Review: the Plantronics Voyager Legend monoaural headset for translation

Ergonomics are often a challenge with the microphones used for dictated translation work. I've used quite a few over the years, usually with USB connections to my computer, though I've also had a few Logitech wireless headphones with integrated mikes that performed well. However, all of them have had some disadvantages.

The country where I live (Portugal) has a rather warm climate for more than a few months of the year. Wearing headphones can get rather uncomfortable on a hot day, and even on a cold one, the pressure on my ears starts to drive me nuts after an hour or so.

Desktop microphones seem like a good solution, and I get good results with my Blue Yeti. But sometimes, when I turn my head to look at something, the pickup is not so good, and my dictation is transcribed incorrectly.

The Hey memoQ app released by memoQ Translation Technologies Ltd. underscored the ergonomic challenges of dictation for me; the app uses iOS devices to access their speech recognition features, and positioning a phone well in such a way that one can still make use of a keyboard is not easy. And trying to connect a microphone or headset by cable to the dodgy Lightning port on my iPhone 7 is usually not a good experience.

So I was intrigued by a recommendation of Plantronics headsets from Dragos Ciobanu of Leeds University (also the author of the E-learning Bakery blog). A specific model mentioned by someone who had attended a dictation workshop with him recently was the Plantronics Voyager Legend, though when I asked Dragos about his experience, he spoke mostly about the Plantronics Voyager 5200, which is a little more expensive. I decided to go "cheap" for my first experience with this sort of equipment and ordered the Voyager Legend from Amazon in Spain. I did so with some trepidation, because the reviews I read were not entirely positive.

The product arrived in simple packaging which led me to think that the Amazon review which suggested the "new" products sold might in fact be refurbished. But in the EU, all electronic gear comes with a two-year warranty, so I don't worry too much about that.

Complaints I read in the reviews about a short charger cable seem ridiculous; the cable I received was over half a meter long, and like anyone who has computers these days, I have more USB extension cords than I know what to do with should I require a longer cable for charging. The magnetic coupler for charging has a female mini-USB port, so it can be attached to another cable as well. Power connections include the most common EU two-pronged charger, the 3-pole UK charger and one for a car's cigarette lighter.

The package also included extra earpieces and covers of different sizes to customize the fit on one's ear.

I tested the microphone first with my laptop; the device was recognized easily, and the results with Dragon NaturallySpeaking were excellent. Getting the connection to my iPhone 7 proved more difficult, however. I read the Getting Started instructions carefully, tried updating the firmware (not necessary - everything was current) and tried various switching and reboot tricks, all to no avail.

Finally, I called the technical support line in the US in total frustration. I didn't expect an answer since it was still the wee hours of the morning in the US, but someone at a support call center did answer the phone. He instructed me to press and hold the "call" button on the device until its LED begins to flash blue and red.


I did that, and when the LED began flashing, "PLT_Legend" appeared in the list of available devices on my iPhone. Then I was ready to test the Voyager Legend for dictated translation with Hey memoQ.

Because I work with German and English, I rely on Dragon NaturallySpeaking for my dictation, and the iOS-based dictation of Hey memoQ will never compete with that. But I am very interested in testing and demonstrating the integrated memoQ app, because many other languages, such as Portuguese, are not available for speech recognition in Dragon NaturallySpeaking or any other readily accessible speech recognition solution of its class.

As I suspected, my dictation in Hey memoQ (and other iOS applications) was easier with the Voyager Legend. This is the first hardware configuration I have tested that really seems like it would offer acceptable ergonomics for Hey memoQ with my phone. And I can use it for Skype calls, listening to my audio books and other things, so I consider the Plantronics Voyager Legend to be money well spent. Now I'll see how it holds up for long sessions of dictated legal translation. The product literature and a little voice in my ear both claim that the device can operate for seven hours of speaking time on a battery charge, and the 90 minutes required for a full recharge will work well enough with the breaks I take in that time anyway.

Of course there are many Bluetooth microphone devices which can be used with speech recognition applications, but what distinguishes this one is its great comfort of wear and the secure fit on my ear. I look forward to a closer acquaintance.

The "Revision Club"

Colleague Simon Berrill, who works from Catalan, Spanish and French into English, writes a rather thoughtful blog which I have enjoyed very much in recent months. His latest post, "Better Together", describes a rather interesting mutual review arrangement, a linguists' triangle, which I thing could be an interesting and beneficial thing for translators at any stage of their careers.

The particular arrangement between Simon and his revision partners, Tim and Victoria, is striking for me because of its flexibility and the fact that it is not linked to specific work assignments. My first thought while reading his post was something like "Gee, I could really benefit from something like this!", and my mind began to drift to all of the interesting things that could be learned in a swap like this with the right people.

No more spoilers... go read the post yourselves and comment there. Thank you, Simon, for another thought-provoking contribution.

