TECHNICAL HELP FOR TRANSLATORS
BY JOST ZETZSCHE
We recently discovered a new and valuable source of information for translators called “Tool Kit”. It is a biweekly email newsletter for people in the translation industry who want to get more out of their computers. The person behind this newsletter is Jost Zetzsche, who gave us kind permission to publish one of its first issues here. Zetzsche also wrote an eBook called “A Translator’s Tool Box for the 21st Century-A Computer Primer for Translators”. It contains a lot information and covers the gamut from operating systems to CAT tools.1
For more information go to http://www.internationalwriters.com/toolkit/
and enjoy.
Issue 4-01-2
Contents:
1. Sharpen Your Tools
1.1 Hello Again to Windows 98
1.2 Browser Sharpening
1.3 Controlling the Insert and Caps Locks Keys
2. Upgrade Your Tools
2.1 Glossary of Standard Microsoft Terminology
2.2 Trados 6.5-a New Feature Review
3. How to Become a Tool Kitter
4. How to Become a Tool Boxer
1. SHARPEN YOUR TOOLS
1.1 HELLO AGAIN TO WINDOWS 98
In the last edition of this newsletter, I wrote the following: “After delaying the decision a number of times, Microsoft has finally decided to retire Windows 98 on January 16, 2004. Although this does not mean that you can’t use the operating system anymore, MS will not provide any support or hot fixes anymore. For more information, see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;[LN];LifeAn1.” If you now visit the same link, you can see that Microsoft has extended the life cycle of Windows 98 through June 2006. You can find some interesting background information on that decision at http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040113/tc_nm/tech_microsoft_windows_dc_3. Even though Microsoft has decided to continue Windows 98 support, this does not mean is that you should sit back and not upgrade. In many important ways, Windows 98 has become obsolete. Of particular concern for us translators is its lack of support for Unicode. Google reports that 27 % of all visitors to its site are still using Windows 98 (http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist_nov03.html)-let us hope that this is not true for the translation community.
1.2 BROWSER SHARPENING
I have finally found my solution for a browser that is (sort of) not Internet Explorer, but supports everything that Internet Explorer supports (only more). MyIE2 (see http://www.myie2.com) is a browser that sits on top of Internet Explorer and still gives you a whole new world of browsing. The features that I particularly like are the tabbed browsing (i.e., you have only one browser instance open with as many web pages as you like-something Opera and Netscape have been using for a long time already-and, this is completely new, you can even save all open web pages in a later retrievable “group”). It has built-in and functional pop-up protection; and you can change the look of the browser as often as you like by simply changing into another skin (of which there are a couple hundred available at their website-my favorite right now is “AquaMac”). Another thing that I like is that you can set an automatic domain completion for several different domains. For instance, you can type “nytimes” in the address field, and by pressing Ctrl+Enter, the browser will automatically open www.nytimes.com. Though this particular shortcut works in the plain version of Internet Explorer as well, in MyIE2 you can set additional domains, for instance Shift+Enter for .co.jp and Ctrl+Shift+Enter for .de (under Tool>MyIE2 Options>Others). It is nifty for translators who naturally travel between a lot of different domains. There are a number of other features of this browser that are highly touted, which you can read about on MyIE2′s website. Oh yes, there is one more feature that I like: It’s free!
1.3 CONTROLLING THE INSERT AND CAPS LOCKS KEYS
There are very few things that I hate as much as when I hit the Caps Lock or the Insert key without knowing it and the following text is either in all caps or overwritten (it happens, for instance, when I look out the window and see the seals playing and the salmon jumping-http://www.internationalwriters.com/aboutus/index.html-as I type). Fortunately, Windows allows you to have a little beep sound go off every time you hit the Caps Lock, Num Lock, or Scroll Lock keys. To activate this feature, select Start>Settings>ControlPanel>Accessibility Options and check Use Toggle Keys (Thanks go to Christoph Niedermair, EN>DE, cniedermair@cs.com for this tip). To make the Insert key beep every time you hit it, you can download the free and tiny Insert ToggleKey utility at http://www.mlin.net/misc.shtml.
