Home / Articles & News / Taking inventory with St. Jerome
Jost Zetzsche is a consultant in localization and translation with a Ph.D. from the Univesity of Hamburg.
Last year I wrote an article in the ATA Chronicle speculating on why so many of us translators shy away from becoming more skilled with our computers. Since then I believe I may have found one answer.
As I was browsing through websites recently, I noticed that the image used most often on translators’ home page is of St. Jerome, the patron saint of translators and the grand translator of the Bible into common Latin. Now, don’t misunderstand me—I have nothing against St. Jerome; in fact, most of my academic life was spent researching the translation of the Bible. But I believe these images of Jerome, quill in hand, bent over a roll of parchment, communicate something else: a romanticized idea of translation that has very little in common with our work as modern translators in a highly computerized world. I may be guilty of overextending this interpretation, but I believe that many of us would prefer to identify with figures like St. Jerome than with a computer geek hunched over a keyboard. The truth is, however, that we need both sides of the coin.
We do well to devote ourselves to St. Jerome’s craft of translation, but we must also be able to work successfully with the tools of our day, our computers. And to work successfully with these computers, we must fulfill two requirements: our computers must be equipped with the tools that are necessary for our translation tasks, and we need to acquire the expertise to use these tools. In this article, I would like to provide you with a short checklist that will be helpful in assembling or complementing your equipment.
The choice of an operating system is one of the most contentious issues you’ll encounter, but it’s of crucial importance. People who use Linux and Macintosh will fiercely defend the benefits of their systems, especially when it comes to security and stability. And they’re right. I don’t have much experience with Linux computers, but I do love my Macintosh. I can’t remember the last time it crashed, and I don’t even have virus protection on it (imagine that, Windows users!).
However, I still think Windows is a better choice for translators because there simply aren’t enough translation-specific tools for the other platforms. For example, only one of the more common computer-assisted translation tools (Wordfast) is designed to work on a Mac; all the others either don’t run well or don’t run at all on Mac.
There have been essentially two families of Windows: one for the home user (Windows 95, 98, and Me) and one that was originally designed for the business user (Windows NT, 2000, XP Professional) but now also serves the home market with Windows XP Home. The Windows 95 series finally died a slow death because of its lack of stability. Windows 2000 and XP are infinitely more stable and—even more important for translators—Unicode-enabled. This means they’re able to process all major (and most minor) languages.
The state of affairs is much the same here as it is for Windows. There are numerous office suites available for Windows, some of which I think are better than Microsoft Office.
The free OpenOffice.org suite is simply fabulous, as is its commercial sibling Sun StarOffice. These weigh much less heavily on your system than their Windows counterpart, and the Word equivalent Write has features that make life a lot easier (such as a direct PDF conversion or a very advanced AutoComplete function).
Anyone who’s worked with WordPerfect, Corel’s word processing program, raves about many of its features, including the noteworthy “Reveal Codes” function or the ability to start typing anywhere on a page.
However, because we’re service providers working on files that are furnished by our clients, we have no choice but to work in the environment provided, or in one that is compatible. All of the office suites claim compatibility with Microsoft Office, but none of them converts perfectly. To prove (or disprove) this point, I downloaded a copy of the brand new WordPerfect 12 yesterday, opened a fairly complex Microsoft Word file, and saved it back to Word format. The result: the file size had increased from 2 to 116 MB, the headers on most pages were gone, the pagination was completely different, and the fonts of the footnotes were messed up. In a conservative estimate, I would have had to spend several hours “fixing” the file. And I know my clients well enough to know they wouldn’t be thrilled having to do the same.
There are really two parts to this question. The first: Which edition of Microsoft Office should you use (Home, Professional, etc.)? Unless you’re working with a lot of databases (with Microsoft Access), there’s no reason for you to need anything but the basic package, which typically includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook. If only Word is relevant for you, you may be just as well off with the much less expensive version of Microsoft Works—just make sure that the package really does contain Word.
