Translator's Tools

Two utilities

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:02:00 +0000

Dear readers, I am back to my blog after a long hiatus. I was away for about two months in India, worked on a shipbuilding project while continuing with my usual translation work, and was quite busy these past months. I submitted my last huge translation job just this week, and have decided to take time off from work and devote it stuff that I like: blogging, gardening, and swimming.

I received calls from several readers urging me to continue posting to the blog as they found the posts quite useful. Thanks for the feedback; I have also noted that the number of subscribers has remained almost constant at about 200 in these past six months in spite of my inactivity. Well, I’m back with new ideas, new tools to help you translate faster and quicker! I’m planning to write on translation memory tools in the near future, so keep checking this space!

1. Tool to find files in a flash

With the number of files in any PC exceeding 10,000 easily, you sometimes will have problems wondering where you have put that file. You do vaguely remember the name, but not where it resides in the hard disk -- and you need it quickly. Fear not; there’s a small, wonderful little utility that will find it for you in a flash. I am utterly impressed at what it can do given its small size. Download Everything, with a size of only 334 kB and install it.

I suggest that the first time you use this application, insert the name of file that you already know exists (such as normal.dot, if you are using Office applications). It goes through your entire hard drive and indexes the files while searching for one file. The next time you enter a few characters of the file name in the search window, the files appear in a flash! The speed at which file names are retrieved is fairly surprising. Check it out. I wanted Clapton songs residing at various locations on my hard disk and they came up in a flash!

2. Defragging your hard disk

I try to keep my files defragged periodically, but it is difficult to do a certain set of tasks using a scheduler. Instead of using the built-in Windows Defrag utility, I decided to try out Smart Defrag, which works fine with a scheduler. It works continuously, automatically and quietly in the background, and is fairly easy to use.

I have scheduled it to defrag my C and D drives once in two weeks. Combined with the automatic defrag feature, this should be adequate to keep the hard drives defragmented at all times.

Do try out these two tools, and let me know you found them.

Until the next post, have a great day!

Technorati Tags: Find files quickly,defragment hard drive

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Quickly launch dictionary sites with Firefox add-on

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:24:00 +0000

This is a very useful add-on for translators using Firefox. Called Site Launcher, it takes you directly to the search engine or dictionary of your choice through a hot-key combination, or you are presented with a list of single letters with corresponding icons and site names that you can refer to and then hits the relevant letter to go to the site. The image below should make this clear to you.

This is the settings menu of the Site Launcher. See the window on the right. You could set the Honyaku archive search site under “h” instead of Gmail shown here, or the Eijiro search site as “e” instead of eBay. I’m quite sure that there wouldn’t be more than 10-15 sites that you frequently visit. Once you set these engines or dictionaries, you can directly go to the site with a single hot key combination – for instance, in my case, Ctrl+Shift+ h pulls up the Honyaku archive search site, and Ctrl+Shift+ w brings up the Wikipedia search (see image below).

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Technorati Tags: launch,dictionary sites,Firefox add-on,site launcher

Using Office 2007 files in Office 2003

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:24:00 +0000

I am one of those who reluctantly switches to the latest MS versions, be it Windows of Office. I still use Office 2003 applications, and sometimes receive Word 2007 files from clients and friends. No big deal - I have downloaded the MS Office compatibility pack for Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 file formats. When I double-click on an Word 2007 file attached to an e-mail message, Word 2003 converts it and opens it. I can open, edit and save such files in the Word 2003 file format. I presume you can do the same with Excel and PowerPoint 2007 file formats, although I have not yet tried these. Note however, that the download size is 27.5 MB for the converter, and as stated on the MS web site, it would take you 1 hour and eight minutes to download it over a 56-Kb connection! Thank God for my broadband connection.

Note also that users of the Microsoft Office XP and 2003 programs Word, Excel, or PowerPoint need to install all High-Priority updates from Microsoft Update before downloading the Compatibility Pack. Does that mean that the converter won't work if you don't download these updates? Maybe so, I don't know. I try to keep my applications updated regularly, so I had no problems in installing the compatibility pack.

Note that users of Microsoft Word 2000 or Microsoft Word 2002 need to see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925451 for information to enable Word 2007 documents to be displayed correctly in these versions of Word, if they wish to read or write documents containing complex scripts.

Have a great day!

Technorati Tags: compatibility pack,Office 2007,Office 2003,converter

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Some Neat Word Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:17:00 +0000

Since many, many years, I have been using MS Word's AutoCorrect feature to insert the degree Celsius symbol — I type "deg" and the spacebar and ˚C is inserted. What if you need only the degree symbol and not the C? How would you find and replace subscripted text in Word? I have documented some of these tips here.

1. Find and replace superscripts and subscripts

A few days ago, a client gave me a translation job that had several tables containing numbers and units already filled in, but the units for volume of water were given as "m3." I had already inserted the superscript in the rest of the text that I had translated, and didn't want to let go these units in the tables with out changing "3" to a superscript 3. Word does not allow this in the Find and Replace window.

