Equipment and Helpful Tools

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER 4 Equipment and Helpful Tools

CHAPTER 4 - Equipment and Helpful Tools

4.1 PC or Laptop with ADSL (Broadband Internet Connection), E-mail and Fax Facilities

It goes without saying that translators in the 21^st century require up-to-date PCs and/or laptops, which are capable of accessing a high speed ADSL (broadband) Internet connection via a compatible modem or wireless connection. Thus, a personal computer or a laptop computer with wireless capability is connected to the Internet 24 hours a day, while your phone/fax line remains open for inbound and outbound telephone and fax calls.

Most PCs and laptops feature built-in fax facilities, so that owning a separate fax machine is optional. The e-mail programs which translators use vary. Outlook Express is an e-mail client that comes with most modern PCs that use Microsoft operating systems. It allows for the sending and receiving of e-mail messages with file attachments. The program should be monitored by an up-to-date virus checker, in order to protect your computer hard drive from unwanted and often malicious viruses. Be aware that virus protection alone is not always enough nowadays and you will also need protection against spyware and malware, which are equally capable of doing harm to the disk operating system on your PC and which are capable of de-activating your firewall and anti-virus protection programs. In order to protect yourself against these eventualities and to allow you to restore our system to a healthy state, you require either a computer with a “system restore” facility, (generally found under ‘help and support’), called up from the menu by first mouse-clicking the start button on your computer or special software program, such as Symantec’s latest Norton Internet Security Software. A number of other well-known security and system repair software programs available on the market also provide system repair or ‘go back’ facilities, which will enable you to restore your computer to a point in time, at which it was still healthy and without bugs.

There is nothing more frustrating for translators, who work to a tight deadline, than having to spend hours trying to remove a virus or malware intruder, which immobilises part of the computer’s operating system. Although readers may already be familiar with some of the above facts, they cannot be emphasised enough for translators, who are contemplating setting-up a small translation business at home.

4.2 Laser Printer

Modern Laser printers operate at high speed, printing 16 or more pages per minute. They come as colour or monochromatic printers and can operate in the ink safe mode, thus reducing toner usage. All printers can be connected to your computer.

Laser printers deliver clean print copies for your clients’ needs and are superior to inkjet printers. When upgrading from your inkjet to a laser printer, do not forget to first install the printer driver on your home computer. Printer drivers for both new or older inkjet and laser printers that you may wish to connect to your computer and for which you can no longer find the installation disk (or where the latter can no longer be read by your new computer’s operating system), can be downloaded from the manufacturer’s website, directly to your PC. You will need to install the downloaded ‘.exe’ file on your hard drive, in order to allow your new (or old) printer to read the print commands, issued to it by your PC. Having performed all the necessary operations, you are now ready to print out on line glossaries, jobs e-mailed to your for translation and of course translated texts for proofreading, hard-copy-faxing, mailing out to clients or filing.

4.3 Flatbed Scanner

A flatbed scanner connected to your PC is another handy tool to have available. It works on its own, in the same manner as a photocopier, once a given document is placed face down on the glass. The prompts appearing on the computer screen are activated by a simple mouse click. All scanners come with the appropriate software, which, like printer software needs to be installed on the hard drive of your PC first.

Translators can scan translation pages in any readable print format for storage on the hard drive or CD-ROM. If you need to refer to the file, it is preferable to first convert it to the Microsoft Word ‘.doc’ format. The advantage of this is that once a backup copy is retained, the document can be imported into a computer-aided translation tool, or into your word processor.

Now, translating line by line beneath or alongside the source language text is possible. This can be achieved by simply having the source language text, either on a parallel screen, as is the case with some computer-aided translation tools, or right above the translated text. This allows for either overtyping of the source language original text, or if the latter is left on screen, for an instant check for omissions, stylistic anomalies, semantic choice and idiom, grammatical and formatting errors and more. In regard to scanned documents, the author has found that very old birth certificates, hand-written in faded ink, can be digitally enhanced (enlarged and made darker) with the aid of your PC’s photo or text editing program. You will find by proceeding

CHAPTER FOUR

in this manner, documents become easier to read. Photo copiers can also perform similar or identical tasks.

If you need to transfer coats of arms, emblems, letter heads or photographs that have not been supplied to you in digital format, e.g. as e-mail attachment or other, then this too will be possible by means of a high quality scanner. You may need to experiment, until you are fully adept with all the functions, which your scanner and its associated software program can perform.

4.4 Photocopier

A photocopier represents another handy tool for translators. If your fax machine does not double up as a photocopier, and if you require a large number of copies of a given document, then a photocopier is indispensable. Black and white copiers can be purchased fairly cheaply second hand, as technology advances and most companies acquire colour copiers. You may ask, why a photocopier?” The answer is simple. Not all documents, which a translator receives for translation, come as e-mail attachments. Some translation work is still derived from documents arriving by e-mail, and it is therefore important to first make copies of the documents, which are to be translated. This will allow translators to check back, in case of alleged translation errors, or if the translations you mail back to a client, are lost in the post. It is therefore advisable to use registered mail, where original documents are involved.

