?t=578

Highlights

1. XTM distinguishes between the two versions of the editor by calling the old one "XTM Editor" (i.e. version 11 and older) and the new one "XTM Workbench" (version 12 and newer), and both will continue to be available for some time.

2. XTM Workbench has two features that are better than XTM Editor, namely the ability to resize the browser window and the ability to view more than one file simultaneously.

3. It also has two features that make it worse, namely having moved the match information further away from the segment (now in a separate pane at the bottom of the screen) and cumbersome and unpredictable pagination.

Separate match pane

The video's narrator says that moving the match information further away from the active segment "doesn't clutter up your screen".

In reality, (a) it now takes up precious vertical space permanently instead of temporarily; (b) the match information and the current segment are no longer both within a single field of vision, which means that 1. your eyes have to move/focus between two or three points on the screen continuously and 2. you now have to memorize more text in order to do things like compare matches. I'm not saying the way it works in XTM Editor is better, but it has productivity advantages that are now lost in XTM Workbench.

On the other hand, subsequent segments are no longer shifted downwards to make room for the match information, which some will find visually pleasing.

New pagination model

The video's narrator believes that XTM Workbench's new scrolling pagination model of much better than XTM Editor's hard pagination model, but in reality it is simply different. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages.

In XTM Editor, there are e.g. 100 segments on the screen (which is a "page"), and you can move quickly and predictably to other pages. However, you can never view more than one page at a time, e.g. if you want to see the bottom 20 segments of page 1 along with the top 20 segments of page 2 (if e.g. they form a logical unit in the source file).

In XTM Workbench, there are e.g. 100 segments on the screen, but if you move all the way to the top or bottom segment, and then move one more time, it loads an additional 35 segments at that point (and removes 35 segments at the other end of the screen), which is great for keeping stuff together even if they span across page boundaries. However, there are no longer buttons for moving to other "pages", and instead, if you want to move to other pages you have to take note of the current segment number, mentally calculate the other page's top segment number by adding 35 segments x number of pages, and type that number into the in the go-to box.

A simple solution to this mental calculation would be to add buttons or a dropdown list for pages in increments of 25 segments.

Dalibor Skalník wrote:
The new version of the XTM online tool ... is better than the old version but still it has horrible flaws that drive me crazy and lower my productivity.


Can you give us some examples of things from the new version (and preferably also the old version) that you feel are "flaws"? Do you dislike all browser-based CAT tools or do you find XTM Workbench specifically bad?


[Edited at 2020-06-13 06:31 GMT]


 
Anton Konashenok
Anton Konashenok  Identity Verified
Czech Republic
Local time: 14:22
French to English
+ ...
No XTM for me, please Jun 12, 2020

A few general considerations first: I am not saying it's impossible to build a good browser-based CAT tool, but every such tool I have seen thus far has been poorly suited to mouse-free, keyboard-only work, and has been slow. Some functions like navigating between segments should be instant - even an extra 100 milliseconds is already noticeable. A typical network connection has a latency of the same order, so the data need to be cached on the user's side in a non-trivial way. Secondly, browser s... See more
A few general considerations first: I am not saying it's impossible to build a good browser-based CAT tool, but every such tool I have seen thus far has been poorly suited to mouse-free, keyboard-only work, and has been slow. Some functions like navigating between segments should be instant - even an extra 100 milliseconds is already noticeable. A typical network connection has a latency of the same order, so the data need to be cached on the user's side in a non-trivial way. Secondly, browser scripts are inherently much slower than native executables, and if something on the local computer hogs up the CPU, scripts will grind to a halt long before native code, especially if the CPU hog sits in another tab of the same browser.

Now, regarding XTM proper: in March, when a big client of mine announced its transition to XTM, I took out a trial subscription on XTM's site and was thoroughly disappointed. Besides the above two problems, both the user interface and the functionality were comparable to CAT tools of 20 years ago. Indirectly, I could infer that XTM is quite useful and convenient for project managers; unfortunately, for translators it's a disaster, and the Excel-based offline version is even worse. From that and from the look and feel of the translator's interface, I have an impression that XTM developers have a background in business intelligence and management software but are totally unaware of the specifics of translator's work. The existing problems cannot be solved by incremental improvements in the spirit of agile software development - the entire client side needs to be rewritten.
Collapse


Kaspars Melkis
i-Translator
 
Kaspars Melkis
Kaspars Melkis  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:22
English to Latvian
+ ...
XTM is indeed broken Jun 13, 2020

One of my clients switched to XTM cloud tool. I tried using it but found it very unsatisfactory for the following reasons:

1) Latency. Even with very fast connection, there is noticiable delay which is annoying. Also when switching pages, the delay is substantial. Could be 10s of seconds.