Here's what I did. I first copied "m³" to the clipboard (using Ctrl+C). In the Find box, I entered "m3." In the Replace box, I typed "^c" (without the quotation marks). This copies the contents of the clipboard. Next, I clicked on Replace All and all the hundreds of offending "m3"s were replaced by "m³" in one shot!

2. Insert often-used characters using the keyboard

a. Degree symbol

I used to insert the degree symbol "˚" (for angular measurements) by first entering "deg" to insert ˚C (degree Celsius inserted together through AutoCorrect) and then delete C. Just found an easier method. Type Ctrl+@, then hit the spacebar, and Word inserts just the degree symbol (˚).

b. Non-breaking space

Another keyboard shortcut that I use often is the non-breaking space, and I need to use this quite often especially when a number with its unit appears at the end of a sentence and the unit wraps over to the next line. For ex:

"The distance between the aft shaft coupling and the bracket is about 3425 mm. Measure this distance …."

If you wish to preserve "3425 mm" together, type Ctrl+Shift+Space after 3425 and then type mm so that they stay together.

c. Greek letters

I have most of the Greek letters saved in AutoCorrect so that when I type a "phi" or a "beta" it gets automatically substituted by Φ and β.

d. Fractions through keyboard

I also remember three important fractions that I often use, namely ¼ ½ ¾. These can be inserted by typing 00BC, 00BD, 00BE and pressing Alt X after each (I use Word 2003; this may vary in your version of Word). You can find these Unicode character codes by pulling down the Insert Menu in Word and selecting Symbol (see below).

Do you know of better and faster ways to insert special characters and symbols? Feel free to comment.

Until the next post, have a great day!

Technorati Tags: Word tips,symbols,superscript,find and replace

Translating text in AutoCAD® drawings

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 06:57:00 +0000

We, as professional translators, get all kinds of files to translate, such as doc, xls, ppt, txt, which are popular formats, and others such as pdf, dxf and so on.

This is a short review of a software (shareware) called TranslateCAD developed by a professional translator/programmer. It can be used to translate text in AutoCAD drawing files, which are generally *.dxf files.

I downloaded a dxf file in English from a product catalog for water control products on the Web, and straightway put TranslateCAD through its paces. The window it presents when you launch the application is intuitive and easy to understand -- see below.

Navigate to the directory containing the dxf file you wish to translate, and hit extract text. Two text files are created for you - the extracted text from the dxf file that you will use for translating the text (.*trans1.txt ), and another with the same name but with a different suffix and (.trans2.txt) that you retain as backup.

Open the file *trans1.txt in Word or any other application and translate as usual. I used WordFast to translate the text extracted from an English dxf file (760.dxf) into Japanese, cleaned the file to get only the translated Japanese text file (760trans1.txt), selected this file in the window on the right, and clicked on Re-Construct DXF.

The status window showed that the reconstruction process (insertion of translated text into the DXF file) had completed successfully.

See the results below.

AutoCAD dxf source file with English captions

AutoCAD dxf translated file with Japanese strings inserted in place

That's all there is to it. I found the application easy to use, and everything worked right the first time.

You can try out AutoCAD yourself, and since it is developed by a professional translator, you'll find it very easy to use. At $29, I think it will pay for itself after the first job, and I do think that translators who write software generally know what a translator wants and should be encouraged!

Have a great day!

Technorati Tags: application,AutoCAD,dxf,translate

Office Research Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:07:00 +0000

I'm back again to writing blogs after a fruitful, 'down-the-memory-lane' trip to India. In addition to my life as a professional translator, I have taken up an assignment as a naval architect (earlier part of my life) again, and am supporting a major shipbuilder in India as its Japan representative. I will continue, of course, with both jobs, and will continue to write this blog, maybe less frequently than before.

'Nuff said - let me tell you about a find in Office 2003 that I recently stumbled upon.

Try this - if you are translating Japanese text in MS Word (2003 and later, I suppose), select a Japanese term, press Alt and left-click your mouse button. This is what you should get on the right side of the window (I performed this action on "浄水"):

If the selection under the search term is "Encarta" or some other, set it to "Translation." Also, select "Japanese" and "English" in the drop down boxes corresponding to "From" and "To."

The Online Bilingual Dictionary gives decent translation and contextual phrases.

Of course, it sorely lacks hardcore technical terms, but it does have the ability to go online and look up search engines, such as Encarta, Thesaurus and others (see below).

Other references you could select other than Translation include several Financial Sites too.

It would be wonderful I could add my own dictionary into this search facility, but I have been unable to do so. Any Word hackers around?

Have a great day!

Technorati Tags: Office 2003,translation,research tool,thesaurus

Another PDF to Doc Converter

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:27:00 +0000

I came across another converter, and this time its online. You don't need to install any software on your system, and the conversion is almost instantaneous. Yes, Japanese also works. Go to the site, click on Browse, upload the PDF file. I uploaded a 9-page PDF document and the converted file was ready for download in less than two minutes.

The screenshots below show the original PDF on the left and the converted Word document on the right.