Revised target document workflows in SDL Trados Studio 2015 vs. memoQ

Yesterday I had an unexpected opportunity to see the new SDL implementation of the feature Kilgray introduced to memoQ two years ago, in which a revised target document (or some portion thereof) is re-imported to a translation project for purposes of updating the translation memory. Since my involvement with the concept and specification of this feature in memoQ, I have been expecting the competition to follow suit, since in principle at least, this is a useful feature which nearly everyone can use in several common scenarios.

The way in which SDL Trados Studio 2015 handles project updates with edited target documents appears very different than what memoQ does, so that one might easily think that the functions are different. And this is one of those rare instances where I have to give SDL credit for a smoother, more streamlined procedure less likely to cause confusion and frustration with users.

The positive difference starts with the choice of terminology in the command interface. SDL refers to a "target document" rather than a "monolingual document" - I think this is less ambiguous and potentially confusing to an average user. The fact that these updates are perhaps not supported for bilingual formats in memoQ is one of those nerdy details which will not interest most people, especially given that there is a stable, established update process for project updates using bilingual documents.

When the reviewed file to import is selected, the user has the option to go to the aligner and correct possible matching errors for the revised target document (desirable if, for example, edits might cause the segmentation to change), but the default is to go straight back to the working window for translation and editing, with the changes already shown in tracked changes mode. Very nice.

In memoQ, the trip through the aligner is mandatory, but for simple changes, this is usually not needed, so I like the fact that Studio 2015 offers this as an option. And in memoQ, several extra steps are needed to show the changes in tracked mode (redlined markup), with confusing traps in the interface along the way. In a recent blog post, I described how Kilgray's emphasis on commands and terms relevant only to server projects, with the usual tracked changes options a translator would want buried under the "Custom" command, causes many users to conclude that tracked changes simply do not work in memoQ, which is not true at all. You just have to run the evil interface gauntlet to get there.

Does this mean I think everyone should dump memoQ and start using SDL Trados Studio 2015? Heck no. There are many processes involved in successful translation work, and switching from one tool to another based on a single feature or a just a few features is not particularly clever, no matter which way you go. (Except for "away from Across", which is always a good idea.) I am very pleased and encouraged by SDL's different approach to this feature, because it shows once again the importance of competition and different approaches to a problem. Ultimately, ergonomics and user experiences should determine the further development of a feature. In my opinion, memoQ usually has the edge here, but not always, and this is a case where improvements to this innovative feature which first appeared in memoQ could very well be inspired by SDL.

Dragon Naturally Speaking Version 13 - Review!

I've had a number of people ask me recently whether I have upgraded to Dragon Naturally Speaking version 13 for my dictation work in translation. I have not; I am still using the German version 12.5 (which includes English - I sometimes dictate poorly legible source texts in German rather than waste my time with OCR if I want to work with translation environment tools, so I need the bilingual edition). However, a colleague was kind enough to point me to this review of the new version, which gives me more than sufficient reason to upgrade soon:

Knowbrainer review of DNS 13

I have a few YouTube videos demonstrating the use of version 11.5 in memoQ and a word processor, which seem to have generated some excitement because of the ridiculously high speed at which I can translate by dictation (and many others are much faster). However, the point of voice recognition for me is not speed and the possibly higher earnings which can result if my editing afterward is not excessive (dictation requires a completely different approach to checking your work, and there is a significant learning curve here). Also (or really more) important are:

• greater engagement with the text on the screen, in my case leaving my hands free to point at various parts of long, complex sentences to help me sequence the translated text better as I work;
• less physical and mental strain during my translation work (I am less tired during and after);
• relief for hands damaged by too many years of working with vibrating power equipment (tillers and chainsaws), riding bicycles on rough ground and typing, typing, typing (some days I have to wash dishes in very hot water for an hour and load up on pain meds just to use a keyboard and mouse without tears - there may be surgery for that in my future and tools like DNS can give others relief or help prevent the sort of strain injuries too common in this profession and others which involve a lot of keyboard work). 

Dragon Naturally Speaking is currently available for U.S. English, UK English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and Japanese. Given the importance of voice recognition for relieving or avoiding strain injuries as well as for productivity (translators working with voice recognition routinely have much higher outputs of good quality than the best realistic claims for crap produced by post-editing machine pseudo-translations), I sincerely hope that Nuance and others will pursue the development of speech technology for other major languages such as Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese and Greek. Such an investment is likely to produce far greater benefits all-round than any money flushed down the machine pseudo-translation toilet, and speech recognition could probably also improve the working conditions of some stressed post-editors in the HAMPsTr world.

The Entrepreneurial Linguist and Online Media

One of my goals for 2011 is to catch up on a backlog of reading that has been accumulating on my shelves and disk drives. One professional resource that was particularly high on my list is the Jenners' book The Entrepreneurial Linguist; I had followed reports of its production with great interest for about a year as well as enjoyed their business tips on the Translation Times blog. I enjoy the perspectives and tips shared by my colleagues in a number of publications, and I have learned something valuable from every one I have read. I particularly value, perhaps more than many would, subtle variations on the same theme, because these help me to discover the context that works best for my business.

