I just read the D:ECONOMY newsletter of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, where Holger Schmidt states:

“Whether a country capitalises on this opportunity of the century depends crucially on individual commitment. One and a half years after the launch of ChatGPT, there are already considerable differences in the world: low-income, non-Western countries such as China and India have recognised the opportunity and are achieving the highest usage rates. People in developed countries such as Switzerland, Australia and Singapore, which are at the top of economic digitalisation rankings, also use the technology regularly. The USA is in the midfield, while most European countries – including Germany – are relatively far behind in the usage statistics.”

I was sufficiently intrigued to visit Trados Studio's “AI enabled” forum and found that the last entry is from four months ago. Are we seizing the opportunity, or are we trying to hold out “like children in sand castles when the tide comes in” (Gandalf, I think).

For Studio users, who are predominantly not programmers, which chances are there to integrate AI into our workflows? Which tools would we need to do this?

The last great technology was the World Wide Web, according to Holger Schmidt. If we take the German retail industry, it totally re-shaped the landscape. The giants of old are gone: Karstadt, Hertie, Neckermann, Quelle etc. Some survived, because they harnessed the new technology. Otto comes to mind.

Both users and providers of software are caught up in this whirlwind of change, and while there might still be some who translate venerable texts using fountain pens and paper notepads, the industry will change and has changed to some degree already.

How can we as the users communicate to RWS what we believe Trados Studio, a software we know well and trust in, needs to stay on top of this change. How can RWS meet the need? Yes, there is the AI assistant, but it is still in its infancy and rather limited in many ways. Maybe a renewed push to enable users to write their own apps (or apps for the AppStore) is what the time calls for? Programming languages have changed dramatically, and programming itself has become more accessible with AI, too. Video tutorials to guide us along the first steps to the first visible results? Or maybe it's something else. If software development is like paddling down a river, we've come to rapids and waterfalls now, and we might have to change the way we go about things.

Detailed user feedback is valuable for companies – feedback that goes beyond complaints that the product is not like what I saw in Star Trek the other day. Let this forum be the place where we give feedback of use cases that are both realistic and real, like this one. There is a joint interest or RWS and Trados Studio users here. My hope is for this forum to reflect this.

Daniel