Click on the image above to see a magnified view. The layout is preserved quite well, but like many other PDF converters, each line has a frame around it. Not good if you are going to translate the Word document with a CAT tool. You will have to save it as a text file and start removing hard returns. Considering the hassle, I found PDF to Word, a shareware, still unbeatable, since it preserves the layout and gives you soft returns at the end of each line (see screenshot with soft returns after conversion by PDF to Word below).

The online converter here, is useful if you are traveling and wish to make a quick conversion online, and of course, it is free and quick.

Have a great day!

Technorati Tags: PDF to Word converter,online,free,fast

Find and replace utility for Excel

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 02:41:00 +0000

Do you have clients who persist in using Excel as a word processor just because they need to insert some tables in the document? This seems to be the favorite pastime of some of my Japanese clients. I have a feeling that they are given a crash course on using Excel as a word processor when they join a Japanese company!

I was given about 31 Excel files each with two or more sheets to translate. As expected, within each cell, the author had generously inserted hard returns to align all text within a specific column. The moment I looked at it I knew that I would be wasting precious time removing these hard returns and translating the text in a CAT tool. To add to this burden, are changes to specific terms that arrive later from the client. How would you make find and replace phrases throughout 31 files x 3 sheet on the translated document? I scoured the Web, landed on an Excel MVP page and installed a free macro utility called FlexFind (thanks Jan Karel Pieterse, you saved me considerable time, and a fine bowl of steaming noodles and beer is on me if you visit me in Japan).

The macro installs easily as an icon in Excel and also appears as an item under the Edit menu. Here's what it looks like:

I ensure that the Acknowledge and Each Item boxes are ticked so that when I do the find and replace, I read and confirm that the macro does replace the terms I want to replace. This is a good macro to keep and use for Excel.

I do have problems yet in merging text spanning across multiple cells and cleaning up sentences with hard returns in the same cell. If you do know of any solutions, for these do write to me.

Have a great day!

Technorati Tags: Excel,macro,find and replace,multiple sheets

Keeping your system up-to-date

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:21:00 +0000

While translation keep me busy most of the time, and there's always underlying pressure to finish off a day's work, I have forced myself devote half about a day every week to check for updates to Windows programs, updates to applications installed on my system, running the Windows defragger to defragment the hard disk, and performing a data backup. Today, I'd like to share with you my once-a-week maintenance schedule with the main utilities I use.

1. Detect and update vulnerable programs

I use Secunia PSI (free for personal use) that checks my system, scans, detects and helps to update vulnerable programs. It provides links for easy download of patches and updates to keep your applications running smoothly. Here's a screenshot of the results of scan of the system by this application.

Try it. I found it to be very useful as it warns me of vulnerabilities.

2. Update checker

I also use the Update Checker from Filehippo.com that scans my system and produces a list of applications that need to be updated. Yes, this is also free, and shows updates to beta versions of applications too. The screenshot below shows some of the applications that I use for which updates are available today, and the download links.

3. Disk Cleanup

I usually go to Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Cleanup (note that my menus are in Japanese so the above may not be the exact words used, but you should be able to find the Cleanup program) and cleanup my system of unnecessary files, such as temporary Internet files. That does free up several hundreds of megabytes of space and prepares the hard disk for defragmentation, which is the next step here.

4. Disk Defrag

I then go to the same menu as above and select Disk Defrag under System Tools (Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/) to defrag my hard disk. The defrag process does take a bit of time depending on how fragmented your hard disk is, but regular defragging makes the process go quite fast and keeps my hard disk in good order.

5. Disk Backup

Finally, I back up my data using Acronis (to back up the entire disk) and also my own low level data backup method that I wrote about before.

To conclude, however busy you are, minimal maintenance such as described above will keep your system working like a well-oiled machine and save you problems in the long run.

Have a great day!

Technorati Tags: software inspector,update checker,disk cleanup,defrag,maintenance

First look at Felix the CAT

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 03:18:00 +0000

I have been meaning to write about CAT tools and have always been putting it off, because discussion of any CAT tool would required at least four to five pages, and I'm sorely pressed for time! I have used Trados, DVX, Wordfast and I'm now working on an actual job using Felix, developed by Ryan Ginstrom, who has given translators some very useful tools (see description of CountAnything) and macros such as Wide2Narrow and, FindNextJ (see here) . I'll probably run this feature on Felix over several days, but here are my first impressions of Felix used with Word.

Felix works differently compared to Trados and Wordfast, with which I am familiar. However, I tried it on an actual translation job using Word and coasted along fine within a day or two. In this write-up, I'll talk mainly about my impressions of Felix with regard to translating a fairly large Japanese document into English in Word, using translation memories (TM) and glossaries originally used in Wordfast, and converted to Felix native format.

You can use Felix for translating documents in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, HTML files. It has tools for converting TMs to and from TMX, and glossaries to and from Multiterm and Excel. I found this conversion feature easy to use and did not hesitate to try out Felix on an actual job using TM and glossaries from Wordfast.

