software - 3

Despite us being well into the computer era, dictionaries are still an essential language resource for any translator. The dictionary-making industry has had to move with the times, which has rocked the boat quite a bit at established publishers such as Langenscheidt, but even so, it has managed to come up with electronic alternatives to paper dictionaries – and equally importantly, various ways of paying for them. Electronic dictionaries are now available as apps for mobile phones and portable e-readers like the Kindle, as PC software and as Web-based applications, for example. This post is about the latter, which are offered as paid services to which users subscribe (software as a service, or "SaaS").

One of the online dictionary services I use is MOT dictionaries and is run by a Finnish company called Kielikone. This firm provides various linguistic services via the Web that cater to people with an interest in translation and proof-reading, including Web-based dictionaries (e.g. via MOT mobile), machine translation (MOT translation) and online proof-reading (MOT proofing):

In addition to these three groups, Kielikone also offers its customers a small number of language guides, e.g. on English and Swedish grammar and on writing and spelling Finnish correctly, which caters to needs in their local market in Scandinavia.

Rather misleadingly, MOT translation is actually concerned with machine translation – from one of nine European languages and (Mandarin) Chinese into English and vice versa. Kielikone realistically admits that its MT system is only capable of making a "quick" translation of a text and is best suited to translating technical texts, instructions and news, i.e. material in which the focus is on content rather than style. In other words, post-editing is necessary to polish up the engine's translations (another task we human translators get lumbered with).

Rather than relying on MT's statistical algorithms, however, I prefer to use several of Kielikone's online dictionaries to help me translate my work. A wide range of monolingual and bilingual works are available, each of which costs a relatively small amount of money to subscribe to (around 15 euros for three months or roughly 49 euros for 12, for example). I've signed up for three German-English dictionaries, viz. MOT Collins German Dictionary, MOT Langenscheidt Muret-Sanders Großwörterbuch Englisch and MOT Oxford German Dictionary, and have an annual subscription, which is rather better value than a quarterly one. These electronic dictionaries are all based on well-known printed versions and have been licensed to Kielikone. (Installable versions for Windows PC users are also available, incidentally.)

To use the dictionaries you have chosen, you just log on to the MOT server via your Web browser using the user data that go with your subscription. It's very fast (and the connections I've set up have always been totally reliable). Set the language for the browser interface when you first start using MOT – it can be in English, German, Swedish or Finnish at the moment – and then pick the dictionary you want to use from a drop-down list:

If you set the system to search all of your dictionaries at once (by picking "Multiple dictionary selection" and clicking on the round plus symbol and selecting the works to be used), then when you enter a search term on the right, the results of your search will be displayed in a vertical list of all the dictionary entries that were found. The hits actually look much like those in a paper dictionary, with the entry being on the left and translations of it on the right together with sample sentences showing how the words are used (i.e. with contextual information):

Different kinds of searches are possible, depending on which option you select:

Like CD-ROM dictionaries, searches for terms can be done very quickly online, but I'd say the real advantage of subscribing to a number of MOT dictionaries is that you can see which dictionaries come up with hits instantaneously and the hits all appear on your monitor at once; there's no need to make individual searches in each dictionary as a universal search is done. So a system of this kind can save you time. Plus the fact that no maintenance is needed at the user's end, no system updates are called for and there's no need for any troubleshooting if anything goes wrong – this is all taken care of by the company providing the dictionaries over the Net.

So there's no hassle at all. What's more, you can try out additional dictionaries whenever you like, with no obligation to take out a subscription for them. If you find them useful, you pay for them and they get included in your personal software "suite" for immediate use. And if you decide you want to stop using your suite for any reason, you can simply cancel your subscription.

I thoroughly recommend "MOT dictionaries" as a translation resource as it's convenient to use, flexible and very helpful in many cases. Apart from including general dictionaries, the range also covers several commercial, technical and specialist dictionaries and encyclopaedias. Here's a sample:

If you'd like to try out the MOT dictionaries, get in touch with the Sales team at Kielikone and ask for a free trial.

