Amberscript, headquartered in Amsterdam, helps users transform audio and video to text and subtitles through the use of its AI-driven on-demand software service.
$10
Prepaid: 1 hour of audio or video uploaded
Trados Studio
Score 5.1 out of 10
N/A
Trados Studio is a translation management and language localization platform, from multinational SDL headquartered in the UK. It is a computer-assisted translation product, designed to be a complete translation environment for language professionals who want to edit, review and manage translation projects whilst in the office or on the move.
Amberscript is great for transcribing individual audio (or video) files that reside on your computer. The ability to view and edit the text of the text file (to correct or remove data that you don't want to be shared) before the output is a great option. I feel it may be limited in the ability to transcribe live audio records such as phone calls or meetings, where we would find it very useful to have immediate access to a transcript (for coaching or sharing purposes). I feel the needs are more designed as a solution for pre-existing audio/video files versus working in real-time.
SDL Trados Studio is extremely well suited for expert CAT tool users. More novice users will have trouble getting up to speed. I have an office full of employees that constantly ask questions on how to do specific tasks, mainly because the task sequence is not obvious and is only uncovered by rote repetition of the same things. If you learn and apply the same techniques repeatedly, it becomes easier, but it seems the software was designed by software people, sometimes with little thought to the end users who have to figure it out. I don't know that professional training should be so necessary.
Again, the list of functions is impressive but the way it is organized (not process-driven) and the fact that complex tasks should be close to basic tasks make the product suitable to hardcore users that have a lot of time to research the manuals and blogs. By the way, Nora Diaz is one of the most respectable users of this product. Her videos help a lot!
Support has been fast, precise and thorough. There is support on the web, by chat, by email, from the communities, from the experts, on the product Help section, on YouTube, and other social media. There is also a paid support for companies. This area is where the company stands out. I was not able to evaluate the support in languages other than English.
I feel that Amazon Transcribe was much more feature-rich, allowing for a much more real-time solution, whereas Amberscript is great for transcribing existing call recordings (or video files) to a rich text file. Amazon Transcribe will do both, while Amberscript only does the latter. For our business, this was a significant feature loss for Amberscript.
I tried using memoQ to get used to server-based localization tools, but experienced critical issues such as translation data not being updated on the server so stopped using it before I get used to it, unfortunately. It must be updated and improved by now, so I might try using it again in the near future.
Having an automated speech-to-text conversion allows us to reduce human hours, which would normally take notes or have to review long audio files.
Being able to transcribe multiple call recordings into a searchable text format allows for coaching of issues in a much more efficient format than an audio recording.
