Is SDL (Trados) certification worth it?
Thread poster: Dr Andrew Read
Dr Andrew Read
Dr Andrew Read  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 05:25
German to English
+ ...
Jun 24, 2015

Hi everyone

I've been a 'lurker' on the forums recently, but as it's time to renew my ProZ membership, I'm taking it as an opportunity to reconsider marketing priorities generally and wanted to ask for colleagues' advice. I will be renewing my ProZ membership as I've gained lots of work through it, over the last year.

My situation is as follows:

- I am a regular user of Trados Studio 2014, having upgraded to it as soon as it was available about a year or so
... See more
Hi everyone

I've been a 'lurker' on the forums recently, but as it's time to renew my ProZ membership, I'm taking it as an opportunity to reconsider marketing priorities generally and wanted to ask for colleagues' advice. I will be renewing my ProZ membership as I've gained lots of work through it, over the last year.

My situation is as follows:

- I am a regular user of Trados Studio 2014, having upgraded to it as soon as it was available about a year or so ago.
- Because so many of the features had changed compared with 'old' Trados, I paid for the two 'Getting Started' training courses via Proz.com and found these very useful.
- Since then, I haven't bothered to complete the exam, as I'd heard that only the Level 3 certification was viewed as worthwhile.
- I have, however, had a further two days' overview training from an experienced Trados trainer at the university where I do some teaching, and I've learned 'on the job' as a user of Trados almost every day since then, working with all sorts of file formats, packages from clients, purchasing external AutoSuggest dictionaries, upgrading my old TMs, creating MultiTerm termbases, etc. etc.
- I've got lots of work, partly from my Proz profile, partly from own applications to agencies, on the basis of being a Trados user (especially from agencies in the German-speaking countries).
- I do, though, need to continue regular marketing as I'm finding that some weeks I'm inundated with work; other times (e.g. the last couple of weeks), I'm working at only 30-60% capacity.

So my questions are as follows:
- Will paying for the next two stages of Trados training (Intermediate and Advanced) bring me any additional *marketing* benefit?
- Specifically, will I be listed anywhere special as a Trados-certified translator? SDL used to mention a database of SDL certified translators, but this now seems to have disappeared from their websites, and a Google search of Trados-certified translators produces no meaningful results.
- Since I can already use Trados perfectly well for my and my existing clients' purposes, would I be better to spend my marketing money on ITI or BDue membership or similar?

Thanks
Andrew
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Kevin Fulton
Kevin Fulton  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 01:25
German to English
Useful for in-house position Jun 24, 2015

Although it's generally useful to expand your skill set, in this case I would imagine that having this type of certification would only make you attractive as a potential in-house employee of an agency. Apart from that, I can't see much marketing utility, as potential agency clients assume familiarity with SDL tools, and non-agency clients don't care.

 


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Is SDL (Trados) certification worth it?







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