I found that these basic features of Felix were sound for Japanese as source text:

1) Fast concordance searches

2) Good fuzzy matching

3) Good term recognition ability

4) Convenient conversions of TM and glossaries between TMX and native-Felix formats

5) Ability to load and use multiple glossaries and TMs

Here's what the translation-in-progress screen looks like:

The uppermost window to the left is the Memory window, the one to the right is the glossary window and the one at the left bottom is the Word window in which you overwrite the translation.

The process is fairly simple. You place your cursor before the source segment to be translated and hit ALT+right arrow. Felix immediately selects the segment, displays terms in the segment in your glossary (if available) in the right window (terms can be pasted into the translation by Alt+1, Alt+2), and displays the source text with fuzzy matches (if any) in the upper left window. If a 100% match, you hit Alt+G and the bilingual segments are registered in memory and the next sentence to be translated is displayed. If a fuzzy match, you hit Alt+Down arrow to copy the fuzzy match into the Word window, edit it as you wish and upon completion, hit Alt+S to register it in memory and move to the next sentence. That's the basics for translating segments. Felix performs these basic operations neatly and efficiently.

You can also register new entries in the glossary or several glossaries; the process is a little cumbersome but the developer has promised to make it easier in the next release, including insertion of a default comment for each item. One of the more convenient features of Felix is saving the glossary directly to an Excel file and editing the entries in Excel. The same feature for TMs would set Felix apart and high above the other CAT tools in the market. The present version has some limitation in not being able to save the TM directly in Excel format because of the limit on the number of characters in one cell in Excel. This too is on the list of improvements for the next release.

I have only translated about 80 pages in Word using Felix, but I think it is definitely a keeper. Support is also very good; being a translator, the developer understands the problems of a translator and is very responsive to suggestions.

Although Felix does not have the abundant options (Pandora) of Wordfast and its flexibility especially for power users, I feel it does score over Wordfast in terms of stability especially when handling double-byte languages, and in terms of ease of TM and glossary conversions. Overall, considering ease of use, stability, support, and price, I would rate Felix as equivalent to Wordfast when working with Word documents (will review other formats in the near future, hopefully) . With improvements for quickly registering glossary entries and saving of TM as Excel files anticipated in the next version, it is likely to become my favorite CAT.

Have a great day!

Technorati Tags: Felix,review,TM,translation,double-byte,Word

Two useful online services for the translator

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:11:00 +0000

I came across a very useful online service the other day called Tip of my Tongue that helps you to recollect words that you vaguely remember but just can't blurt out. I tried it out immediately on a word that I never seem to get right the first time - a word that means "pulverization" starting with "com" and ending with "tion." I entered the relevant information and here is the result:

Yes, I am always unsure of whether the 'u' or the 'i' comes first in "comminution." This site will be on the top of my list of bookmarks.

The other one reads out your text and the computer-generated voices are not too bad. The site at Read the Words even produces an mp3 recording of the text you paste in its window and sends it to you by e-mail. You can try out a demo by pasting text less than 100 characters in a window, selecting a voice and listening to it. If you like it, you could register and then paste larger chunks of text and have it read it out to you while you translate. You can register for a free account, and upload Word, PDF or HTML files and have the text read out to you (don't upload confidential documents!)

Try the 100-character demo first selecting different voices and see if you like what you hear before you register for a free account.

Have a great weekend!

Technorati Tags: recollect words,text to speech,online services

Searching online dictionaries and search engines through Office programs

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 19:41:00 +0000

Today, I'm reporting about a Microsoft add-in (free, of course) for all the four main Office programs (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook) called ClickSolve that searches user-selected search engines after a term or phrase is selected and hot key is pressed while in the Office application. This is called the Search It! feature. There is also a mapping feature called Map It! for mapping and directions, although the Search It! feature might be of more interest to translators.

Installation after downloading the program adds a new menu item to your Office applications. The menu in Word looks like this:

The menu item unfolds to show the features and more importantly the Options, where one can select the engines to search for! These include Google, Yahoo, Ask, LiveSearch and others. I wrote to the developer to include several Japanese engines, and he added Eijiro to the Options menu.

Here's what the Options window looks like:

Select ALC J-E translation and you can select a word in any of the Office applications, activate Search It! and it should give you the gloss. The J-E search works fine too.

To test Map It!, I pasted the JAT meeting address in Japanese in Word (東京都渋谷区道玄坂2－10－7), selected it and activated Map It! See image below.

Currently, the option to include your own search engine does not exist, but the developer has hinted that this is being considered. Should you have your own favorite dictionary or search engine, write directly to the developer through the Contact Us tab. I requested Eijiro and Glova be included, but he encountered some problem in including Glova in the list of Options.

Technorati Tags: Search,dictionaries,Office applications

Tips for quick searches and using Run commands

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:04:00 +0000

1. Quickly get definitions

Would you like to get a definition of a term quickly? This quick grab of a definition works in Firefox 3.0. Say you need the definition of "allopathy." Here's what you do:

1) Hit Ctrl + L when Firefox is open (this selects the URL in the address bar)

2) Type definr.com/allopathy and hit Enter.