But how much is there to be said about the business of freelance translation that is really different or original? More than I realize, as I am reminded time and again. This profession is evolving quickly, though not always in the ways that the prophets of machine translation and others would have us believe.

The Entrepreneurial Linguist starts off with an excellent discussion of the business mindset needed for successful positioning and negotiation and follows with a chapter on organization and accounting that is for the most part good and relevant, but not particularly distinguished compared to similar expositions I've seen. The third chapter, however, on "Social Media and Web 2.0" is gold. As can be expected in a rapidly evolving field, some minor parts are already in need of updating, and I was surprised to see an excellent, extensive discussion of Facebook without a mention of Facebook "pages". But this is the best overview of the various online media options that I have seen yet for language service professionals, covering blogs, professional networks such as XING and LinkedIn, Twitter and more in a very focused, relevant way.

Innumerable times I have listened to friends and colleagues who "just don't see the point" of various social media for business or personal use or who are put off by all the stupid hype. In thirty well-written, balanced pages, Judy and Dagmar Jenner make the case and the limitations very, very clear. That by itself is worth the cover price of the book and a lot more.

Of course there is a lot more useful content as one would expect from freelancers with business degrees who successfully work exclusively with direct clients rather than agencies. What the authors excel at most of all is communication, both in online media and more traditional venues, and this provides the reader with a lot of unique, valuable and highly digestible fare.

MemoQ 3.5: the march of progress continues!

Since I'm heading off to Budapest next week for the MemoQ Fest 2009, I was very pleased to see Jost Zetzsche's review of the latest MemoQ release in his very useful Translators ToolKit newsletter a few weeks ago. Here it is republished with his permission for the benefit of those looking for flexible new options in translation assistance technology. I am particularly excited by the new filter for doing Star Transit projects; although I have been using Déjà Vu X and occasionally Trados to translate the target XML files in a PXF project package, Kilgray's approach represents a huge step forward in functionality and user-friendliness. This is a tool worth watching!

*******

Rememo Me?
(republished from The 137th Tool Kit - Premium Edition
© 2009 International Writers' Group)

For the last few months I have been keeping tabs on MemoQ's latest releases, which have come out with refreshing regularity. Every so often there was enough interesting material to write about, but I always held out. Until now.

This last week MemoQ 3.5 was released, and here are the new features according to Kilgray (the Hungarian company behind MemoQ):

· Longest substring concordance

· Wildcard concordance and wildcard in terms

· STAR Transit filter

· Bi-directional language enhancements

· Horizontal edit view

· XML preview feature

· PowerPoint 2007 filter

· Drastic server speed improvements

I downloaded the new version and specifically looked at the first three features, which I found truly ground-breaking.

Let's start with the first feature first, the oddly named "longest substring concordance" (or, just as odd: LSC). This is an attempt to automate concordance searches according to user-defined parameters (under Tools> Options> Subsegment leverage you can set the minimum number of concordance hits and/or the minimum number in words/letters/characters) and without interrupting the workflow. In the Translation results pane there are now not only translation memory matches, terminology matches, and assembled rows (available since version 3.2) but also ominous-looking matches of subsets of the string that needs to be translated with empty targets. These are the LSC matches. Clicking on them will produce the Concordance dialog, which will list all (or a predefined number of) the appearances of that particular substring in the translation memory within the context of the complete strings in the TM.

Confused?

Imagine you have this (real-life) sentence:

The starter motor rotates the engine during the start sequence, by driving it through the reduction gear unit assembly.

MemoQ might find that "the reduction gear unit" is a worthwhile subsegment and will display this in the Translation results pane with an empty target. Double-clicking on it would bring up the Concordance dialog with these options:

The starter motor rotates the engine during the start sequence, by driving it through the reduction gear unit assembly.

A coupling assembly mechanically connects the main output drive shaft of the reduction gear unit to the driven unit.

Individual accessory drive pads for the main lube oil pump are also incorporated on the reduction gear unit.

with their respective translations. If you wanted to use any of those, you would just need to highlight the part of the translation you want to use and select Insert selected.

I really like this feature because it offers a new granularity to TM materials without being obtrusive (the program does not slow you down by displaying an additional dialog like a comparable feature in Trados, plus you are free to use the displayed option or not), it enables easy paste access to the desired translation, and MemoQ's superior search-and-lookup speed allows it to operate without even seeming to slow down the search process too much.

Speaking of the Concordance dialog, that same dialog is also used for the enhanced concordance features. (A "concordance search" is the process of manually highlighting one term or phrase in the source segment, pressing a shortcut key -- in the case of MemoQ, it's Ctrl+K -- and accessing all occurrences of that in the TM.) What makes MemoQ's concordance feature attractive is the possible automatic addition of a wildcard character. In the Concordance dialog you can select the option Add wildcard to selected text, and for the current and next search(es) MemoQ automatically adds an asterisk (*) to each of the terms. This will make MemoQ look for 0 or more additional characters to the term in question, something that is particularly helpful for languages with heavy flexion. (Plus, I really like this because I always forget where the asterisk is on the German keyboard and I get tired of switching back to the English keyboard to enter it manually.)

