SDL TRADOS STUDIO 2011

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This morning I received an email by SDL's customer service announcing, "IT'S HERE!" Trados Studio 2011! I had been waiting for this, since it's been a couple of months now that SDL has announced the upcoming new version of its flagship CAT tool, and I hear it's going to be good! This is what's promised:

• EASIER REVIEWING CAPABILITIES: Reviewing has always been a bit of a pain in the backside in Studio, partly because its default view does not allow natural reading like you would in a Word document, making it easy for you to miss out on repetitions or stylistic errors, and secondly because you had to close documents, save them, re-open them for review, etc, in short, there were far too many steps involved to get a proper review done. Trados Studio 2011 promises to accelerate this. Perfect Matches from previous documents, understood to be reviewed already, are automatically locked and not included in the review process. Changes can be tracked and the superior Microsoft spell checker may be used. Plus, documents can be exported to word using SDLXLIFF, a free downloadable app from SDL OpenExchange, and reviewed there, in order to be re-imported to Studio to save your updated TMs and projects. I can hear you screaming, "How many error messages will I get doing that", considering SDL Studio's notorious lack of reliability when exporting and importing files, throwing up bizarre error messages along the way. (Last time, I even learned there was a specific file format for "SDL error message log files". - Good God! It's so unreliable they had to invent their own error message format!) Well, let's not be pessimistic and hope it's all be smooth as silk.
• NEW FILE FILTERS: A new filter for troublemaker file formats like InDesign a is welcome addition, and will hopefully erase all our memories of TagEditor and its related problems. Others, like the OpenOffice format, seem less essential (just save as .rtf), but we're not complaining.
• ENHANCED PERFORMANCE: According to the SDL website, it's "faster than ever", though it would be more appropriate, if not grammatically correct, to say "faster than never", because SDL Studio has always been among the less responsive, green-progress-bars-everywhere type of programmes. So faster can only be a good thing, though I'd take a few seconds wait in return for stable performance any day.

So far my comments on what's promised to be in it for us translators. Now I only need to get my hands on it, in order to write a proper review.

P.S. The interface is still more Windows 95 than Windows 8 by the way, with ugly blue colours everywhere. But it's not about beauty is it, rather about what's inside...


Have you had a chance to get your hand on SDL Trados Studio 2011? If so, what are your impressions? And do you think it will deliver?