Inquiries about OmegaT

What is OmegaT?

"OmegaT" can refer to two things:

• The software: a Computer Aided Translation (CAT) tool. It is software used by human translators to translate more efficiently.
• The project: the group of volunteers who develop the OmegaT software and maintain its infrastructure (website, mailing lists, CI, etc.)

In this document "OmegaT" will refer to the software; the project will be referred to as "the OmegaT project".

What is OmegaT not?

OmegaT is not a machine translation tool. It does not provide translations itself; it only facilitates the work of human translators.
OmegaT is not a "cloud" tool. It runs locally on the translator's machine. Note, however, that it does support collaborative ("team") translation; see the manual for details.
OmegaT is not a translation services provider. It is a software development project.
OmegaT is not a company. It has no employees; it is run entirely by volunteers.

Who runs the OmegaT project?

The OmegaT project is run solely by volunteers. It is not a company; there are no employees.

Who uses OmegaT?

Translators, both professional and otherwise, from around the world.

What does OmegaT cost?

OmegaT is free, open-source software. Binaries are provided free of cost, and the source code is freely available under the GNU General Public License, v3.

OK, the software is free, but what about the service?

There is no service provided by the OmegaT project.

OmegaT can optionally interface with paid services such as some for-pay machine translation providers. However the customer-provider relationship does not involve the OmegaT project and exists entirely between you and the provider.

You cannot plausibly accidentally incur costs by using OmegaT because paid services require providing API keys or other authentication tokens.

What platforms does OmegaT run on?

OmegaT is a Java program; it runs anywhere that Java 1.8 or higher can run. In addition to a platform-agnostic build, platform-specific builds are provided for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Do you provide translation services?

No, the OmegaT project is focused solely on the development of OmegaT the software tool; it does not provide translation services.

Can you provide a quote for x?

We can provide quotes for development work on OmegaT. Please contact info [at] omegat [dot] org.
We cannot provide quotes for translation, per above.

What features does OmegaT have?

Most features are documented in the manual. If you require more information or need help with a particular use case, please consult the OmegaT User Support group.

Can OmegaT be integrated into our platform?

OmegaT is a Java program with the GUI implemented in Swing. So the answer is "maybe", depending on what your platform is and what you mean by "integrate".

Is OmegaT safe to use with confidential material?

OmegaT does not transmit source text or translations anywhere, except when using machine translation (MT) connectors: by definition, the source text must be transmitted to the MT provider in order to be translated. MT translation is not enabled by default; it must be manually configured.

Other than that, all data resides solely on the user's local machine in the case of a "normal" project. In the case of a "team" project, the data will reside on the team project server (presumably under the full control of the project administrator) and the local machines of any users working on that project.