Nowadays most modern Translation Environment Tools can exchange information via standardized file formats – primarily XLIFF (for bilingual files) and TMX (for exchanging Translation Memory information) – and some of them even offer native or extendable (via add-ons) support for reading and writing proprietary formats of other TEnTs. It was probably promoted by the increased range of available TEnTs in the market and the emphasize that some developers have put into better standards supports and interoperability from the get go. In recent years quite a few advancements have been made in terms of TEnTs interoperability.
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Therefore, the professional must be able to choose his or her tools by merit, experience, and expertise with as little as possible artificial obstacles influencing the decision. I believe that the human professional is the most important element in any professional activity and that the technology is just there to help the professional as a tool. This resonates hard with me because I’m strongly against what I believe is a harmful, damaging, misleading, delusional, and near-sighted infatuation with technology that puts the technology before the human professional. One unfortunate results of this difficulty is the enablement of some unethical practices, and even more importantly, the creation of the feeling among users that they are held “captive” by the propriety formats and forced to use a certain tool over another regardless of their workflow needs or preferences, unless they are willing to spend time and effort applying workarounds that are almost never guaranteed to work, or worse, invest money in tools just for using their filters in the pre-processing stage. Most TEnTs store the data in proprietary file formats and that makes it that much harder to share or migrate information. Interoperability is a topic I took a special interest in since starting to use Translation Environment Tools (TEnTs).