Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Technology


Corinne McKay

Post updates: Mac backups, accented characters in OpenOffice.org

Here are two recent comments that you might be interested in. First, Jean-Christophe Helary offers some advice on backing up your Mac, with a link to a post on his blog:

On Mac 0SX (10.5), the bundled Time Machine utility does hourly incremental backups off all the specified areas on your machine to an external disk.

Not only is finding “old” files trivial (you just search for it as you’d search for a normal file), but restoring your machine’s contents is very easy too.

My current setting is:
1) daily incremental backup of my whole home space to an external disk with the rsync utility (free software)
2) daily incremental backup of the whole system Applications folder to an external disk with the same utility
3) hourly incremental backup of my whole home space (without the local Applications folder, the Download folder etc) to an external disk with the bundled Time Machine utility

I wrote a piece on how to make a smart use of Time Machine and other backup utilities in the context of Spotlight (the indexing and search bundled utility):

http://mac4translators.blogspot.com/search/label/Time%20Machine

and then Bill Hibbert, whose macro was featured in the post Inserting accented characters in OpenOffice.org wrote in with an update on that too:

Hi
I’ve been pointed here by someone who found my macro via your blog and was kind enough to write and say thank you for it.
I’m not a professional translator, although have done a lot of French->English translation, and often work in the two languages together (I’m English living mostly in France). I developed the macro because my memory isn’t good enough to remember all the ALT,0 combinations needed to input even a modest set of special characters, and picking them off the special character menu is far too clumsy for frequent use.
The problem is a long-standing one in OO – these two bug reports, which were opened in 2002, give an idea of the history:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=6847

http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4579
The latter in particular should amuse – I post as redi2go there, and you can see how irritated I was getting around the middle of last year.
Having had the insight that there was a simple solution that nobody had spotted in five years of searching and done the work to develop and test it, I was then infuriated by the sheer impossibility of making it into an extension and putting it into a generally available library. My post on the 4579 bug of May 8th gives a pretty accurate view of my feelings on the matter!
I like my solution because it doesn’t need the mouse, it’s quick and intuitive to use, it has no practical limits on the number of special characters made available, and it’s easy to customise to key combinations that make sense to you.
Anyway, thought I’d just check in and say hello, and how pleased I am that this little piece of software is useful to somebody – I really thought it had sunk without trace!


Corinne McKay

Methods for backing up your computer data

Years ago, I was visiting friends of friends in Denmark and the inhabitants of the house happened to be very serious geeks. On the dining room wall, they had a sort of shadow box frame, and in it was a computer disk (this was back in the day of five-inch floppies) spray painted gold, with the caption “BACKUP COPY.” As a teenager I remember being horrified by their choice of home decor, but over the years I’ve actually thought of making my own similar display for my office. If you’re not backing up at least once a day, you’re playing Russian roulette with your business.

As a freelance translator, a functioning computer is absolutely critical to your business. Some day, your computer will fail or you will accidentally erase some critical files or your office will flood or your computer will get stolen, or maybe more than one of these things will happen. The point is that at some point, a bad thing will happen to your computer and you will need to restore some data.

At the micro level, I think it’s good to periodically e-mail yourself the current version of a project in progress so that you don’t lose the time that you’ve put into it. At a minimum, I do this at the end of every day, by sending those files to my Gmail account. That way, if I have an issue before the project is done, I simply go to the Gmail account and download the file I need onto another computer, and no time is lost. This point was driven home to me when my primary computer’s video card failed. It wasn’t a catastrophic failure, but the computer was unusable until I got a new video card. This is one reason why I think that an entire backup computer (laptop or desktop) is a good idea. If you have a backup computer, you won’t be stuck waiting for a new primary computer to arrive if your primary computer dies.

At the macro level, you need a way to back up large numbers of files or even your entire computer system, so you have to look at larger solutions. Some possibilities are:

External media: This could involve backing up your files onto a flash drive, CD/DVD or external hard drive. A few considerations: flash drives are hard to label and easy to lose, but as I understand it they are not damaged by contact with magnets or magnetic fields, which is a plus. CDs and DVDs can hold a lot of data (maybe up to 8.5 gig for a DVD) but their lifetime can vary by the burning method and the brand of disk. External hard drives are easy to use and the price for them has fallen, but my understanding is that they can also be susceptible to malware attacks if your primary hard drive is affected.