Photocopiers can also enlarge, lighten or darken documents, to make them more readable. This is a frequent requirement, when you are sent handwritten documents, such as birth certificates, issued a long time ago. Frequently barely readable documents are sent to translators by agencies and clients. After photocopying and enhancing such a document’s readability, it will be possible to translate it.

4.5 Fax Machine

Translators require modern communication tools, which include a reliable fax machine or computer-based fax facility. This allows for the transmission of documents from a client or agency to the translator and vice versa. The fax machine is generally used, where the transmission of documents is required, which are not available in an electronic format (e.g. old birth and marriage certificates, school and university diplomas, transcripts and the like). Where a translation, which resides on your computer’s hard drive, has to be faxed back to a client, you can use your computer’s built-in fax device. This saves you having to first print out a hard copy of the translated text for the purpose of feeding it through your fax machine.

4.6 Fixed Telephone Line and/or Mobile Phone

Translators generally possess both a fixed line telephone and a mobile telephone. The fixed line is generally required in order to connect a broadband modem.

Frequently, translators whilst working on a translation at home, have to consult with their client or the agency that sent them the job. In these cases a portable home phone, which can be taken into any room or a mobile phone will come in very handy. Translators can simply sit in front of their computer screen, whilst using the phone to clarify any translation issue or cross-cultural transfer problem with a client or translation agency

Translators who need to be mobile, work with laptops that have a wireless Internet connection. This enables them to take their laptop computer with them wherever they go and allows them to work on the spot e.g. in a library, where many bilingual and specialised dictionaries and other reference books are on hand, which translators may not have in their personal home library.

Nowadays most airlines offer laptop and Internet connections on board their aircraft. You may therefore never have to miss out on a translation job because you are not at home or are travelling by air. Just take your laptop and smart phone.

Mobile phone technology already allows for the sending and receiving of e-mails, SMS text messages and sound files.

Some mobile phones also feature web browsers, word processors, etc. Soon, even the laptop may be superfluous to the modern translator on the move. Given these advances in technology, part-time translators will be able to undertake their communications and translation work on a train or bus, whilst commuting to their full-time job.

Do I hear you say that the same modern communication tools can already handle the machine translation of simple sentences? This is in fact quite true, but as you will read in the chapter on ‘machine translation’, human translators will still be needed for some time.

4.7 Magnifying Glass or Plastic Magnifying Sheets

Both the above mentioned devices are indispensable for translators. Frequently, clients will submit documents, which are faded or which, after having been faxed, are barely readable with the naked eye. Some magnification is therefore required.

As already said, magnification by means of a scanning device or image editor is, of course, possible on the computer and may render a document legible. However, if you are not near a scanner or photocopier to enhance and enlarge your translation text, then simply go and purchase a strong magnifying glass with a built-in light and start deciphering those hard to read documents. A client of mine was once overheard saying: “why should I supply translators with a legible document, when it’s their job to decipher the document and produce a meaningful translation. That’s what I am paying them for.”

Even in our age of enlightenment such a way of thinking among the public still prevails in relation to translators. When perusing unreadable scripts translators you should be able to perceive the many problems the well-known French Egyptologist Champollion encountered while trying to decipher ancient the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

4.8 Old Fashioned Golf Ball Typewriter for Completion of Non-electronic Forms

If your translation practice predates the computer age, you will probably still have a typewriter hidden away in a back room somewhere. Don’t throw it out yet. Whilst a museum may pay you some money for it one day, it will still come in handy when you need to type a translation on a form or template. Sometimes it is possible to scan the forms. You may find however, that the formats of some forms are generally such, that scanning them into the computer for easier completion creates problems. When this occurs, you will be able to put your old-fashioned typewriter to good use. Only highly skilled computer buffs are able to type in the questionnaire answers on a blank page of Microsoft Word in perfect alignment with the form to be completed, which they then run through their laser printer. Try it, if you are not frustrated enough yet with fighting your computer on a daily basis!

4.9 CAT, TM, Localisation, Word Count and Code-converter Software Tools

Translators, who regularly undertake routine translations of birth, marriage, and death certificates, school reports and other documents, will find that the task is repetitive and the format is generally the same in the source language. Translators, who do not own a computer-aided translation (CAT) tool, can prepare their own templates in Microsoft Word and store them on their computers. When another translation of the same type arrives at a translator’s home office, the translator will immediately recognise the format and remember that a template has already been stored on the computer.

It is therefore quite a simple matter to call up the relevant template (or locate it with the assistance of ‘Google desktop search’) and insert the translated details in the relevant spaces. The completed document is now ready for printout and mailing, or e-mailing to the client.