Here's what you get:

2. Quickly get English equivalents of Japanese terms from online references

If you have already registered your favorite bilingual database such as Glova in a an earlier article Lightning search of an online database, you should see a blue icon with white lens on the right hand side of the Firefox screen like so:

Well, you are all set to hit a few keys and search for Japanese terms too!

Here's what you do:

1) Hit Ctrl + K (shifts the focus on the search bar)

2) Paste or enter the Japanese term you wish to search and hit Enter.

That's it! Here are the results for 変換:

3. Useful run commands

As a translator, you need to use the keyboard more to reduce wear and tear of your wrist. I find run commands useful and use them whenever I can. You'll find huge lists of 156, 164, 178 and so on, run commands on the Net - but nobody in his right mind would remember or use such a lot of commands. I give here some of run commands that I find useful and which have saved me a lot of mousing around.

Remember all you need to do is hold down the Win Key, press R, then type in or copy and paste the command from the list below and hit ENTER.

COMMAND	DOES THIS
appwiz.cpl	Opens the Add and Remove Programs in Control Panel
calc	Launches the calculator
charmap	Launches character map - you can search for those Greek and mathematical symbols you wish to insert in Word.
clpbrd	View the clipboard. Shows you what you have copied to the clipboard using Ctrl C.
cmd	Command prompt - from where you can run all kinds of DOS commands
control	Opens Control Panel to gives you access to all kinds of settings
control folders	Perform folder settings
devmgmt.msc	Opens the device manager. The moment you find a yellow exclamation work next to a device here, you know something's wrong!
desk.cpl	Perform screen resolution, screen saver and other desktop settings
mrt	Checks your system for malicious software
excel	Launches Excel
mspaint	Launches Paint
powerpnt	Launches Powerpoint
winword	Launches Word
osk	Displays your Onscreen keyboard
regedit	Make changes to your Registry - take care
shutdown	Shuts down Windows
sysinfo	Shows information about your system
taskmgr	Shows what applications are running; gives you the option to close down running applications
winver	Shows you which version of Windows is running

That's all for today folks. Have a great day!

Technorati Tags: Quick searches,Run commands

Various utilities and useful links

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:14:00 +0000

I was in the US for more than a month and personal as well as business engagements took away time for this blog. I'm back again and hope to record convenient tools and tips during my forays into the World Wide Web. I have put through a smorgasbord of offerings this time. 'Nuff said - here they are:

1. Launch bar

I wrote about SlickRun many months ago, and I still use this great utility. For a second line of applications that I wish to run, here is a simple method (for Windows that is, and I use XP) that does not involve installing any application. Here's what you do:

a. Right click your desktop and create a new folder; call it “Launch Bar”.

b. Drag the Launch Bar folder to the extreme top of the desktop screen and drop it.

c. That's it - you have a toolbar.

d. Now drag the applications you need to launch and drop them in this launch bar.

You can also right click this toolbar at the top and click on the feature to automatically hide it so that it pops up only when you bring the cursor to the top of the Desktop Screen. Here's what mine looks like:

2. New patent search site

For all ye patent buffs - here's a new site (patents.com) that gives you patents in clean PDFs and as late as last month too. I searched with keywords "planing boat" and found a patent dated Aug. 26, and another with the keyword "semiconductor" and found one dated Aug. 28.

3. Auto-complete at command prompt

I'm sure some of you must be using the command prompt especially when you want to print a list of files (see Quickly print a list of files to a file) but here's a neat trick where you can use Auto-complete to display directories or files using the tab key at the command prompt. I came across this trick in another blog by another techie. The procedure involves making a small change in the Windows Registry, so make sure you make a backup of the Registry before you make changes! The instructions for changing the just one value in the Registry are clearly given here.

This gives you the ability to hit TAB to type out long Japanese file names at the command prompt - see example below.

Until next week, here's wishing you a great day!

Technorati Tags: Launch Bar,patent search site,autocomplete at command prompt

Two utilities to make your life easier

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:08:00 +0000

I give you two freeware utilities this week - both small, unobtrusive and useful.

Rainbow Folders helps you to identify and classify folders on your desktop, directory, or other work spaces by using distinct colors. You can hue and saturation values to make distinct shades and color folders easily.

Here's how I have colored some of my folders to distinguish them as PDF documents in English and Japanese.

The above screenshot is a part of the Explorer window.

The program is for Windows only; OS: Win 98/ME/2K/NT/XP, and weighs in at 783 kB.

The second one is also a freeware utility called AutoUnbreak that removes line breaks from text copied from PDF files. You copy the text from the PDF file and paste it into AutoUnbreak, then process it and copy the results to Word or any other editor. Here are screenshots of the program and results of a small test I did on an English PDF file.

The procedure is as shown in the screen shot above. Paste text into the window, click Unbreak and copy the results to clipboard.

I copied part of a PDF file to a text editor first (you can see the line breaks) in the screenshot below, and then pasted it to AutoUnbreak.

After processing with AutoUnbreak and copying the results to the same text editor, this is what I got:

AutoUnbreak did remove line breaks in all but one location. Maybe not perfect, but useful nonetheless if you have a huge PDF document to be translated in Word.