Regards,

Carl

Further reading

- More on Langenscheidt's restructuring programme (in German)

images: screen shots from Kielikone's website; logo and other website images by courtesy of Kielikone Oy

The other day I happened to stumble across a job advert by SDL plc, a well-known producer of software tools for translators, one of which I reviewed here briefly last autumn. The position was being advertised via monster.de, the big job portal on the internet, and looked as though it was in nearby Munich, which was why it initially caught my attention. It turned out it was actually an internship as an English to German translator. On closer reading, I found that the post was over in Sheffield (in the UK) and that SDL expects the person who is fortunate enough to get the job to work for what I would call peanuts – the National Minimum Wage in Britain, a stunning £6.50 an hour (7.85 euros at today's exchange rate).



Here's the top half of the ad, showing an appealing picture of a young team of professionals around a laptop, presumably to put you in an enthusiastic mood:

Looking at the job description, it sounds like an interesting position for a qualified translator. You would be working with a variety of CAT tools (obviously, since that's what SDL produces) and doing translating and editing work that can be demanding (post-editing machine-translated texts). You'd also have a degree of responsibility because you'd be checking software to find any mistakes or problems with it, testing websites (presumably how well they work) and doing terminological work, which means building up and possibly verifying and editing terms in a terminology database, no doubt for other members of staff (= translators) to use.



You need an educational background in translation or terminology for this job, as SDL specifically requests, and very good skills in two languages as well:

What do you think about this advertisement? My first reaction was one of disbelief; I asked myself why anyone with suitable qualifications should want to undertake work like this for a pittance? After all, it's a full-time position, even if it's only for six months (apparently with no option of being taken on properly afterwards).



Is it reasonable for an employer to expect this kind of work to be done by an intern, do you think? I could understand them offering the internship for a shorter period, say three months, but six seems a bit steep to me under these circumstances. On the other hand, it's become quite common for young people, including recent university graduates, to try and get some work experience in business fields that interest them even if it means them not being paid anything at all – it's the experience that counts for them rather than their earnings. (Think of the media, for example – TV and advertising.) In that respect, this particular position could be regarded as a particularly attractive one since you'd be getting paid all the time in addition to being given the opportunity to learn a lot about modern translation technology.



Still, I must say I find it unsettling to see low-paid positions being advertised that require skills that not everybody happens to have. Although the person's manpower would be tied up for half a year and the work they'd do would benefit the employer's own web marketing, they'd only be offered a token salary. Something's not quite right there, is it?



Carl

Proz, the international translators' portal, is going to run a series of free webinars for registered users in March.

According to the programme of events now available here, the sessions will mainly be covering computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools:

• Wordfast Pro 3.3
  
   


• memoQ 2013 R2
  
   


• SDL Trados Studio 2014
  
   


• Déjà Vu X3 (aka "DVX3")
  
   


• Fluency
  
   


• and Wordbee Freelancer.

In addition, you will also be able to learn more about utilities like WordFinder, a web-based dictionary suite, and Translation Office 3000, a package for managing your translation and proof-reading assignments, your customers and your accounting. Several of these programs are now available in brand new versions with fresh interfaces.

There are also going to be two sessions on getting in touch with potential customers via Proz's own web platform. At the time of writing this post, places were still available for the session on 20 March.

To participate in any of these events, all you have to do is register to attend them. If you aren't a registered user yet, sign up for free or take out a paid subscription, depending on what features you would like to use.

Proz.com regularly stages training events for translators and interpreters, not just giving them an opportunity to learn about the latest software tools, but also to improve their knowledge of subject areas they work with such as legal contracts, interpreting in court or for the police, medical translation, tourism and travel, software localisation and audio subtitling, to mention just a few examples.

Some of the events are recorded and can be viewed any time, albeit at a small cost. These are known as "on-demand courses".

The training Proz offers isn't just in English, but that does seem to be the main lingua franca used. Sometimes presentations are held in other languages; some of the events in March are going to take place in Spanish, Italian, French, German, Russian or Chinese, for instance.

Quality-wise, the free webinars and "virtual conferences" I have attended so far have generally been reasonable to good. Not brilliant, but generally interesting. Some were a bit too commercial for my taste, but still, you learn to pick out the cherries after a while...

Why not take a look at the events lined up in March and see if there are any that interest you?

Regards,

Carl

images: screen shots taken from Proz.com

Déjà Vu is a versatile software suite for translators that has been on the market for twenty years now, ever since 1993. An established CAT tool produced by a European firm called Atril, it has a loyal following among its users thanks to its flexibility and robustness, not to mention the speedy and helpful technical support Atril provides.