A useful tool to assist translators in repetitive tasks is the so-called ‘TM’ or translation memory, which may be part of CAT software that you already own, or which can be purchased by freelance translators. It has the great capacity to instantly identify words or text segments that have been previously translated. This can save translators repetitive work and will help speed up translations considerably. As not all home-based, self-employed translators are flush with money, there is the already mentioned cheaper and simpler way of retrieving this information by means of Google and Microsoft freely downloadable desktop search programs, which allow you to simply type in key words or a phrase. The document/s in which the words or the phrase appear will be found by the desktop search engine and the relevant reference displayed on your web browser. You can then simply double click on the relevant file, which will open either under Word or Adobe Acrobat and allow you to apply the standard ‘cut and paste’ routine. Often, only a few words have to be altered to adapt the text to the required new translation.

If you do not have the fairly costly Adobe Acrobat program installed on your computer, you can download a free copy of Acrobat Reader. This will open all ‘pdf’ documents and render them readable. You can save them to your hard disk and then use a PDF converter (freely downloadable software), in order to turn a pdf formatted document into a Microsoft word ‘doc’

file document for the purpose of translating and printing it.

Translators, who work on a full-time basis and who have the capacity to earn lots of money, will generally invest in more sophisticated translation tools, such as CAT tools. Such tools under their various names have become very popular with translators and are generally mandatory when contracting work on the web for large international companies which become

your clients. It is common in Europe and the USA that some web-based translation agencies with whom you are contracting translation work, insist on the use of a specific CAT tool, installed on your computer.

The most commonly used of these tools are Wordfast (free of charge), Workbench, TRADOS/SDLX, Déja Vu, RC WinTrans, Smartlink, Cats Cradle, Euroscript, UniLex, OmegaT, MetaTexis, Passolo, Multicorpora, TransSuite 2000, J-CAT, IBM-CAT tool, Across and others.

Wordfast is quite popular and links to machine translation packages. It works on both PC and Mac computers and integrates with MS-Word. It allows for a direct translation from such Microsoft programs such as MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access It is also set up so that it can link up with external and computer-based dictionaries and glossaries and it comes with a large end–user Manual.

Like most CAT tools, it requires some time to master and use as they are not for the faint-hearted, the impatient, or anyone, who become easily frustrated with steep learning curves. However, CAT tools are very useful tools for the truly professional translator. Those translators, who have decided to download and purchase one of the mentioned CAT tools, will find a number of discussion forums available on the web. There, you can post any translation-related questions and will receive a number of very quick and helpful replies from translators around the world. Similar help is available on these forums, if you have a technical question. As the URL frequently changes, it will be best for you to use your favourite search engine to locate the discussion group, which is best suited to your own needs. CAT editor programs allow you to work with both source and target language (translation) texts at the same time, thus making the transfer across languages a relatively simple process by means of alignment. Most CAT tools have their own translation memory (TM) and allow access to web-based or computer–based dictionaries and terminology banks, including your personal terminology files.

Should you be called upon to work with computer animation, it is essential that you first learn about the configuration or interface between the various formats and the CAT tool you are using. Déjà Vu can handle most formats including Word, RTF, HTML, plain text and will cope with Page Maker, Frame Maker, PowerPoint, Quark Express, and Olifant. Most programs are constantly updated, such as the popular TRADOS/SDXL. Among the currently available CAT tools, ECCO by PrimaTrans Software is one tool which some translators praise.

Please note that new programs are constantly being developed and you will need to surf the web and ensure that you always have the very latest program versions installed on your computer. If you cannot afford to update your software regularly, you may be left behind when competing against web-based translators worldwide.

Surf the Internet to find out all about CAT tools and their many functions. Then make up your own mind about which tool, if any, best suits your needs, your computer skills and above all your financial means. The cost of CAT tools varies from hundreds of Australian dollars up to two thousand dollars.

Download trial versions, if available, and explore the many features of the highly popular TRADOS Translators Workbench, Wordfast, TagEditro, MultiTerm, WinAlign, S-Tagger and others. Have a look at MetaTexis, which is able to read and write TRADOS and Wordfast encoded documents and could be cheaper. Similis too is a software programme that appears to be somewhat more user-friendly for translators, who are not absolute computer wizards. It is used by some educational institutions around the world.

Do not confuse CAT tools with MT, which will be discussed later.

If you are only dealing with general run of the mill translations, you may not need a highly sophisticated, costly and difficult to use CAT tool. However, if you are both a translator and highly computer literate, you can carve out a niche market for yourself, by tackling more challenging translation projects that entail graphic interface and localisation work. If you translate a lot of web page content, have a look at and download ‘CatsCradle’, which functions as a web-page editor that will assist you

In document Self Employed Translators Handbook (Page 31-36)