The second part of this question is which version of Microsoft Office you should use. The short answer: if you work in Asian, Eastern European, or other non-Western languages, you’ll want to use Office 2000 or higher because it supports Unicode. Naturally there are differences between Office 2000, XP, and 2003, but I haven’t yet found the magic option that would justify the fairly steep upgrade price. Besides, all the versions are compatible with each other.
Are the Right Versions of Windows and Word Enough?
Well . . . no.
Here’s the lowdown on what we’ve covered so far: there are many tasks that you’ll be able to do quite well with this equipment, but there’s much more that can be accomplished with the help of some other more specialized tools. Windows and Word would like to make you think they can cover everything, but there’s almost nothing that can’t be done just a little bit better.
The great thing is that most of the tools—called utilities—that you can use for these specific tasks are free. Even if there’s some cost involved, most of them are shareware, which means that you can download them to test them extensively.
HTML editors: NEVER use Word to work in HTML files. Instead, use one of the many free or inexpensive tools like Sausage’s HotDog (see www.sausage.com/products), Arachnophilia (see www.arachnoid.com), or Macromedia (formerly Allaire) HomeSite (see www.macromedia.com/software/homesite).
Text editors: If you want to sort, search, compare, or otherwise manipulate text files, you will want to work with text editors such as TextPad (see www.textpad.com), Multi-Edit (see www.multiedit.com), or UltraEdit (see www.ultraedit.com). For non-Western languages, try EmEditor (www.emeditor.com).
Search tools: When it’s important to search through a large number of files at once (such as different glossaries), you might want to look at the beloved Search and Replace (see www.funduc.com/search_replace.htm).
Conversion utilities: Convert (see www.joshmadison.com/software) places every possible (and impossible) conversion at your fingertips.
Copy and paste programs: Tired of overwriting your clipboard content? ClipMate (see www.thornsoft.com) may be just what you’re looking for. It stores copied content indefinitely, ready for you to access at any time.
By now you’ve probably realized that I could go on for a long time. The great thing is this: if you have a task that you would love your computer to do just a little more efficiently, chances are that someone else has already had the same wish—and has actually developed an application that will do just that. Often a single search in Google will direct you to that tool in a matter of seconds.
Some translators are content with what we’ve put together so far, but in my opinion there’s still something missing. I tend to divide my translation career into two phases: pre-CAT tool discovery and post-CAT tool discovery. The term CAT tool refers to computer-assisted translation tools, and in particular to translation memory tools (SDLX, Déjà Vu, Trados, Wordfast, and Star Transit, to name a few).
When I first began looking at these tools, I was skeptical: I didn’t want to change the workflow I’d become comfortable with; I thought my own memory was good enough to retain what I’d translated before; and I feared that my translation creativity would suffer with a CAT tool hanging around my neck.
Today, with a translation memory database of almost a million and a terminology database of about 100,000 records, I can’t help but smile at my early fears. No matter how good my own memory is, it still isn’t that good! And creativity? Given the choice that I have in these large data repositories, I have no doubt that my translations are just as creative as they were before—or even more so.
To decide which one fits your needs, make a list of criteria that seem important to you. Some of these might include the following:
the file formats that your tool will need to support, the variety
or uniformity of its user interface, your preference for working in single
files or several files at once, and
the supportiveness of the tool’s user group and distributor.
Most of these tools offer an evaluation version, and some even provide a completely free version that you can use for specific files which have been prepared by your clients—a great way of getting to know a variety of tools! And if you find out that the tool you’ve chosen is not the right one, it’s usually quite easy to transfer the databases between different tools.
It’s certainly important to uphold the love of language and meaning that St.
Jerome personifies. But as we cultivate those qualities, remember also that
it’s acceptable and even advisable to replace the quill with a keyboard and
the parchment with a well-equipped computer.
If you’re interested in these and many more computer-related details, please subscribe to my free newsletter at www.internationalwriters.com/toolkit.
(This article was reprinted with permission of the ATA Chronicle)
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