A new version of the software called "X3" is going to be launched this year. Two free "sneak preview" webinars will be held on it in the second half of January to give translators an idea of what enhancements and innovations they can expect. These are going to be on 23 Jan (7-8 pm CEST) and on 28 Jan (4-5 pm CEST), the company's website says.

Version X3 comes with a number of enhancements and brand new features compared to its predecessor DVX2. These include:

• a completely overhauled user interface for easier access to features (a ribbon approach)



• live previews for Microsoft Office documents: Word, Excel and PowerPoint files from customers' Office 2003, 2007, 2010 or 2013 suites can now be displayed without Office having to be pre-installed on the translator's PC.



• as for all file formats not supported by the live preview, DVX3 will display "live source context", thus providing code information in development formats, for example



• WYSIWYG inline formatting in the translation grid ("What you see is what you get")



• better quality assurance, including a dynamic inline spell-checker (with the possibility to add your own dictionaries)



• enhanced file filters (IDML and Excel, specifically) for quicker import, fewer embedded codes, additional compatibility and interoperability and better handling of Quicksilver files



• automation (e.g. automatic update notification).

If you would like to attend one of the webinars, all you need to do is sign up for it in advance on Atril's website at www.atril.com. You'll see the two links on the right of the page in the section called "Training", as the screen shot here shows.

This CAT tool is worth taking a look at despite the fact that the translation market appears to be dominated by various products made by SDL plc. In fact, if you looked behind the scenes at the software tools we translators use, you'd find that many of us are actually employing CAT tools that are not SDL's, but are compatible to them – and often more convenient to use (many of them are less expensive, too).

What matters at the end of the day is that customers get the translations they request in the file format they ask for and that using other tools to achieve these aims doesn't cause them any extra work. Déjà Vu is one of these compatible alternatives. It has some ingenious features that can help you translate texts faster and produce work of a more consistent nature. It is capable of tapping several external machine-translation engines and also works well in conjunction with speech-recognition software, which means you don't need to use the keyboard or mouse all the time. (With a bit of practice, you can even work at a higher speed.)

Hope you find the preview interesting.

Regards,

Carl

images: courtesy of Atril

This week a customer from an advertising agency I work for sent me a PDF file to translate containing a newspaper article she had scanned. What struck me right away was that the whole article was an image and that it was laid out in a number of columns with a headline and large picture at the top. It looked quite nice as pieces of journalism go, but how did she expect me to make a quotation and translate the text? To be honest, I don't think she realised what she was asking of me; these days it's so common for people in PR, sales and marketing to work with PDFs of glossy-looking articles that they don't realise how tricky they can be for translators to deal with.

One way of handling such image files is to load them into Adobe Acrobat®, a powerful but pricey application for creating and editing PDF documents. You import the file and then process it using the optical-character-recognition feature (OCR). This theoretically "captures" any text found in the image and makes it editable. After doing that and saving the results as a new PDF file, you can export it to an external word-processing application like Microsoft Word® and then check it to see if all the text has been captured and reproduced correctly. It's only once this last step has been taken that you can actually start translating.

If you do most of your translating in a CAT tool, then you may also want to go over the editable file again before doing that using a utility such as Dave Turner's CodeZapper as this can reduce the number of formatting "tags" or "codes" in it, which appear in the translation grid and stop you from translating segments quickly (as you have to insert them in your translation one by one).

Well, after creating an editable Word file from Adobe Acrobat XI and not being very impressed with the outcome, I remembered a blog post that Dominique Pivard wrote a while ago about handling scanned PDFs using a Web-based CAT tool called Wordfast Anywhere®. Dominique has made a large number of short but generally very instructive videos on CAT tools that you can watch on his blog or on YouTube for free, and this is one of them.

I watched the video twice (just to make sure I'd understood everything!), set up a free user account on the Wordfast Anywhere site and then uploaded the original scanned PDF file to it. You need to create a translation memory and set the source and target languages before it processes the PDF, but once you've done that, you're off! The Wordfast Anywhere server processed my PDF file using a powerful OCR algorithm and converted it into an editable file in just a few minutes. It lets you either translate the output in a Wordfast environment directly on the server or download the file and translate it by other means if you wish (e.g. in a desktop CAT tool).

