Since 1993

WE’VE COME A LONG WAY

Leaders in Computer Assisted Translation

Atril has a unique reputation for innovating translation technology from the stand point of the user, not the technologist. We’ve never considered new functions on isolation or introduced them solely for the sake if the technology. We’ve always worked to a bigger picture.

Right from our very beginnings in 1993 we’ve been committed to much more than simply automating the translation process to enhance productivity, aiming above all to provide a tightly-integrates tool that helps everyone in the translation supply chain work as effectively and efficiently as possible. Which shouldn’t be surprising, since those are our roots.

Our system designs have as a result never involved any trade-offs between quality and productivity. Just as they have always been conceived so they can be easily and flexibly customized to individual needs.

It’s this thinking which has generated our constant technological innovation. Just as it has involved us in a close dialogue with our users that has in itself been innovative, while ensuring our product development makes a real impact on their quality, productivity and reputation.

That’s also why we offer fully-functional evaluation versions – because we know that within 30 days they’ll speak for themselves.

What’s more, ours is long-term commitment as independent experts with a track record that shows we’re here to stay. You can see that commitment to long-term relationships in our free update and flexible upgrade policies – further evidence that Atril doesn’t just add value but offers industry-leading value as well.

Our Mission, Vision and Values

Atril’s mission is to help our customers achieve high-quality translations in the easiest, fastest, most economical way, bringing added value to their work and time, with measurable and clear results day by day.

Our vision is to become our customers’ unconditional partner in the development of their work, actively supporting their pursuit of quality, productivity, compatibility and profitability.

Our values are grounded in integrated product and efficient dialogue with our customers.

A history of firsts

Atril’s customer relations and product development are centered on supporting the thinking as well as the operations of the key professionals in the translation quality chain. Our aim is to help translators, editors and project managers increase the quality and productivity of their work not just through automation, but above all by providing all the information they need to make the right decisions at the right time. We likewise aim to enhance this by providing flexible systems that can be customized to the way they work, so they always benefit form the most comfortable, efficient and intuitive workflow and work environment.

For the most part, this approach stems from the origins of Déjà Vu, which was initially developed in 1993 to fulfil our own need for a professional translation tool. Our initial experiments with MT (Machine Translation) systems were extremely disappointing, and subsequent experiences with TM (Translation Memory) tools exposed a variety of shortcomings. Although appropriate for automatically recycling translations of previous versions of the same document : all the systems were only capable of processing plain text files and ran under MS-DOS, making them neither versatile nor user-friendly.

We consequently experimented with writing our own TM software, and after much testing discovered a set of techniques that made our innovative ideas feasible and our software very fast. A preliminary version was finished and immediately began working on an interface that integrated our system with Microsoft Word for Windows 2.0, creating Version 1 of Déjà Vu, which was released to the public in November 1993. This is radical move established Déjà Vu as the most advanced translation tool of its time and the first to provide a translation environment combining substantial reference information, comprehensive writing/editing tools and powerful automation. It was the beginning of a long series of industry firsts that rapidly won Atril its reputation as the leading innovator in the industry..

The name we chose our product, Déjà Vu, expressed our approach, making it clear that Atril’s priority was not simply to automate the translation of new versions of old documents, buts to inform and facilitate the translator’s and editor’s work. Every translator has “Déjà Vu Moments” when they encounter a translation problem they can recall having solved in the past without remembering how. Déjà Vu declared in its very name that it had been designed to support their thinking and productivity by immediately and automatically supplying “Déjà Vu” information.

Moving away from a Word interface in 1996, almost a decade before the many competitors who emulated us, we provided a dedicated translation environment of our own design which enable users to work on a large number of different files in a single project with unparalleled flexibility – and without having to own and learn a large number of different word processing and desktop publishing systems. This new environment also enabled us to add many powerful innovations, including automated quality control checks and our Assemble technology, the first-ever application of Example-Based Machine Translation.

Since then we have continued to add new functionality, ensuring that Déjà Vu remains uniquely effective and productive in its application of technology to support translation professionals in the crucial human intelligence aspects of their work.