Have you ever heard of the CAT, TAO, or Computer Assisted Translation tools? Well, you should know that many translators worldwide would have a lot of difficulties in carrying out their work without them. We are talking about a series of platforms that give us a hand when translating text and collaborating with our knowledge.

OmegaT is one of the most famous programs in this field, one that has been specially developed so that we can access an excellent glossary of words. Therefore, it should not be missing from your computer if you are a translator or need to translate at a specific time. The best is that it is a free application, for which you will not have to pay a penny to enjoy.

Translators have developed this utility for translators, so it has some convenient elements, such as storing specific phrases that we can review later. And since it is an open-source system, we can get used to it, fully confident that it will remain free over time, with security that others do not offer.

How does this application work? In an effortless way. The first thing you have to have is a document as a source, which will be the one we will translate, and of course, it is easier if it is in virtual format. Before starting, and whenever you prefer, you can also add your glossaries and memories to be assisted in the best possible way once you start working.

After a certain amount of time, which will depend in almost all cases on the length of the source text, we will find some results, such as the translated document, and together with it, new information added to the program's memory, which could be helpful to the next time we want to translate something.

The exciting thing about OmegaT is that not all similar programs have a window displayed along with the original document, showing you the translation in real-time and the matches that exist with the document's memory or the glossary. If you want, you can add all matches manually or automatically if their percentage is higher than the one you have set.

If you translate several projects simultaneously, this utility will allow you to switch from one to another without any inconvenience during both works. For this purpose, we have a handy project file viewer, of course. Other changes you can make have to do with switching from one paragraph to another within the same file, and in these cases, you can make the jumps with the keyboard or using the mouse.

We have also found it essential that it is a translator capable of helping us with the texts in languages with writing from right to left, considering that several competitors do not have this quality. We do not doubt that this is an advantage for expert translators who want to work with languages such as Arabic, which are written in the opposite direction.

A small detail, which is not critical but which you will have to take into account, is related to the fact that every time we load new memories or glossaries, it will be necessary to restart the program so that they can be taken into account in the translation. This is extremely important because we have encountered several times that it did not register the new material, and the explanation has finally been shown here.

How about the compatibility of this software? Positive to tell the truth, considering that we have found ourselves opening, without any problems, Java, HTML or XHTML files, text files with different encodings such as Unicode, and others made with office suites such as StarOffice, OpenOffice.org and Open Document. Undoubtedly, you have nothing to worry about in this regard.

It is precisely the above feature, its high compatibility, that makes it a program that offers support for working together with other translation memory applications, making it an even more complete alternative.

Whenever translation memories or glossaries are added to the project or changes have been made to these files, the translator must reload the project so that OmegaT recognizes the newly added segments. The project must also be reloaded if changes are made to the segmentation rules during the translation process.

In our experience of use, OmegaT has proved to be an efficient program, which has not caused us any problems translating the texts we wanted to see in Spanish. However, as a warning, we must point out that starting a new project is not as easy as one would like it to be. However, it is worth generating it to be able to translate all the texts you consider necessary.