Have a great weekend!

More on proofreading by text to speech

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 03:01:00 +0000

In a previous post, I wrote about a proofreading solution using a commercial software (Dragon Naturally Speaking) to read out the text you translated. Although the voice is not as natural as in Naturally Speaking, here is a free solution, SayzMe, thanks to a reader of this blog who pointed it out to me. The voice bundled with this free application is passable, and certainly better than some of the voices I had tried out a year ago. Download this freeware utility and try it out yourself.

I have recorded two simple Word macros that hide and un-hide hidden text when you use a CAT tool such as Wordfast. These macros may be used to conveniently hide the hidden text and proofread paragraphs or the entire document during the translation process. I have put them on Word's toolbar as you see here:

To proofread a paragraph, you can run HidOff that hides the Japanese source text and displays only the translated English text, select the paragraph and hit Ctrl +C to copy the text to clipboard. If SayzMe is already running, it will read out the clipboard text.

You can record these two convenient macros yourself using the macro recorder in Word or copy them from here (Note: I have run these on Word 2003, and they work fine. If they don't work for you, try recording them yourself.)

CAUTION: When you proofread and wish to make corrections by deleting or writing over text at the beginning or end of sentences, make sure you turn the hidden text ON and then do the corrections. There is a good chance you may delete the hidden bookmarks inserted by the CAT tool when you delete/overwrite text.

I wanted to write about CAT tools, such as Wordfast and Felix the Cat. unfortunately, looming deadlines have prevented me trying out Felix - hopefully in the near future. Here are the two macros:

Sub HidOff()
'
' HidOff Macro
' Macro recorded 2008/04/03 by Gururaj Rao
'
    Application.DisplayStatusBar = True
    Application.ShowWindowsInTaskbar = True
    Application.ShowStartupDialog = True
    With ActiveWindow
        .DisplayHorizontalScrollBar = True
        .DisplayVerticalScrollBar = True
        .DisplayLeftScrollBar = False
        .StyleAreaWidth = MillimetersToPoints(0)
        .DisplayVerticalRuler = True
        .DisplayRightRuler = False
        .DisplayScreenTips = True
        With .View
            .ShowAnimation = True
            .Draft = False
            .WrapToWindow = True
            .ShowPicturePlaceHolders = False
            .ShowFieldCodes = False
            .ShowBookmarks = False
            .FieldShading = wdFieldShadingWhenSelected
            .ShowTabs = False
            .ShowSpaces = False
            .ShowParagraphs = False
            .ShowHyphens = False
            .ShowHiddenText = False
            .ShowAll = False
            .ShowDrawings = True
            .ShowObjectAnchors = True
            .ShowTextBoundaries = False
            .ShowHighlight = True
            .ShowOptionalBreaks = False
            .DisplayPageBoundaries = True
            .DisplaySmartTags = False
        End With
    End With
End Sub
Sub HidON()
'
' HidON Macro
' Macro recorded 2008/04/03 by Gururaj Rao
'
    Application.DisplayStatusBar = True
    Application.ShowWindowsInTaskbar = True
    Application.ShowStartupDialog = True
    With ActiveWindow
        .DisplayHorizontalScrollBar = True
        .DisplayVerticalScrollBar = True
        .DisplayLeftScrollBar = False
        .StyleAreaWidth = MillimetersToPoints(0)
        .DisplayVerticalRuler = True
        .DisplayRightRuler = False
        .DisplayScreenTips = True
        With .View
            .ShowAnimation = True
            .Draft = False
            .WrapToWindow = True
            .ShowPicturePlaceHolders = False
            .ShowFieldCodes = False
            .ShowBookmarks = False
            .FieldShading = wdFieldShadingWhenSelected
            .ShowTabs = False
            .ShowSpaces = False
            .ShowParagraphs = False
            .ShowHyphens = False
            .ShowHiddenText = True
            .ShowAll = False
            .ShowDrawings = True
            .ShowObjectAnchors = True
            .ShowTextBoundaries = False
            .ShowHighlight = True
            .ShowOptionalBreaks = False
            .DisplayPageBoundaries = True
            .DisplaySmartTags = False
        End With
    End With
End Sub

Technorati Tags: Proofreading,text to speech,free utility,CAT

Proofreading your translation

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:42:00 +0000

To proofread my translated text, I thought of using a utility that would read out the text to me. I tried out various freeware utilities some time ago but they all came with Microsoft voices such as Microsoft Sam. Well, frankly they were too 'computerish' for me and I gave up.

I had purchased Dragon Naturally Speaking more than a year ago, but never did find the time to train it with my voice. I suddenly wondered whether it did have some tool to read out text. I was overjoyed when I read the Help file!

This is what it had to say:

"You can use text-to-speech to have text on your screen read aloud in a computer voice. "

"Using text-to-speech can free your eyes for other tasks. For example, you could have a document you dictated read back while you listen for mistakes and sections you may want to revise."