2) Screen space or layout. It really was not usable on standard laptop. The placement of current row was hard to see. The windows of TM matches and glossary terms were either too smal
... See more
One of my clients switched to XTM cloud tool. I tried using it but found it very unsatisfactory for the following reasons:

1) Latency. Even with very fast connection, there is noticiable delay which is annoying. Also when switching pages, the delay is substantial. Could be 10s of seconds.

2) Screen space or layout. It really was not usable on standard laptop. The placement of current row was hard to see. The windows of TM matches and glossary terms were either too small or too big.

3) The workflow logic assumes that the translator or editor mechanically works row by row only forward. This is not how I really work and I assume many translators too. I often go back to correct things because I realized that I missed something or even work randomly on certain segments.

The offline excel tool was a little bit better. It didn't have the latency. But it had some strange issue with font size. I was able to adjust to it by changing screen resolution. There was another bug that sometimes it just started scrolling upwards without end.

I contacted XML support but they said that I need to contact the client about that. The client, however, just disabled the export to Enhanced Excel files.

At the end I just refused the jobs in this platform. It wasn't worth it because my productivity and work quality would plummet. I am sure that the companies who chose it, will suffer because they will lose good translators.
Collapse


Pichamon S.
 
Stepan Konev
Stepan Konev  Identity Verified
Russian Federation
Local time: 16:22
English to Russian
Any real advantages? Jun 13, 2020

I think most translator users know that XTM is not for translators. But what about other users like managers or localizers? Does anybody here aware of specific advantages? I don't mean 'smooth workflow', 'good experience' and other idle talk I read here in previous pages. I mean specific advantages. Why clients choose this stuff? Got ideas? Maybe non-translator users here or XTM Intl themselves can give a hint? Thank you.

 
Kaspars Melkis
Kaspars Melkis  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:22
English to Latvian
+ ...
it may be just the status of translators Jun 15, 2020

Stepan Konev wrote:

I think most translator users know that XTM is not for translators. But what about other users like managers or localizers? Does anybody here aware of specific advantages? I don't mean 'smooth workflow', 'good experience' and other idle talk I read here in previous pages. I mean specific advantages. Why clients choose this stuff? Got ideas? Maybe non-translator users here or XTM Intl themselves can give a hint? Thank you.


I sometimes work as a locum community pharmacist in the UK and different pharmacies use different pharmacy management software. I was surprisd to learn that compared to most CAT tools, they all were really well designed. The developers had thought about every aspect of functionality and interface to make them easy to use and ensure maximum productivity. The developers also listened to pharmacists and made relevant changes, along with legal requirements and good practice guidance.

Then I shortly worked as a pharmacist in Latvia and that management software was terrible. For some reason, the pharmacist profession wasn't really valued in this country.

There is no secret that translators generally are not respected globally. There are some niche work where they command some respect but that is not the norm. XTM just provides the platform for this industry where the translator is just a cheap language worker without decision making power. I don't blame the company that designs XTM because the feedback they should have getting, never got through translation agencies.


Stepan Konev
 
Vickie Dimitriadou
Vickie Dimitriadou
Local time: 15:22
English to Greek
XTM Cloud Workbench issue Jul 16, 2020

There is a serious issue with XTM Workbench. It does not allow users who have the role of Reviewer to change segment status in one go!

The menu item "Change Status" is greyed out.

When I have to review a translation consisting of thousands of segments, it is impossible to change segment status to "Completed" all in one go, as I was able to do in Editor. Now, I will have to do it one by one, which is out of the question of course!

My client requires that I c
... See more
There is a serious issue with XTM Workbench. It does not allow users who have the role of Reviewer to change segment status in one go!

The menu item "Change Status" is greyed out.

When I have to review a translation consisting of thousands of segments, it is impossible to change segment status to "Completed" all in one go, as I was able to do in Editor. Now, I will have to do it one by one, which is out of the question of course!

My client requires that I change all segments to "Completed" after review is done.

XTM developers should fix this asap. Please!!!

[Edited at 2020-07-16 16:20 GMT]
Collapse


 
Pages in topic:   < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11] >


There is no moderator assigned specifically to this forum.
To report site rules violations or get help, please contact site staff »


What is your opinion on XTM Cloud CAT tool?






Anycount & Translation Office 3000
Translation Office 3000

Translation Office 3000 is an advanced accounting tool for freelance translators and small agencies. TO3000 easily and seamlessly integrates with the business life of professional freelance translators.

More info »
TM-Town
Manage your TMs and Terms ... and boost your translation business

Are you ready for something fresh in the industry? TM-Town is a unique new site for you -- the freelance translator -- to store, manage and share translation memories (TMs) and glossaries...and potentially meet new clients on the basis of your prior work.

More info »