BasicCAT vs Supervertaler Workbench

BasicCAT is a free, open-source computer-aided translation tool intended to give translators a simple desktop workspace. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows and includes translation memory, terminology management, language checking, Quickfill, AutoCorrect, and interactive machine translation. Users can merge or split segments, export Word files for external review, and create bilingual paragraph files. Listed file support includes TXT, IDML, XLIFF, and Gettext PO, alongside TMX, TBX, and SRX standards. Its documentation lists built-in connections to 12 machine translation services, including Baidu, Google, Microsoft Bing, MyMemory, Tencent Cloud, IBM Watson, and Amazon. Most services require API keys; MyMemory instead requires an email address. Language checks use LanguageTool through its API or locally. Translation memory and terms can be shared through a server program, while Git collaboration is for work files and does not sync those resources. The sharing server requires Java 8 or later.

Supervertaler Workbench is a free standalone CAT tool that combines AI translation with traditional computer-assisted translation workflows. It supports AI translation, batch translation, chat, prompts, image context and AI proofreading, as well as local models through Ollama. Listed providers include OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, Mistral AI, DeepSeek, OpenRouter, Ollama and custom OpenAI-compatible endpoints. Translation features include fuzzy matching, TMX import and concordance search; terminology tools include termbases, automatic term highlighting and TermLens. DOCX and TXT are supported directly, with additional formats through Okapi, including IDML, HTML, XLIFF, PO, XLSX and PPTX. Documentation describes exchange workflows for memoQ, Trados Studio, Phrase and CafeTran. The privacy policy says documents, termbases and translation memories stay on the user's machine, while AI requests go directly to the selected provider when an AI action is triggered. Ollama processes data locally. Workbench runs on Linux, macOS and Windows and supports offline desktop use. Its maker says it is no longer actively developed, though genuine bugs may still be fixed and releases still go out.