Technology

In the “small but mighty developments” department, the FR<>EN translator’s friend, the Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique now offers a search box for your browser toolbar. It works in Firefox 2.0 or IE 7.0, and you have to select whether you want to add the FR>EN or the EN>FR box. And while you’re on the site, you can spend almost an endless amount of time reading the GDT’s specialized glossaries: scrapbooking, hockey, Carnaval, blogging, and more!

If you run OpenOffice.org and/or Linux and are getting impatient while waiting for the cross-platform standalone version of Wordfast, you might want to take a look at Anaphraseus, previously called Open Wordfast.

Anaphraseus is a translation tool that works from within OpenOffice.org and uses a segmentation model that seems similar to the one used by Wordfast and Trados. It’s still technically a beta version, and I know at least one translator who reported that she installed it according to the instructions and it essentially didn’t work. However, I downloaded and installed the most recent release yesterday and was pleasantly surprised by the functionality. Anaphraseus definitely isn’t as feature-packed as the commercial TenTs or OmegaT, but it has some definite appeal. One of the only times that I hit a roadblock working in OmegaT (my current preferred TenT) is when a client wants to either send or receive files in Trados uncleaned/bilingual format. Since OmegaT doesn’t use the equivalent of cleaned and uncleaned files, it can be a problem to accommodate that request. However, Anaphraseus seems to do quite a good job of producing a Trados-style bilingual file.

Given that Anaphraseus is still new on the scene and doesn’t have many of the support features (i.e. a very active discussion group) that other open source TenTs have, I’m not sure I would use it for a large or critical project, but I think it’s a nice addition to an OpenOffice.org-using translator’s quiver of tools.

Unscientific evidence suggests that more and more translators are using BlackBerries, Treos and other types of wireless e-mail devices. Whereas these devices used to be (say until a few years ago) nearly absent from translation-related events, half of the attendees at a recent Colorado Translators Association workshop said that they use a BlackBerry or similar device.

I’ll admit that I am someone who enjoys excluding technology and communications devices from certain areas of my life. I don’t answer my business phone line when I’m not working, I have no problem going away for the weekend to a place that doesn’t have cell reception, etc. and my sense is that many translators feel similarly. A colleague recently told me that she “only turns her cell phone on by appointment” and I generally don’t think of translators as people who are obsessed with being reachable.

At the same time, I’ll admit that I do a fair bit of “going home to quickly check e-mail.” Although I sometimes take a weekday off to enjoy some recreation and then make up the work time at night, I’m reluctant to be out of the office for more than about three hours at a time, for fear that I’ll miss an important work-related communication. So, I frequently pop back into the office just to check e-mail, then head out again if nothing demands immediate attention. In one sense I see how a BlackBerry or similar device could avoid this situation, since I could simply respond to the important e-mail while outside the office. In another sense, I’m terrified of becoming one of those people who feels lost and insecure without connectivity, and I wonder if it’s really possible to handle a translator’s work-related e-mail, i.e. “could you take a look at this 125 page file and tell me how long it would take to translate it and how much it would cost?” on a tiny screen. Any thoughts?

This is one of those technology questions that a) is critical and b) has no hard-and-fast answer. In earlier times, processor speed doubled approximately every 18 months, but this is not universally true anymore. So, should you keep the old computer until you either max out the hard drive or it starts making odd noises, or should you automatically upgrade every X number of years? The answer depends on a few factors: How intensively do you use your computer? Do you have a backup computer and excellent backup system in case your current computer fails catastrophically? Do you do processor-intensive computing such as using a speech recognition program to dictate into your translation memory program? All of these factors are important in your decision on when to get a new computer.

Regardless of how often you purchase a new computer, basic digital and physical hygiene can go a long way toward prolonging your machine’s life. Especially if you have pets, a thorough cleaning of the inside of your computer’s case (make sure to unplug it from all power sources first) can be a worthwhile (if horrifying!) step, as can deleting large/old files that you no longer need. Movies and music are big culprits on most of our computers, so it’s a good idea to go through and purge the ones that you don’t want.

If you are one of those translators who likes to get the longest possible life out of your computer, make sure that you have a backup computer (i.e. a laptop or a separate desktop that is in working order) in case your computer either literally or figuratively goes up in smoke. In addition, a reliable computer backup system is critical regardless of how old your primary computer is.

When you decide that it’s time to replace your computer, it’s worth considering the option of assembling your own computer from parts. This option allows you to put your money into the features that are important to you; for example you might want a lot of processor speed but just adequate audio and video capabilities, or the other way around. For some advice on purchasing and assembling a good, affordable computer, an excellent resource is the website of computer security expert Daniel J. Bernstein. His page includes exact hardware specs so that you don’t have to figure out, for example, exactly what processor you want (plus you get to visit the domain cr.yp.to ; how cool is that?). My current primary computer is the 2004 version of Bernstein’s basic workstation and I’ve been quite happy with it.

Bill Hibbert just sent an additional update about his macro for inserting accented characters in OpenOffice.org. Here it is!

I’ve made a small change to the macro and its documentation that I never bothered with before because I didn’t think anyone was interested.

There has been a known problem since the beginning with autocorrect of apostrophes. If this is switched on (in AutoCorrect>Custom Quotes, and also I think in AutoCorrect>Options>Replace standard quotes with custom quotes) then the autocorrect system gets to the apostrophe first, changes it, and so the macro can no longer find it in the conversion table eg to make an e acute. So it’s important that Custom Quotes should be switched off.

However, this removes easy access to opening and closing quotation marks, a real blow to the typographically fastidious amongst us, so I’ve added the four open/close single/double quotes to the beginning of the table, giving explicit control over the way apostrophes and quotation marks are used (which is really much better anyway, since OO isn’t as clever as it thinks it is). The new entries are:

‘ = single opening quote
‘/ = single closing quote
” = double opening quotes
“/ = double closing quotes

Of course for languages which use other characters (eg « and ») for quotations, different substitutions will apply (in this case the quotes are already in the table so my additions are redundant but harmless) and people will need to decide for themselves what changes, if any, they need to make.

I hope all this makes sense. It might be worth adding another post to your blog at some time pointing out this addition to people who’ve already downloaded it. They will probably find it easiest just to download the new macro, copy the first four entries in the table, then, editing their own table, paste them in at the beginning. This will keep intact any customisations they have made themselves. If they haven’t made any it’s probably easiest just to replace the whole macro.