"Text-to-speech will read back specific parts of the document. You can specify a line, paragraph, selection, the complete document, or the whole screen to be read back to you. You can also specify that text-to-speech reads from the top of the window to the insertion point or from the insertion point to the bottom of the window."

I launched Dragon Naturally Speaking pulled down the Sound menu, I found Read That. The voice too was more natural than the ones that came with freeware utilities. I had it read out text that I had just translated and I liked it. I had found a now proofing tool hidden in the dark recesses of my PC!

I found that Dragon Naturally Speaking also has a transcription tool - you feed an audio file and it transcribes for you. I should try this out next time.

Have a great day!

Technorati Tags: Proofread,translation,text to speech

Utility to annotate images

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 15:11:00 +0000

I sometimes get text embedded in images that I have to translate. I tried various utilities to replace the captions in such images by translated text in English, including the excellent freeware, Irfan View.

I finally stumbled upon FastStone Capture for Windows and plan to stick to it, unless you come up with something better than this one!

Although a neat image capturing utility, I found its editing functions to be excellent. Images speak more than a thousand words - so I give you two images. One, the original image with Japanese text and the other replaced with various kinds of English text (with colored box, background and so on).

For instance, see the location where I have inserted Voltage. The software allows you to cover up the Japanese and type in the translation in a colored (red) box.

Next, see the caption "Current." You can replace the border by a different color have a shaded border (the caption for the image below "Current"), use a transparent box so that the Japanese text can be seen through along with the translated text.

The image capturing ability of the software is also excellent. You can even capture a scrolling window. Nothing to beat the price too.

Do you know of a freeware better than this utility? I'll be happy to hear from you.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Feeds through Firefox not updated

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:40:00 +0000

Technorati Tags: Feed,Firefox,subscribe,new,link

It has just been pointed out to me by a friend that his subscription through Firefox to Translator's Tools had not been updated since December. He thought there was no fresh content, and accidentally stumbled on new content in this blog during a Google search.

I have rectified this problem, but I don't know how to communicate with all those who have subscribed through this feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/jDms which is not being updated; and I don't know the reason for this. Some readers have subscribed through the link above will not be reading this post as their feed stops in December. If you have subscribed to this blog through the link mentioned above, please re-subscribe by clicking on the link "Subscribe in a reader" under the heading "Click here to subscribe" on the side bar to the left, or scroll down and click on "Let the news come to you - subscribe" under the heading "Subscribe." Both these links will lead you to http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/uRQg which is the correct link and which updates correctly to the latest posts.

I am sorry for the inconvenience caused to some of you. If you have friends that have subscribed to this blog through the obsolete link, kindly inform them.

Fast full-text Japanese search

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 07:45:00 +0000

I am always on the lookout for utilities that search Japanese text quickly. I came across one that did a fairly good job - it goes by the name Shin3rou (探三郎) and the one I'm talking about here is freeware.

I found that it did a great job - lightning quick searches of all Office files, PDF, html, txt, csv and AUTOCAD files, after indexing these files. When you extract the files from the zip, make sure you put them in their own folders! Otherwise when you launch the program, you'll get an error message.

Once you specify the files and directories you want the utility to index, just enter the phrase in the search box you need and hit the Search (検索） button - the results come up in a flash. Impressive! Here's a photo of the hit screen. Go get it if you have a huge glossary or an enormous translation memory you need to search while you translate.

Definitely a keeper for me. Do you know of any Japanese text indexing utility like this one?

Technorati Tags: Full-text,Japanese,search,utility,indexing,freeware

Transcription

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 01:38:00 +0000

Fifteen years ago I transcribed a couple of audio tapes for the first time in my life. I had only an audio cassette player, and being green around the gills in the translation field at that time, I had not even heard of a foot pedal. I spent an enormous amount of time on those two audio tapes and vowed never to do the same job again.

Two days ago a friend and colleague who runs his own translation company came up with an urgent request to transcribe a 10-minute technical video clip in English that he needed to translate into Japanese. I asked him to send it over. The voice was clear.

I hunted around the Internet and found a freeware that could extract just the audio from the video clip. This was the Free Video to MP3 Converter V.3.1.1.2. It did a fairly good job and gave me an audio file containing the speech to be transcribed (see screenshot).

Now to find an application that would allow me to play the audio clip, pause and restart using shortcut keys. This would facilitate typing out the speech. Another Google search with relevant keywords led me to an application called Express Scribe (see screenshot). Here's the blurb from the website:

Express Scribe Transcription Playback Software

Digital Transcription Audio Player Software

Express Scribe is a professional audio player software for PC, Mac or Linux designed to assist the transcription of audio recordings. It is installed on the typist's computer and can be controlled using a transcription foot pedal or using the keyboard (with 'hot' keys). This computer transcriber application also offers valuable features for typists including variable speed playback, multi-channel control, file management and more. This program is free.

I ran the mp3 file through this utility and it did a satisfactory job. I had to go listen to the audio clip about four to five times after having typed out a rough draft, and also to check the website for product names and company names that occurred in the speech. Transcription of a 10-minute video tape grabbed four hours of my time – this included searching the Internet for an appropriate Video to MP3 converter and an audio playback player suitable for transcription, typing out the speech while listening to the audio clip, revising and re-listening the entire about four times, and confirming the spelling of product and company names. I can however do a similar job now in about half the time since I have the tools for the job on my system.