You can back up to external media either manually (copying over the files that you want to back up) or by using software that runs the backups for you automatically, such as Acronis TrueImage or Norton Ghost. If you use backup software, just make sure that you know how to restore your data from the backed up version, since the software may not store the data in a format that you are used to using.

External storage media have a few main pros and cons. On the plus side, you’re in control of the backups, and your data is in your hands. You don’t need to worry about confidentiality of your data or about the reliability of a third party business. On the con side, external media can get lost, stolen or mislabeled, and the drives and disks are also subject to the same risks as your primary computer in the event of a fire or flood. If you use external storage media and keep them in the same physical location as your primary computer, make sure that you have some sort of off-site backup. For example you might scan your tax records, burn them onto a DVD and keep them at a (trusted!) friend’s house.

Online methods: As server space has gotten cheaper, various businesses have sprung up, offering to store your files online for you at an attractive price. Two services that seem to get good reviews are Mozy (operated by EMC) and Carbonite. Mozy offers “unlimited backup for your home computer” for $4.95 per month, and Mozy Pro is priced per month (starting at $3.95 plus 50 cents per gig) but has more features and can be automated. Carbonite costs $49.95 per year for unlimited space and promises that it is “completely automatic.”

If you use an online storage method, you have the advantage of being able to access your data from anywhere, and an obvious advantage is that online methods aren’t subject to risks like loss, theft, fire or flood. Some issues with them are confidentiality and control. For example, it seems to me that there is some risk that a) the backup company’s servers could be hacked or stolen and your confidential data could be lost and b) there might be some issues with complying with client confidentiality agreements if you use an online storage service, for example if the client asks you to “permanently delete” certain files from your computer.

Yet another option (and the one that I use for on-site backups) is a RAID disk setup in your primary computer. RAID is not exactly a backup method but more of a redundancy method (it stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) where your computer data is written to both disks simultaneously. RAID can be used with various numbers of disks; I have two hard drives in my primary computer’s box. In this way, one of the disks can operate without the other one, and since they contain the same data, you’re OK with just one of the disks. The advantage is that this method is totally automatic and disks are cheap, plus with both of the disks inside the computer case there’s nothing to lose; the disadvantage is that both of the disks are still in the same machine, so if that pipe bursts above your desk, you’re still out of luck.

The most important aspect of backups is doing them. For most home-based translators, it’s possible to get away with a basic method of backups as long as you run the backup every day without fail.


Corinne McKay

Inserting accented characters in OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is a fantastic office suite for most translators. It’s free, it’s stable, it’s localized into many languages that the proprietary companies will never touch …there’s a lot to love. For a long time, the only feature of OO.o that I’ve found problematic (other than the fact that its macros are not compatible with Microsoft Office macros, and that’s not really OpenOffice’s fault) is the difficulty of inserting special characters such as accented letters. By default, OpenOffice requires you to go to Insert>Special Character and then insert the character of your choice if you want to type something that’s not on the keyboard.

To give Microsoft Office credit where credit is due, it has very simple keyboard shortcuts for inserting an accented letter. Even if you don’t translate into a language that makes copious use of accented letters, the keyboard shortcuts are still useful. For example although I translate exclusively into English I e-mail clients in French a good deal of the time, and although I’ve created an OpenOffice keyboard shortcut to pop up the Insert>Special Character dialog box, it still takes a lot of time and keystrokes to insert those letters when I’m typing in French.

There are a couple of workarounds for this issue. You can install a US International Keyboard layout and use it as needed. If you’re lazy, (I’m ashamed to admit how often I do this) you can save some time by copying the most commonly used accented letter (in French this would be é) and pasting it when you need it. Or (drum roll) you could check out this web page by Bill Hibbert, which includes an OpenOffice macro that will enable you to assign shortcuts to all sorts of special characters that use marks such as acute accent, circumflex accent, tilde, umlaut, inverted question mark, etc. Once you install this macro, you would for example type e’ and then a keyboard shortcut you assign, and the é would appear.

From reading this extremely helpful web page I am guessing that Bill Hibbert is not a translator? Why? Because this page is in a section of his website entitled “Boring Tech Stuff,” and I’m guessing that most translators who use OpenOffice will find Bill’s page nothing short of fascinating… Thanks, Bill!


