Review
This review applies to version 7.0
The latest version of this software will soon be reviewed by our
informers.
CATALYST 7.0, developed by Alchemy, is a localization and translation tool that assists professional teams in every phase of the localization process: from translation to software engineering and testing. CATALYST 7.0 is one of the most renown localization tools in the market, and offers what the developers call a “Total Visual Localization environment” to localize software files, Websites, online help, manuals, database files, and many other file types.
In spite of its highly sophisticated interface, the tool is accessible and easy to handle, providing the translator with the appropriate environment so that focus is only on language and the quality of a translation. This implies that it is not necessary for translators to be experts in software development or programing to use this tool, as it hides complex code from executables and software files and shows only the text to be translated as the professional types. At the same time, this represents a total protection of tags and meta-data information, without any chance of damaging files.
Catalyst 7.0 supports more than 170 file types which include: DLL, EXE, INI, MS .NET, CNT, CPP, Hpp, all XML/XHTML documents, and Database formats such as IBM DB 2, Oracle and Microsoft SQL, plus additional support for Java platforms; .JAR and .class files. Besides, it integrates with other tools related to translation/localization projects, for example Trados Suite components. To automate the localization process and reduce costs, professionals are allowed to reuse existing translation memories, using the industry standard formats, which guarantees never translating the same structure twice.
If you have taken a look at the price, it is almost unnecessary to point out that this tool is only affordable by companies and well-established translation agencies handling numerous projects. In any case, a demo version of Catalyst 7.0 can be tried out for 30 days with some restrictions like a limited number of changes saved to a project, among others. |