Do you know of other tools comparable to Express Scribe? Please feel free to comment.

FreeSnap – freeware utility for sizing a window

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Mon, 26 May 2008 23:23:00 +0000

Although practically all of my translation assignments are in electronic format (data files such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint files), I occasionally need to translate embedded text in PDF image files. In such cases, I place a new Word document and the PDF file to be translated side by side, look at the PDF file and type out my translation into the Word file (see the image below).

I recently came across a nifty freeware utility called FreeSnap that makes sizing windows and adjusting the sides of windows a snap! Placing two windows side by side becomes an easy task using FreeSnap. It runs in the background (has no tray icon) and you use hotkeys (Win + arrows, Win + Numpad keys) to maximize any of the sides of a window, to center a window, or resize it. For instance, if you use the Win key with Plus or Minus keys on the Numpad successively you can resize the window to a specific size. FreeSnap also provides an alternate set of hotkeys for laptops.

Here are the basic operations:

Windows Key + Up Arrow: Snap top window edge

Windows Key + Down Arrow: Snap bottom window edge

Windows Key + Left Arrow: Snap left window edge

Windows Key + Right Arrow: Snap right window edge

Using Numpad (Number Pad)

Windows Key + Home, End, PgUP, and PgDn keys: Move a window to the corresponding corner of the screen without resizing the window

Windows Key + arrow keys: Size windows

Windows Key + corner keys (7,9,1,3): Move windows to the corner of the screen.

Windows Key + 5 key: Center the window

Windows Key + Plus and Minus keys: Resize the window to a specific dimension.

The dimensions used are:

640 x 480

800 x 600

1024 x 768

1152 x 864

1280 x 1024

Once you run FreeSnap, the only indication that it is running is its name that appears in the Start Menu. Have you come across anything better than or as good as FreeSnap? If yes, share your information by clicking on Comments below this post.

Word/character counting utility

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Mon, 26 May 2008 10:01:00 +0000

Some of the most useful utilities for translators working between Japanese and English have come from Ryan Ginstrom, a translator and colleague. He's come up with the latest offering, which is useful, and also free: CountAnything. As its name indicates, it counts most of the file formats I generally translate, including words in text boxes and many other embedded objects. It counts the numbers of words, characters (with and without spaces), Asian characters, and non-Asian words. You can save the reports as html files or print them out. I personally would have prepared a tab-delimited file, as you can export it directly into Excel. The latest version 1.2.1 gives you word/character counts of the following document formats:

* MS Word (.doc, .rtf)

* MS Excel (.xls, .csv)

* MS PowerPoint

* Text

* HTML

* XML

* PDF (New!)

Here's what the screen looks like after a count:

I tried out the PDF feature on a document containing mixed Japanese and English, and CountAnything did very well.

	Asian characters	Non-Asian words	Characters (no. spaces)
MS Word	7087	3374	25243
CountAnything	7092	3377	25241

Another keeper!

PDF to Doc converter

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Sun, 25 May 2008 01:13:00 +0000

After trying out various converters, I finally found a freeware converter that offers you a choice on whether to convert a PDF document to a Word file with or without text boxes, and with or without line breaks in the output. So here's one that's free and with no nags, and no ads with a cryptic name: Some PDF to Word Converter.

It also offers batch processing and other customizability such as selecting the number of pages to convert, deleting graphics, pictures, and so on. Although online converters exist that do a fairly good job, I would rather handle sensitive documents on my desktop rather than uploading them for online conversion. Here are the options this utility offers (see image):

The application works on Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista. This one is a keeper. I am, however, yet to find a similar one that has like features and works with Japanese PDF documents; would any of our Japanese readers who frequently scan Vector, Mado no Mori or similar Japanese websites like to add some information on Japanese freeware to convert Japanese PDF documents to Word documents? This is a long-felt need for JE translators.

Your results may vary with Some PDF to Word Converter – try out conversions with and without line breaks too. I had good results with a PDF document in English without fancy formatting.

Incidentally, the downloads page on the same site has other converters also to convert PDF to html, txt and so on; and all free, of course.

Poll results

noreply@blogger.com (Gururaj Rao) — Fri, 23 May 2008 04:11:00 +0000

I was out of office for a while and saddled with three urgent jobs – the dust has cleared and I hope to start writing more frequently. The Masters' swim meet in Hokkaido was a great event; and Hokkaido is a wonderful place to be in spring!

Thanks for voting – the poll gives me an idea on what readers like to read.

95% of the readers voted for software/ utilities to assist translation

55% of the readers voted for translation resources

40% of the readers found Web search tips interesting

30% preferred tips on CAT tools

25% voted for tools to maintain and enhance productivity.

I'll concentrate more on giving you what you asked for. The next article will be on a tool that translators nowadays often need to use! Coming soon.

Have a great day!