The History of TRADOS

SDL Trados is a computer-assisted translation software originally developed by the German company Trados GmbH and currently available from SDL International, a provider of translation management software, content management and language services.

Since its entry into the translation software market in 1984, Trados has become a widely recognized name within the industry. SDL Trados has steadily grown its customer base of over 185,000 translation professionals (from freelance translators to large enterprises) by continuously delivering innovative and translation memory software.

Trados (TRAnslation & DOcumentation Software) was established in Stuttgart, Germany by Jochen Hummel and Iko Knyphausen in 1984. Hummell and Knyphausen initially set up Trados as a Language Service Provider (LSP) following their decision to tender for a translation project for IBM.

The mid-eighties saw the emergence of computer-assisted translation (CAT) technology following the increasing demand for translated content. Translators were unable to keep up with number of translation projects being passed on to them from customers. Hummell and Knyphausen recognised the opportunity for technology and started developing software to solve this issue.

At the dawn of the translation memory era in 1988, Trados developed TED, a very early version of what is known today as Translator's Workbench, one of the translation memory applications in SDL Trados.

In 1990, Trados launched their first product, MultiTerm, into the market place. The first version of Translator's Workbench was later released in 1992. Trados also started expanding as a company in the mid-nineties. Matthias Heyn, a computational linguist from the University of Stuttgart joined the company and developed the first alignment tool on the market (T Align, later to become WinAlign). The nineties saw a large amount of development in translation software technology, and CAT tools were becoming more and more commonplace.

In 2005, Trados was acquired by SDL. The company first released SDL Trados 2007 Suite, which combines both robust technology with innovative new features. SDL Trados Studio 2009 was released in 2009, and the journey continued with SDL Trados Studio 2011, launched in 2011.

SDL Trados includes the following components:

•   Trados Translator’s Workbench: the interface to the translation memory
•   TagEditor: the text editor for translating tagged text file formats
•   WinAlign: to create translation memory from existing translations
•   Synergy: a new component for project management
•   Filters: to convert FrameMaker and Interleaf files for translation in Trados
•   Trados Glue: for “gluing” multiple source files into one Trados TagEditor file
•   T-Window for Clipboard: to translate clipboard content
•   MultiTerm: the terminology management program

Source: http://www.translationzone.com/en/about-us/history-of-sdl-trados/

             http://www.finntranslations.com/Trados_for_Beginners_handout.pdf