Corinne McKay

Google Translation Center

Thanks to reader Dierk Seeburg for sending the link to an article from the Washington Post about Google’s new Google Translation Center service (not yet fully launched, login seems not to work using a regular Google account). The Post article has a link to a yet more interesting article on Google Blogoscoped where one can even view some screen shots of the Translation Center.

At least to the untrained eye, this looks like an interesting combination of Google’s existing language tools, an online translator workbench including the source and target text and a column for “Previous Translations,” and on-demand access to human translators (this part looks similar to SDL’s Click2Translate service).

I think that the most interesting part of the article on Google Blogoscoped is the one in which co-editor Tony Ruscoe muses about the implications of Google’s reported plan to “match current translations with previous ones.” He points out that “This sounds like what the industry calls a Translation Memory” and brings up the question of ownership of the TMs created by the Translation Center.

At the end of the post, Philipp Lenssen says that Google has now “removed many of the pages and files in question,” but this looks like a translation website worth keeping an eye on.


Corinne McKay

News from the ATA TCD Conference

The American Translators Association Translation Company Division held its 9th annual conference in Denver this past weekend. This was a high-quality conference, even for those of us who are technically freelancers and not translation companies; the presentations were very well done and it was a good chance to get an agency’s-eye view of the industry.
I attended sessions on machine translation, international payments, creating a motivating workplace, online communication tools, workflow management software, organizational constraints, and the current state of the TenT (translation environment tool) market.

I came away from this conference with a few (admittedly unscientific) observations:

  • Agencies are frustrated with the current state of the translation software market and are ready (and I mean ready) for some alternatives to the major players. During Jost Zetzsche’s presentation “The Technological Vice Grip: Is it No Way or the Giant’s Way,” audience hostility toward the market leader translation software companies was a major topic. A few agency owners in the audience had invested heavily in Idiom WorldServer just months before Idiom was acquired by SDL, and one even commented that agencies “…are concerned that some of the independent companies may not be viable, but that if they become more viable, they’ll be bought up.” In his presentation, Jost stressed that open source and open standards are the most reliable form of protection against investing in software that either becomes orphaned or is acquired by a competitor. For example at present, none of the market leader TenT companies has signed on to the XLIFF standard that allows the exchange of bilingual files between tools.It seems that agency owners are in a bind when it comes to translation software. The biggest agencies either develop their own tools in-house or purchase a software company and the smallest agencies don’t use translation software at the enterprise level at all, which leaves the medium-sized agencies out in the cold, feeling that they have to choose between having their technological trajectory dictated by a large software company or gambling on a smaller independent company that may or may not still be independent/in business next year. It will be interesting to see if any of these medium-sized agencies invest in their own open source or open standards tools, coming up with funding either individually or as a group.
  • The market is going better for freelancers than for agencies. Again, this is just my gut feeling, but nearly every freelancer I talk to says “I’ve never been busier…I keep raising my rates and I still have more work than I want.” In contrast, I got the feeling that many of the agency owners at the conference are concerned not so much about work volume but about profits, and that agencies maybe cannot make pricing decisions as impulsively as a freelancer can. In addition, I think that many U.S.-based agencies that have traditionally depended on translators in other countries are being hit hard by the falling dollar. Here again, many U.S.-based freelancers are benefiting from the exchange rate situation by seeking new clients abroad, which is a more difficult proposition for agencies.
  • Agencies seem to be taking a new look at the possibility of employing in-house translators. I talked to several agency owners who feel that in language combinations where the agency has large volumes of work, in-house translators can improve customer satisfaction, translation quality and the agency’s bottom line. Some reasons for this? In-house translators can turn around small rush projects very quickly; in-house translators save project management time because they’re right there in the agency’s office; in-house translators allow agencies to respond more quickly to requests for pricing and turnaround time; a preferred client can be given access to their preferred translator again and again, and because in-house translators are on salary, the agency can more easily forecast its costs. Clearly there are downsides too: agencies are under ongoing obligations to in-house translators in a way that they aren’t to freelancers, and unless the in-house translators are highly experienced in a variety of fields (which might price them out of an agency’s salary range), they might not cover all of the specializations that an agency needs. This is another interesting phenomenon that is worth following throughout the second half of the year!