The last feature that really caught my interest was the Transit compatibility feature. Now, Transit is a great program, but it's really different, and many folks just don't want to spend the time to learn to use the free Satellite edition (even if they might miss out on something). For those, this feature will be very useful. It allows you to import a PXF file -- this is a Transit-specific package file with the translation files, reference material (i.e., TM), and glossary data -- extract the translation files as well as the TM content, translate it, and then send it back to your client as a TXF file -- Transit's return package format.

In general it works very well. There are a few glitches -- a couple of strings (out of a few thousand in a test run) were unduly protected as tags, and I had to switch my import mode to get all my data, but it's impressive that the MemoQ developers were able to use Transit logic to "harvest" reference material that is readily available in the TM you selected when you started translating. What this feature is not able to do is automatically import the TermStar glossaries. This is somewhat unfortunate because Transit projects tend to be very terminology-heavy because of its excellent terminology tool.

Here are some other caveats with the new version: Word 2007 is still not supported -- though PowerPoint and Excel 2007 are -- and TBX, the termbase exchange standard, is also not supported yet.

This morning I had a chance to talk with the owner of a translation agency who has been using the server edition of MemoQ for a while, just to get an idea of what his take on performance and user acceptance was. He was very positive overall. Compared to other server-based products (Idiom WorldServer, Logoport, and Across) he reported equal or better server response times. He also liked the option for translators to check out resources to work offline or the online document storage. This last feature allows translators not only to share translation memories and terminology databases, but also the actual documents, which -- optionally -- can be server-based as well. Thus, multiple users can have access to large documents that can be translated and edited at the same time for faster turnaround. His assessment of that process was kind of interesting: He ran into problems with translators not working successively from top to bottom through documents, creating havoc for the poor editors; however, that seems to be less a technical limitation than an organizational one.

As far as user acceptance, he acknowledged that not all his translators were super-eager to adopt a new tool at the drop of a hat, but it helped that they did not have to pay for the program. With MemoQ's mobile licensing concept, he is able to assign temporary full licenses to his users. Interestingly -- and he was not the first to mention it -- Déjà Vu users in particular are struggling with the idea of using a different tool.

Speaking of licensing, I am interested to see how MemoQ's licensing scheme will be adopted once it's time for it. Last fall Kilgray adopted a new system in which all upgrades are free for a year after purchase, no matter how major or minor they might be; after that year, a 20% annual fee is applicable for further upgrades. This is certainly not an uncommon practice in the software industry in general, but as far as I know it is unusual for the individual user sector in our industry. We'll see what happens come fall of 2009.

MultiLingual

Since beginning this narrative I've found so many wonderful and useful resources in the course of my research. One find for today is MultiLingual, which calls itself "the information source for the localization, internationalization, translation and language technology industry". There are a number of offerings, including a print magazine (with a very affordable digital version with a free sample online) and free guides to localization, writing for translation, project management and other useful topics. The guides are obviously supported by advertising, but the content is good. The sample of the digital magazine has a nice review of Jost Zetzsche's TranslatorsTraining.com which goes far beyond anything I intended to write on the subject, so I recommend you go read it. Subscribers to the magazine receive 8 issues per year and a resource directory.

I'm fairly sure I must have run across this publication before at a trade show or when considering whether to attend Localization World (MultiLingual is a partner in producing that event). However, like many things, this was forgotten in the crush of daily life and mountains of work. In any case, I'm glad I've got the most interesting guides on my hard drive for reference now, and I'll probably end up forking over the ten bucks for a digital subscription. But first I have to get back to work....

The Great Administration Platform Migration Odyssey

Since 2004 I have used the LTC Organiser from The Language Technology Centre Ltd. to handle my translation project organization, invoicing, customer records management, financial reporting and other related tasks. At the time it was the best option I found for what I wanted to accomplish as a single translator who needed to manage team records for outsourcing (Projetex had not been released yet) with an interface which I found superior to TOM (Translation Office Manager).

Although the package made my administrative work much easier and I used the reports to great effect in my business plans which I had to submit to banks when we decided to build a house, I was never really satisfied with the product. There were many little bugs which were never resolved, such as the "tab bug" in the quotation view of the last released version, which would clear the data for an entire line item if one tried to tab between fields. I had serious doubts about the LTC programming team, which were fully confirmed when I was in discussions with the company about beta testing the new Worx product in 2006 and I was suddenly informed that the availability of that online tool would be delayed by about 9 months. The fact that top management had been unaware of problems in the development team up to that point says a lot. I am a former software developer, and I've been part of that game since I was ten years old. Any company that has so little oversight of its development is best avoided. Maybe they have their act together in the meantime, but I really don't care any more. The fact that close associates of mine had support issues with the product for years (though whose fault that was I really don't know, the company had excuses for this too) sort of closed that book for me.