2. UPGRADE YOUR TOOLS
2.1 Glossary of Standard Microsoft Terminology. A little addendum to the note on the Microsoft glossaries from the last newsletter. Under http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwue/html/wordlists.asp you can find the most basic standard terminology for Microsoft’s products for most languages. If you need to download this list, here is a great way of doing it: If you have Excel XP or higher on your computer, you can right-click on the glossary table in Internet Explorer (or MyIE2, see above) and select “Export to Excel”. This will automatically paste all the information into a newly created Excel spreadsheet. As far as searching through the otherwise very large Microsoft glossaries mentioned in the last newsletter, Karin Bauchrowitz (EN>DE, karinbauchrowitz@comcast.net) pointed out that the little utility MSG Browser (see http://www.msgbrowser.com) allows you to search through all of the glossaries simultaneously. If you do not use your translation memory application to search through the glossaries, this is indeed a great way to do it.
2.2 TRADOS 6.5-A NEW FEATURES REVIEW
Instead of giving a full-fledged review of Trados, I will only focus on the new features of the new version, Trados 6.5. For an in-depth introduction to translation memory tools, and comparisons of different tools, see the Computer-Assisted Translation Tools chapters in my Tool Box book (see http://www.internationalwriters.com/toolbox/). First of all, the new features that should already have been in a free update for the previous version: support for updated file formats, including Microsoft Office 2003, InDesign 2, Adobe FrameMaker 7, and QuarkXPress 5 (ironically, at least in the cases of FrameMaker and InDesign, there are already newer versions than the newly supported ones). I have always found it frustrating and unnecessary that you had to upgrade to a completely new version of Trados or buy an additional plug-in when a new version of Office or another format was released. Aside from that, Trados’ new version has a number of pleasant surprises. My favorite is that PowerPoint and Excel files can now be processed in TagEditor (and the alignment module WinAlign). Now, if you have used TagEditor in version 3 or even 5 and you had the impression that it was not a particularly stable tool, you were right. The good news is that TagEditor has come a long way and has developed into a stable (although at times sluggish) program that offers you the ability to translate (almost) any Trados-supported file, including RTFbased Trados files. In the past there have been many complaints about the fact that Trados uses different interfaces for different file formats, which, like in the case for T-Window for PowerPoint and T-Window for Excel, often were a pain to work in. With the steps to consolidate the processing of most formats in Tag-Editor, Trados is going a step in the right direction. When Trados 6.5 was announced, I was most excited about the new automated concordance feature which I hoped would be a lot like Deja Vu’s AutoSearch feature, but I was a little disappointed when I saw how it was actually implemented. If you have that feature enabled (under Options>Translation
MemoryOptions>Concordance>Start concordance search if no segment match is found), the Concordance window will come up with single word matches from the translation memory if no other match is found. This is a useful concept as it allows you to see how a word has been translated previously, even though you may not have entered that into the MultiTerm terminology database. The problem is that the suggestions come up in a separate window that you have to manually close which I found very disruptive to my workflow. Also, there is no reason not to display these partial matches when a less than 100% is found, which it does not do at the moment. Once Trados solves these problems and finds a way to display the suggestions in the Workbench window, this feature will be a much welcomed and helpful aid. Although I have not had a chance to try out the remote connectivity of translation memories in the latest version (although you can connect to a translation memory with the freelance edition, you can not set up a remote database), this also is clearly a forward step as it allows for true real-time virtual workgroups. I would be interested to get some feedback on the actual performance by subscribers who have actually used this feature. Feel free to drop me a line at toolkit@internationalwriters.com. I will make sure to publish some of the impressions in one of the next editions.
3. HOW TO BECOME A TOOL KITTER
If you have a tip that you would like to share or a question that you would like to have answered, send an email to toolkit@internationalwriters.com. If you would like to recommend this newsletter to a colleague or friend, send them to http://www.internationalwriters.com/toolkit/. To unsubscribe, you can simply send a message with the word Unsubscribe in the Subject line to toolkit@internationalwriters.com.
4. HOW TO BECOME A TOOL BOXER
A Translator’s Tool Box for the 21st Century is filled with expert advice on which software tools you’ll need to save time (and make more money), the best way to use these tools, and which popular tools you can do without. Look for purchase information under http://www.internationalwriters.com/toolbox/.
To subscribe to the newsletter, send an email to toolkit@internationalwriters.com with the word “Subscribe” in the subject line or visit http://www.internationalwriters.com/toolkit.
1 For information about this book please contact David Lakritz of the NCTA who had a chance to review it. David’s e-mail address: dave@lai.com
