Do you use CAT tools? Language learning apps? Online dictionaries or other resources for reference?
This is your thread to share your favorite translation and language-related tools. We hope that here you'll be able not only to share tools that you already use and love, but also learn from your peers and perhaps find new favorites that you might not have come across otherwise :)
We're looking forward to your responses!
10 comments
There are a lot of great tools that help very much with translation work. First of all, I would mention dictation. With a good dictation tool, you can speed up your work enormously while protecting yourself from repetitive strain injuries typical for intense typers. Unfortunately, I have not yet found a way to use dictation with a browser, so that I cannot use it with the Gengo platform jobs.
Next, there are dozens of essential websites I use for daily translation work (in fact they are always open in a tab), for example: Acronymfinder, urbandictionary, Linguee, Reverso, DeepL (not for translating itself, but for getting ideas when I'm stuck), dict.leo.org, German and English Wikipedia (the interwiki links are great for finding technical terms), the Proz term search, and for the German language: Duden.de and "Wortschatz Uni Leipzig" which is great for finding synonyms.
I'm also using CAT tools but this mainly depends on the client or agency I work for. Memsource seems to be a favorite with my agencies, but when I can choose, I prefer MemoQ.
In regard with CAT tools, I first came across Memsource when working on Gengo's projects last year. It is a great tool to keep consistency in translating the terms and autofill repetitions for me. Though this is my first annual subscription, I see my productivity improving immensely.
MemoQ is the main CAT tool I use, quite user-friendly with a lot of features. Memsource isn't bad, either.
The most useful tools nowadays seem to be Linguee and Reverso. It’s really helpful to see specific words used in broader context. The ProZ term search is great when it comes to more technical or obscure, specific terms. Good, reliable dictionary is also a must. In certain circumstances and very rarely, I will also use Google’s translator – it can sometimes return accurate translations of terms used in Internet or social media context. There’s also one lesser known, but useful thing – LanguageTool. It can catch grammatical, style and spelling errors ignored by plain spell-checkers, that’s why I use it before final review. It’s not perfect, as its suggestions concerning for example commas placement are not always right, but it’s helpful anyway.
I never felt the need to use CAT tools, but I tried free Smartcat this month. It’s really good and simple to use. It splits the text in similar way as Gengo’s workbench does, but sadly there’s currently no way to transfer Gengo jobs there, unless you have access to the file.
This is a great thread to know what other translators are using.
I'm an English-to-Japanese translator. While my best reference is still various dictionaries, there are some non-dictionary resources that I'd like to mention.
I set the language on one browser (Chrome) as Japanese and another (Firefox) as English, and I also toggle with the language setting on my iPhone often, both of which can be helpful especially in IT and SNS-related jobs.
The rest of my tricks that I find useful are specific to us in language pairs that cross-over from/into non-alphabet writing systems. Among several tabs that I keep on my browsers, the one that I use for jobs in different fields often is 外国人名読み方字典 by Weblio that provides several ways alphabet names are written in Japanese. I cross-reference the choices with other web sources such as Wikipedia and Google to determine the most appropriate. Speaking of Google, Google Maps is also a reference that's kept on my tab. When I need the name of a place spelled in Japanese characters (katakana or kanji in case of Chinese or Korean locales), I type the alphabet name into my Chrome Google Maps, and in most cases they take me to the place and show me the Japanese name, often times down to the street name. The trick often is to zoom into the actual map. Cross-referencing is still a must; after all, it is Google.
I did not find Grammarly capable of catching the subtle errors which Gengo reviewers never ever miss ;) Instead, Grammarly constantly complains about passive voice misuse.
(in the free version at least, but i doubt the paid version can do it either)
A great tool for translation into English is Ludwig - it is useful if you cannot remember exactly how the english idiom is used, also for choosing the right article.
MemoQ is the main CAT tool I use. Wordfast is also a very good one.
I don't use any CAT Tools but now and then I use LEO.ORG or WordReference.com in case I need some help with languages. LEO.ORG is a classic tool they use in Germany though and is limited to a certain amount of languages.
I still use Microsoft Word for translation. The Find & Replace is valuable for keeping consistency throughout a document in a one-off project.