We recently decided to migrate to one of the most popular tools for freelancers to do their admin and accounting work, Translation Office 3000 a k a TO3000. God only knows where the 3000 comes from - maybe it's an inside joke to say that the software is 1000 years ahead of its time. I can't agree with that, but I will say it's pretty good. I've owned a license for several years, but I never did more than play with it, because when I got it, we still did the occasional bit of outsourcing. After we finally stopped giving in to end client requests to manage projects for languages we don't work with and some Murphy's Law experiences with good translators we sent work to made us quote Poe's raven when it comes to outsourcing, the product suddenly became very relevant. When the LTC Organiser was discontinued last year, I realized it was just a matter of time before I would upgrade to the latest version of TO3000 and leave LTC behind. So a few months ago, I downloaded the fully-funcional demo version 9 onto my not-so-new-anymore laptop and tested it. I immediate realized that the workflow for setting up price sheets and quoting jobs was far better than what I have suffered with for four years, and many features which irritated me in version 7 had improved. And the templates for invoices, quotation forms, etc. are all RTF files, so my partner can update them if I don't feel like doing the work. With LTC I had to get Crystal Reports to customize my paperwork if I didn't feel like paying the company a zillion GBP per hour to do it for me.

So I played for a few weeks, decided that TO3000 was the future and promptly forgot about it in a blizzard of work. With the end of the year coming up, however, I want to make a clean break, and my partner has promised to help with a backlog of invoices to be written that goes back to last spring (we are very, very busy), and she doesn't want to waste her time with the old system. So I ordered the upgrade and got the license key today.

This was the point where I started to get nervous. I switched laptops about a year ago, and the other day I tried to install my legal copy of Abbyy FineReader 7 (yes, I know I'm out of date) on the new laptop, because I no longer use it on the old one. No dice. It was an upgrade from version 6, and I have long since lost the v6 files and license info on yet another laptop that died in a spectacular way, so basically I'm screwed as far as that Abbyy license is concerned. One of these days I'll contact tech support, and I'm sure the nice folks there will have a solution for me. It'll be a while, because I've got projects that will keep me distracted for a while.

So after my FineReader experience, I figured I would not be able to install an upgrade on a machine which had never seen version 7. When it worked without a hitch, I screamed "BLESS THESE PEOPLE!!!" so loudly that Monique thought something was seriously wrong. On the contrary. I love those rare instances when a tools provider gets it right. They know we are licensed users, so there's no bullshit about the upgrade key working. I was prepared for a long, complex correspondence with AIT to explain about the change of computers, etc. - but I don't have to waste my time. I wish every company were that customer-friendly.

My database from the test phase into which I had already entered a master price list and a few clients was taken over by the upgrade, so my work a few months ago wasn't in vain. With our client base and my schedule I assume that transferring all the relevant data will take me a few weeks at least unless there's a clever import function I haven't found out about yet.

Since there is a lot to do before the system is completely in place, I'll be posting updates regarding the individual phases to give an overview of the process. I'm sure I'll have a few false starts - or maybe a lot of them - since I have not spent a lot of time learning how to use the software up to now. General impressions were more important. So now, Dear Readers, you'll be able to follow the progress of a practical setup for an overly busy translator more or less in realtime. We'll see how it goes....

Jost Zetzsche's Tool Kit newsletter

What can you get for USD 15? Maybe a decent meal at an inexpensive restaurant. A paperback book probably - hardbacks cost more. If you need a consultant to help you deal with a problem on your computer or to advise you on how to work more efficiently, expect to pay a lot more. Or not. For just 15 US dollars a year, Jost - the author of the Translator's Toolbox, co-creator of the Translator's Training web site, author of user manuals for popular CAT tools and more - offers a biweekly advice letter with lots of useful tips. Click on the icon link above to find out more. I've received two issues so far, and the information is very worthwhile - one tip applied is worth the price of the year's subscription.

Practical use of corpora in acquiring or enhancing a translation specialty

For a long time now, I've had an interest in the use of text collections in particular subject domains as a means of developing specialized terminologies for my own use or the use of my clients. When I found my first practical guide on the use of bilingual corpora for terminology development, I immersed myself in the topic with delight, bought myself a license for Trados MultiTerm Extract and began to mine a lot of my past work to upgrade the termbases I had been creating for years.

There are, however, other useful applications of corpus linguistics for working translators. One interesting approach is described by Maher, Waller and Kerans in the July 2008 issue of the Journal of Specialised Translation in an article titled "Acquiring or enhancing a translation specialism: the monolingual corpus-guided approach".

The article discusses absolutely practical ways in which working translators can use concordancers and desktop-based indexers to acquire or enhance linguistic expertise for special subjects in their target languages. The target readers for the article are

• novice translators seeking to specialize
• experienced generalists who want to go "up market" with a specialty
• translators who wish to enhance their subject-area expertise for a special client
• translators working in a team who need to harmonize their use of language

The basic differences between concordancers and indexers are explained, and specific tools are mentined (the freeware AntConc concordancer from Laurence Anthony and the commercial, but inexpensive desktop indexer Archivarius). A concordancer looks up and aligns keywords (generally in the KWIC or keyword-in-context view) to allow you to see how they are used and identify patterns; frequency assessments and other functions are also available. A desktop indexer works like Google or any other search engine, except that it allows specific folders on the user's computer to be selected, so special text collections can be searched in a focused way.