The results of the conversion I got it to do were very good and the file didn't need much fine-tuning at all – it was better than Acrobat's output and didn't cost me a penny.

Many thanks to Dominique for making his video tutorial. If you'd like to watch it, then just click here. (The 4-minute video will start running as soon as the page has built up in your browser.)

Carl

image: Wordfast logo © Wordfast LLC

Related posts: Uses of Adobe Acrobat XI (part 1)

As you may have gathered by now, I use a translation tool called memoQ to help me with most of my translation work. MemoQ comes with an interesting dictionary plug-in linking it to a huge external terminology database called the EuroTermBank, and if it is activated (which it is by default in version 6.0 and 6.2), then memoQ constantly looks up expressions that appear in my source texts in the database and "suggests" any English translations of them to me that it finds there.

The terms that are "recognised", i.e. correspond to the source words in appearance, are displayed in a window to the right of the translation area in memoQ so you can see them easily while you translate and decide whether or not to pick them (sometimes they match the context, sometimes they don't). You can insert them manually or by using a combination of keys on your keyboard. The ETB entries have a special symbol next to them in the results list, as you can see from this screen shot showing a German source text and matching term-base results (the empty space in the middle is for the translation that is about to be done):

Fig. 1: The translations found in the ETB term base are conveniently shown to the right of the translation grid. Those from my own term bases are directly above them.

Now, you won't find everything in the ETB term base, of course, but you will find a lot of material in a large number of European languages (currently 33, in fact), including those used in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States (Lithuania and Latvia, for example). That's because the ETB is actually a terminology project involving a large number of countries from the European Union.

The EuroTermBank was set up by a consortium of organisations specifically with Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in mind, but other new EU member states and interested countries and organizations outside the EU are invited to get involved in the project as well. The idea, they say, is to "exchange terminology data with existing national and EU terminology databases by establishing cooperative relationships, aligning methodologies and standards, [and] designing and implementing data-exchange mechanisms and procedures".

According to the ETB website, www.eurotermbank.com, the project focuses on harmonisation and consolidation of terminology work in new EU member states, "transferring experience from other European Union terminology networks and accumulating competencies and efforts of the accessed countries". The aim of the project is to provide a source of "consistent, harmonised and easily accessible terminology" in the European Union, a "centralized online terminology bank for languages of new EU member countries interlinked to other terminology banks and resources".

The terminology the ETB draws upon is taken from public-sector terminology resources, so it's obviously of particular value if you translate texts concerned with any of these (widely varying) areas. Business, finance and institutions are covered, for example.

There's a quick summary of what the database covers on the left (as of 14 Nov. 2013). As you can see, the EuroTermBank is a big, ongoing multilingual project. What I find particularly useful about it is the fact that source terms are not just listed in the target language you pick, but some of them also come with a definition, giving you some background information that can come in handy as you translate.

To access the ETB, you don't have to have memoQ (even though Kilgray is its first technology partner); you can access it from your own web browser by calling up its URL, http://www.eurotermbank.com/, in which case you'll see something like this at the top of the page:

Fig. 2: The ETB on the internet (showing a window for an advanced search with several options, including definitions)

The subject areas that are covered are displayed in the "domain" field, which is shown on the left when you do an advanced search (click on "Show advanced options" next to the orange search button). If you click on the little arrow there, a drop-down list will appear. Here you can see that the ETB covers a wide range of areas: politics, international relations, European Community law, trade, social issues, education, employment, energy, transport and more... Amazing!

Incidentally, you can also download a special plug-in for Microsoft Word® that will help you with dictionary look-ups while you use that program. This enhancement can help you understand a text better, particularly one in a foreign language – mark a tricky word and then call up the ETB by right-clicking your mouse. Go to "Terminology..." and then a special pane will open listing possible equivalents in various languages.

If you fail to find any terms you look up, the portal enables you to build up a personalised list of such words (in "My ETB"), which you can share with other users from the ETB community if you'd like to.

This is a great resource for translators!

Regards,

Carl

images: ETB website and my own screen shots from memoQ

As I mentioned at the end of last month, the Hungarian CAT-tool maker Kilgray recently released a new version of its main product for freelance translators, memoQ, called "memoQ 2013 R2" (the "R" stands for "release", apparently). I've been using this version of memoQ ever since then and have found it to be robust and very convenient thanks to various enhancements to existing features and several brand new features it comes with.

