I was looking to renew my yearly Trados subscription, but they've jacked up the price to €480 w/VAT (€400 without), which is insane. I paid €295 last year and I must've used it like three or four times in the past 12 months, since I don't need it for my two biggest clients. One uses memoQ and gives me a license and I do interpretation for the other, so no CAT tools.

I've tried CafeTran in the past and never really liked it. I think I had a license but I need to dig through my inbox... I don't like using memoQ that much either and it seems like it's almost as much for a yearly subscription as well.

Basically I'm looking for a good alternative to Trados that is compatible with my Trados TMs and TBs. I do like how feature-rich Trados is but since I don't use it much anymore, I suppose I could settle for something a bit more bare bones if it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg. I also prefer to use a desktop app, I don't like using in-browser CAT tools.

Any suggestions? Thank you!

Say you're translating something for a client but it's not specifically being published in either the UK or the US; it's just going to be put online. The client not only doesn't have a concept of the differences between British and American English, they don't have a preference. The copy will however be read by people from all over. How would you decide which English to use? What are you considerations? What does each represent when it appears in a kind of no man's land?

I recently got an email from a project manager asking if I could send them a headshot and blurb for their website. The idea seems to be to show prospective clients some of the real people who have been working with the agency for a long time, in order to inspire confidence in the fact that there are real, skilled humans handling this work, so I imagine folks on the agency side have been receiving queries along the lines of "How do I know you're not just going to put my file into ChatGPT and hand me the result? What am I really paying for?" They provided some examples of the kind of blurb they're looking for, which consisted of confidence-inspiring copy along the lines of "When I translate a book, I always strive to preserve…"

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I don't totally hate the idea, but I feel like I should get some kind of compensation for this beyond the vague promise of people maybe choosing the agency in the future because I appear on its website. I also recently accepted a full-time position outside the language services industry, so translation is strictly something I do on the side now because I enjoy it. I haven't yet broken the news about the full-time role to the agency, for what that's worth, although the volume of work I get from them these days is such that I don't expect to have to decline all that much anyway.

Any of y'all ever gotten a similar request and/or have thoughts about how to handle this?

Hi all,

When trying to generate my invoice on Translated (TOP) to withdraw earnings, the system blocked it with: "We're unable to generate your invoice. Additional information is required. Please contact community@translated.com".

Vendor Management placed a hold on my pending POs and requested:

• ID document + selfie video holding the ID.
• Academic/professional degree proofs for declared language pairs.
• Updated billing details strictly matching my profile.

They cited Articles 5, 6, 7, and 10, warning of account closure and voided payments.

Has anyone gone through this exact KYC audit? If you submitted the video and proofs, did they actually unlock your account and release your earnings?

Thanks!