After reading the article, I downloaded the tools and tested them. I was very impressed. Archivarius is much better than Copernic, which I have used for some time - a key difference is that it can deal with morphology in 18 languages. I personally only care about two of these, but it ought to make many translators happy. A 30-day fully functional trial with 99 launches is available, and individual licences range between about 20 euros for students and 45 euros for businesses. (Maybe a freelancer qualifies for the 30 euro "personal" license - that wasn't clear to me when I looked at the web site. I'll find out, however, because I will license this tool!) Dealing with morphology means, for example, that I can search "gleich" and get "gleiche", "gleicher", "gleichen" and "gleiches" in German.

The article has a nice discussion of access to free, readily-available texts. I also discovered in my research that there are large corpora covering specialist domains available for free in some languages. The American National Corpus is one example - I found a Berlitz travel corpus there with over a million words. Not my interest, but for someone who specializes in tourism or wants to, this is probably useful. The authors put together a special corpus for corporate financial reports using publicly available documents, and other examples were given.

The discussion of sampling adequacy is very valuable in my opinion. This is a question which has nagged me for a long time; the several books on the subject of corpus linguistics which are in my library dance around this issue and never commit to hard numbers that I can do something with. I am grateful to the authors for sticking their necks out and saying, for example, that while 40,000 words might be an adequate basis for a language teacher wanting to get started in a specialist area, a translator's linguistic questions probably won't be usefully addressed with less than about 250,000 words, with 500,000 being the point where things really start to get good.

The authors use a practical model of a high-quality base or "substrate corpus", which is carefully selected, cleaned of reference lists, non-linguistic content, extra spaces (these screw up frequency counts for phrases not to mention their identification) and maintained plus Q&D (quick-and-dirty) corpora, which cover specific topics for a current job, etc. Q&D corpora of a million words or more can be assembled in minutes using online corpus collectors, such as the Sketch Engine. The article gives good, practical advice on blancing these two types of resources and how they can and should be stored on your hard drive.

The discussion of "fair use" is thoughtful. I agree with it, but others, including some lawyers, may not. These topics get debated in public forums a lot, and have been the subject of articles in professional journals as well where intellectual property issues regarding translations and translation memories are raised. For those with an interest in such topics, there is enough out there to keep you busy reading for months. I tend to be cautious and share resources only when I am sure no legal objections will be raised.

The authors offer practical advice or storing and organizing corpora, including the importance of naming conventions for files and maintaining a log of corpora. This advice should be read carefully, as it reflects some hard-won experience.

In their conclusions, the authors emphasize that this appoach not only has value for compensating uneven or insufficient knowledge of a field, genre or register, but it can also be important for counteracting source language interference for people like me who live in the country where the source language is spoken and do not have daily contact with speakers and the culture of the target language. That's a valuable point, because many of us have observed such problems with ourselves or others. (If you haven't, you're either a hermit or just incredibly dense.)

Given how often the question of specialization and how to acquire it is raised on forums like Translator's Café or ProZ, I think the article can help an enormous number of translators improve their situation. I particularly appreciated the clear language of the article and its example-based, practical advice. Many people, especially those coming to translation from other career or edicational backgrounds than languages or linguistics, who try to investigate the topic of corpus linguistics get snowed under to quickly in a blizzard of academic bullshit. This is an article that you can read in an hour and apply in a useful way in the next hour.

German-English dictionaries for welding and soldering

I'm often asked to recommend German-English dictionaries for various subjects, since my partner and I are fanatical collectors of references in many areas. So from time to time I will discuss some of the references that have proven very useful in practical work and perhaps a few that haven't.

The Dictionary of Welding by G. R. Lohrmann is one of those bargains I found on eBay. I think it cost me three euros or so there. Amazon.com (the US site) wants $51 for the dictionary. I think I got a much better deal, but I've gotten so much use out of the dictionary in the four years I've had it that it would have been worth it to pay the full price. Which, by the way, is much less if ordered from the German Amazon.de site :-) The dictionary is small - my hand just about covers it - but in translation jobs involving welding equipment and procedures, it has come through for me most of the time. There are about 5000 terms in the German to English part and another 6000 in the English to German section without a lot of filler. The cover, by the way, is not hardback, despite what the American Amazon link says - it's vinyl. All the better for sticking the thing in your pocket if you want to take it with you for a construction site interpreting job or some such thing. Published in 1998, the book is a little dated, however. According to the publisher's web site, a new edition is planned for release in September 2009. I definitely plan to get it and maybe put my old copy back on eBay.

The same publisher (DVS Media) also offers the Dictionary for Electronic Soldering by Mikhail Kudish- its availability seems to be better on the German Amazon siteor from the publisher, but I find this dictionary less valuable. Its production values are much worse - it is just a long typewritten vocabulary list in alphabetical order, the quality of the binding (paperback) is worse and the material is already 18 years old. It's probably due for an update or at least a serious DTP facelift. Still, if you need a German-English soldering terminology, this is probably it. General engineering/technical dictionaries will have the basic terms, but probably not as much specialist detail as you'll find in this reference.