To find out more about this particular release, you can now sign up to attend a free, one-hour webinar by Kilgray on the tool's new features, which is going to be staged later this week: on 14 November at 4 p.m. GMT (= 5 p.m. CET). Click here to sign up.

In Kilgray's own words on the event, the features to be discussed include "monolingual review (to update your translation memory by importing reviewed monolingual documents), PDF file import with full formatting (imported PDF files will keep the layout of the original file and texts can be translated as .doc or .docx files), a start-up wizard (to make configuration easier) and a couple of Microsoft Office Word integration enhancements".

The last point is a very modest description of some major achievements in memoQ: "Use Microsoft Word dictionaries for spell-checking; change fonts automatically in .docx files according to the most widespread fonts when you translate between European and Asian languages (CCJK); comments added to your source document will appear as comments or translatable content in the translation grid, depending on your preference; and comments added during translation can be exported into a Word file", as Kilgray says. (The above outline is just a small part of a more comprehensive summary available on the CAT-tool maker's website – click here to view the whole page.)

Reading about features is a good start, but watching a webinar will give you a lot of visual information as well as being more informative in general. You can also ask questions that may be answered straightaway, so it's a good way of finding out about key aspects of the program quickly. After which you should give it a spin yourself. Download a free user's guide from Kilgray's website and find out how the tool works – and most of all, how (like all CAT tools) it can help you improve your productivity and make sure you use the right terminology consistently as you translate. (More about the benefits of using translation software in a later post...)

See you at the webinar.

Regards,

Carl

image: logo courtesy of Kilgray Translation Technologies and my own screen shot from Citrix webinar software

Closely related posts: Promising new features in memoQ 2013 R2

MemoQ (pronounced "memo kyu") is a CAT tool that has become very popular among translators, partly because it offers a lot of convenient features and is relatively easy to use; beginners can learn how to set up a project and translate and export texts with the tool in just 1-2 hours. Plus it can process a wide range of file formats smoothly, including Trados 2007's bilingual RTF and SDL Trados Studio 2009/2011 files in XLIFF format. Last but not least, I personally think it's good value for money, especially if you buy it as part of a promotion or group purchase!

A new version of memoQ called memoQ 2013 was released at the end of May and includes lots of enhancements and several new features, including an integrated online dictionary search facility that you can configure yourself using as many of your favourite Web resources as you like. (This is in addition to the Eurotermbank plug-in that memoQ comes with.)

Release 2 of memoQ 2013 is now just about to be launched, and this promises to be a great leap forward in terms of user convenience. For one thing, it has a feature called monolingual review that translators will love! It saves you a great deal of time updating translation memories (TM) when a customer or reviewer sends you the final version of a translation you've done. In most CAT tools, updating a TM to include the latest changes is a laborious manual process, but memoQ 2013 R2 has automated the step for Word® and other documents, employing a re-alignment procedure to update the segments stored in your TM.

Fig. 1: When you import the final version, memoQ opens an alignment window. The green lines mark the segments that have been changed.

Another enhancement is the ability to import term bases straight from SDL's terminology tool MultiTerm®. This is useful if a customer sends you a document to translate using specific terms they work with and have stored in that format. More specifically, memoQ 2013 now enables you to import MultiTerm XML or TBX files, extract the terms and include them in a term base of its own, which you select yourself. This gives you faster leverage of the customer's resources.

Fig. 2: To import a MultiTerm XML file (term base), click on "Import terminology" and then select the format.

There are a number of other improvements as well, some of which concern the DOCX filter for importing and exporting Word® documents. Exporting comments made in memoQ along with a translation has now been implemented. (This has been possible in other CAT tools such as Déjà Vu X and X2 for ages, but not in memoQ, and saves you a lot of time inserting comments into your translation manually after exporting it.)

But to find out more about it, why not attend Kilgray's introductory webinar on the new release? It's going to be held from 5-6 pm CET (4-5 pm GMT) on Monday 28 October. It's free – all you have to do is register in advance. Click here to go to the registration page.

Have fun trying out the program! (You'll be able to download it shortly and can try it out for free for 45 days.)

Best,

Carl

memoQ logo: courtesy of Kilgray Translation Technologies; screen shots: my own.

P.S. (written on 13 Nov. 2013) A free recording of the webinar is now available on the internet – click here to access it.