How To Write For Translation: The Essential Technical Writer's Guide

I discovered this 36-page PDF gem while visiting the relaunched web site of an Australian partner of mine, Academy Translations. It's available as a free download through a little request box in the sidebar.

The booklet is a nice, concise overview of important issues, not a detailed technical treatise on how to write. As such, it is also an excellent reference for others involved with documentation and translations projects... including translators.

Some of the advice to technical writers, such as the controlled use of language, is just as valuable to translators as it is to original authors. I long ago gave up hope that more than a small fraction of the people writing the technical documentation I translate will follow these principles. There are a few delightful exceptions, but very often I find five synonyms or more in a source document, which good technical style and clarity would require to be reduced to a single term in the English translation. Or the writers fail to understand the proper use of lists, with bullet lists used to explain key ordered sequences, followed by similar instructions in an ordinary paragraph, where the steps are no longer immediately recognized as distinct. Although I often use other methods, I think the style advice for writing documentation is very good.

The booklet also discusses design aspects, such as the use of authoring software, appropriate templates, text formatting and allowing for text expansion, and the importance of style guides and terminology glossaries are expressed. As far as style guides and glossaries are concerned, anyone who translates much is aware that too many clients do not provide such material, and that source documents are often very inconsistent in both respects. Taking this from a translator's perspective, I see it as an opportunity rather than a liability. Keep your own short style guide handy, and submit it for approval as part of a quotation. This is likely to have one of two results, both of them positive:

• the client will accept your suggestions, probably be grateful for them, and you will look like a pro or
• the client will provide the style guide information that should have been given to you in the first place.

In the case of a software manual where the names of buttons are written in various ways (Cancel, "Cancel", Cancel, Cancel, , Cancel, etc.) in the same document, I expect the first reaction.

When glossaries are not provided by clients, they have long been part of the "add-on business" or extra service I provide. Depending on the scope, budget and schedule of the project, a terminology project sometimes precedes the translation itself. At the very least, a glossary of terms I want the client to be aware of for purposes of review and possible discussion is submitted with the delivery of the translation. These lists often become the start of the previously neglected corporate terminology.

The guide goes on to give advice on collateral and marketing material, including tips for DTP programs used to produce such material.

Writing online help is covered, with similar issues to conventional documentation (style guides and terminology).

Web site translation issues and tools are presented, and the final sections (which are much too short) cover brand issues and what to do when thnigs go wrong.

The guide is certainly worth its price and more. I found it a refreshing read in exactly the sort of clear, simple style it encourages. Most importantly, it got me to thinking again about what I do right in my work and where my attention should be focused for improvement.

eBook: The Translator's Toolbox by Jost Zetzsche

Reviewed: Version 7.0 (November 2008)
Price USD 50
Format: PDF, CHM
Info link: http://www.internationalwriters.com/toolbox/

The 361 pages of this eBook are offer a wide-ranging overview of computer technology relevant to translators and its possibilities. It is delivered in two formats: PDF for better reading and Windows Help (CHM) for more efficient searching of topics. As the author describes it, "This book is not a tutorial on what to do or not to do with your computer. Instead, it is a list of suggestions based on what has worked well (or not so well) for me." As such, it is an excellent overview of value to translators at all levels of experience and technosavvy. The book focuses on tools and techniques for Windows users, so Mac and Linux fans will find a lot, but not all, of the material irrelevant.

Some of the sections I found interesting and useful covered:

• Windows OS & techniques for optimizing it
• Advanced browsing tips for Google (searching in page titles, excluding file types, text embedded in URLs, etc.)
• Reducing risk from phishing, viruses, trojans and various other modes of attack
• All sorts of utilities including collaboration tools, OCR, etc.
• Office suites, DTP programs and graphics applications
• CAT review / overview, including QA tools and TM quality maintenance
  
• Terminology extraction and management tools
• Localization tools
• Management tools for your business
  
• A quick reference for handling complex file formats
• Voice recognition apps

The book was updated in November 2008, so the information is absolutely up to date as I write this. That's important in a field where the technology changes so rapidly and companies are busy swallowing each other and changing formerly independent tools into vassals of the Evil Empire and others.

The author, Mr. Zetzsche, has a great perspective and understanding of the technology scene. His discussion of CAT tools, for example, puts them in exactly the right perspective. As he noted, "We’re at a point in the development of translation environment tools when it’s generally understood that translation memory tools are not primarily time-saving applications; first and foremost they are programs that allow translators to increase the quality and consistency of their work." That is a very important point to remember when many translators, agencies and end clients think of them primarily as ways to speed up jobs and cut costs. My own experience, particularly when dealing with complex, heavily tagged formats, is that working with CAT tools can occasionally require much more effort (and should be charged accordingly), but that it is still worthwhile to do so because of the access to reference material in the environments. The higher quality that results produces downstream savings for customers, but there is no justification for applying discount scales to such projects.

The book is written in clear, competent English that is accessible to anyone who uses English as a working language. The range of topics is broad enough that almost anyone - from beginning translators and those without a clue regarding technology to those with a good understanding of the craft and its tools - will find something of value. The book is well worth the price.

German-English dictionary for environmental risk assessment and contaminated site investigation

While reading a discussion of the recent ATA conference, I saw a mention of a "new" environmental dictionary, Wörterbuch der Umweltrisikoprüfung und Altlastenerkundung (DE->EN, EN->DE) by George Lindemann. This was, of course, very interesting to me given that it's one of my favorite areas to translate and, despite the prevalence of Internet research in my work, I am a great believer in collecting as wide a range as possible of useful dictionaries in one's special subjects.

So I promptly made a "trip" to amazon.de and found the desired reference work. The price was reasonable - thirty euros - so I promptly ordered a copy. When it arrived a few days later, I was irritated to discover (from information on a postcard inserted in the book) that a hardbound version is available for just a few euros more (€ 38.50). The only edition available from Amazon was a paperback. The hardcopy version can be ordered from the publisher directly (Projekte-Verlag Cornelius GmbH).

Time will tell how good the dictionary is when I get down to real work with it; I don't refer to dictionaries often when translating for this subject. When I looked through the entries, they appeared well-organized, with an indication of the relevant domains. However, there do appear to be some gaps with regard to chemical terminology at least - a common synonym for dichloromethane (methylene chloride) was missing, and I suspect that will be the case for other, similar terminology. Not a problem for me - I'm a chemist, and I internalized several nomenclature systems ages ago, but someone with a different background may require additional references if such terminology is not familiar. (I have an opinion on whether these people should be doing chemical/environmental translations at all, but I'll keep that to myself....)

On the whole it looks like the € 30 was well spent; I expect to get at least as much value, probably more, out of this than a noted patent dictionary that set me back € 100 last year but fails to live up to its reputation.

Internet Freelancing: Practical Guide for Translators

Oleg Rudavin's book has been advertised on ProZ for some time now. It's available in English and Russian. However, with the hefty price tag of USD 58.00 I wasn't particularly tempted to have a look at what I assumed would be yet another "getting started" guide for beginners. But when I gained access to Chapters 3 & 4 on Jost Zetzsche's Translators Training site I decided to have a look at the English text.

It is quickly apparent that the author is not a native speaker of English; though he communicates well on the whole, the chapters I read could have benefited from some editing. However, after some initial irritation over the flaws in the English, I got caught up in the interesting first-person narrative with which the author dispenses advice.

Chapter 3 focuses on beginners, the basics of getting established, common risks and useful tips for the early stages of a freelance translation business. While the presentation of information is very idiosyncratic and may be more relevant to the author's situation than that of someone starting out in a western country, there is a lot of useful advice, and the narrative is simply interesting. It interests me to see the diverse paths that my colleagues have taken to success, and I found Mr. Rudavin's tale of his start as an army translator and subsequent experiences quite fascinating. While there wasn't anything in this chapter that I would adopt directly for my established business, it did inspire a few ideas for how to market project experience more effectively when submitting quotations. While I find Alex Eames' material more entertaining, this book seems more up-to-date for the specific issues faced by freelancers today, including specific details on international money transfer issues and other topics that newcomers to the profession may find difficult.

Chapter 4 is for the "established translator", with numerous ideas for improving efficiency, raising rtaes, managing risks at this stage. There was nothing really new here - the topics discussed are probably familiar to some extent to any experienced translator, but once again, I found the shared personal experience of an experienced colleague to be interesting, and at many points it caused me to think more carefully about my own methods and how I might improve them. I found it interesting to see how much alike business in the Ukraine (where the author lives) and Germany (where I am) seems to be, but the fundamentals of success are probably the same everywhere.

So - based on the sample I've seen - is the book worth its price? The answer to that question is a qualified "yes". I can't compare it to many other, similar books on the subject, because I haven't read them all. For the stage I am at, with the intentions I have for the future of my business, I think there is no point in getting the whole text. Later chapters deal with successful outsourcing; I have no interest whatsoever in adopting such a business model on any significant scale, so that information would have only entertainment value for me. The sections discussing the maintenance and improvement of a mature business are good, but I have read them already, and I discuss these issues in public forums daily and benefit from the diverse experience of successful colleagues around the world. However, for someone starting out as a translator and looking for good advice and a realistic discussion of options from someone with good experience, this is in fact a useful roadmap. I can't say that it's better or worse than others I've seen - it's different. For what basically amounts to the cost of a decent restaurant meal, you can immerse yourself in an interesting story of professional development and cherry-pick the parts that may be useful to you (and there will be a lot). After reading the chapters for a while in fact, I had a mental image of sitting at a table with the author, sipping a good glass of wine and listening with interest to what he had to say. And should he have a reason to come to Berlin I will be pleased to do just that.