Useful applications Thread poster: Chris Lancaster
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The other day there was a useful link to wordweb, which made me wonder what other applications/freeware translators swear by in their daily endeavours. For example, a lot of agencies request invoices be sent on 25th of the month instead of at the end and if you forget, as I frequently did, then you have to wait an extra month for payment. Because of that I now use Lucky24 as a reminder pop-up tool for that and other things. I'm sure there must be other useful applications being used ...
| | | | esperantisto 
Local time: 21:32
Member (2006)
English to Russian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | Mozilla Sunbird (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/) | Dec 11, 2007 |
I'm not sure, if it can produce pop-ups, it just highlights pending tasks with blue and overdue ones with red.
But I, frankly, can't understand what you need…
| | | | | I don't need anything | Dec 11, 2007 |
I was merely wondering what other useful tools/applications are being used out there.
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loaded every single working day (XP):
TO3000, SDL Trados, Dragon Naturally Speaking, Darn Passwords, Outlook (used for periodic reminders from Calendar), Attachment Save, Attachment Forget-me-not, PowerDesk, Skype, BitDefender, AsusProbe, DriveClone, Aqua Dock, Fix-It Utilities, Google Desktop
According to needs:
Word, Excel, Adobe Reader, PowerPoint, Helium, ExactSpent, LocStudio, Download Accelerator Plus, Omnipage, PDF Create, Bulk Rename Utility, Picasa, WinHTTrack,... See more loaded every single working day (XP):
TO3000, SDL Trados, Dragon Naturally Speaking, Darn Passwords, Outlook (used for periodic reminders from Calendar), Attachment Save, Attachment Forget-me-not, PowerDesk, Skype, BitDefender, AsusProbe, DriveClone, Aqua Dock, Fix-It Utilities, Google Desktop
According to needs:
Word, Excel, Adobe Reader, PowerPoint, Helium, ExactSpent, LocStudio, Download Accelerator Plus, Omnipage, PDF Create, Bulk Rename Utility, Picasa, WinHTTrack, Ad-aware, Multiterm, Multiterm Extract, Search&Replace
Use for all of these programs is detailed by googling them.
After a few years' trial and error and the help of some Proz.com forums and tips, I end up with a lot of bits and pieces, but I think they make me more productive and safer datawise. Fact is, I find it more painful to work on a PC that doesn't feature all these gizmos.
Of course, each of us have their own recipes to speed up certain tasks.
Philippe ▲ Collapse
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| A variety of small, free applications | Dec 11, 2007 |
- Express Scribe: for transcription. Makes hot keys available to start and stop audio play from within word processer.
- WorkRave: stop at intervals to do brief exercises and stretches.
- Time Stamp: simple time tracker for jobs billed
... See more
- Express Scribe: for transcription. Makes hot keys available to start and stop audio play from within word processer.
- WorkRave: stop at intervals to do brief exercises and stretches.
- Time Stamp: simple time tracker for jobs billed by the hour.
- Alarm Clock
Programs in my system tray:
- Snippy: tiny, simple screen capture program. You can select a rectangular or free-form area to capture.
- Date In Tray: show date always in system tray; click on date to show current month's calendar.
[Edited at 2007-12-11 21:22]
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| | | | Maria Asis
Spain
Local time: 20:32
Member (2002)
English to Spanish
+ ...
| | A bit of my collection | Dec 11, 2007 |
FileSphere Personal - http://www.filesphere.com/
Document and version management software. Useful for keeping track of projects that contain several files, especially website translation. Also, never send your client old versions of files that have been updated since, ever again! It also lets you comment diffrerent version of a file as well as compare different versions of a file. You can launch applicat... See more FileSphere Personal - http://www.filesphere.com/
Document and version management software. Useful for keeping track of projects that contain several files, especially website translation. Also, never send your client old versions of files that have been updated since, ever again! It also lets you comment diffrerent version of a file as well as compare different versions of a file. You can launch applications directly from within the program - it opens TagEditor files in TagEditor! The Personal edition is free and is perfect for the needs of freelancers.
Exalead Desktop - http://www.exalead.com/download/exaleadDesktop
Internet and desktop search. Beautiful interface, with previews of documents and websites displayed as thumbnails. Will index the contents of your drive while you are idle - always up to date. Possibility to define where you want to search, what you want to search for - lots of search criteria. There is a feature that will let you bookmark specific search results, in cases where you want to run a search that may contain thousands of results and you want to collect the relevant results before opening them. What I find awesome is that it will display e-mail messages (provided you save them outside of Outlook to a folder - see below for MessageSave) with their attachment - you can then open the original e-mail, open the attachments directly from within Exalead and even display the contents of the attachment within Exalead! The Desktop edition is free.
ApSic XBench - http://www.apsic.com/en/products_xbench.html
Quality check & quality assurance for translators. Awesome tool! It can do lots of things that commercial software doesn't. You can, for example, merge TMs and overwrite the source and target languages so you can use an EN-EN > FR-FR TM to translate an EN-EN > FR-CA document. It will let you load any number of TMs, TDBs and other bilingual files and it lets you define priorities among these so the results from the most relevant resource are displayed first. You can search within TagEditor documents for segments with advanced search criteria - for example, you can search for three words in a segment, but these three words will not have to be next to each other in the segment and they can be placed in any order (you'll never use the Maintain function of Trados again for searches). It will find all segments that contain a string, even if it is lower than a 30% match (forget about Trados). Finally, if you load a bilingual file (Word uncleaned, TradosTag, etc.) and define it as active translation, it will list search results for strings, then you can look at the context (usually ten segments before and ten segments after the current segment) and if you want to edit the segment directly in the document, it will open whatever software you use for editing (e.g., TagEditor) and highlight that particular segment. The possibilities are endless. This is by far the most useful software I use, even in comparison with commercial software - and it is FREE!
ApSic Comparator - http://www.apsic.com/en/products_comparator.html
File comparison for bilingual files. This usually means TradosTag files and uncleaned Word files, but it works for a few othe filetypes as well. This is straightforward. When editing a bilingual document, you don't need to use commenting tools anymore, thereby interrupting the process of editing and losing productibity. Just take that TradosTag file, edit whatever there is to edit without stopping to write comments on your edits. When you are done, Comparator will compare the original bilingual file with the one you edited, and it will produce a report. In the report, you will only see segments that were edited - those that were not edited are absent in the report. All edits are highlighted within the segments. The report is a table and you have some columns to the right to enter your questions, comments or other information - you can also customize these columns. You can simply add your comments in one run, which helps to boost productivity. This one is also free.
Nelson Email Organizer - http://www.caelo.com/
Add-on for Outlook. Lets you look at your mail the way you want to see it. This is basically an interface to handle mail - mail is still handled by Outlook, but NEO helps you to be on top of it all. It lets you find e-mail much more easily than Outlook, will let you file e-mail according to your logic (this is sorely missing in Outlook) and will even file e-mail automatically. This is awesome for anybody who uses e-mail intensively. Try it, you'll see. I can't do wothout it anymore. There is a Free edition, which is nice but doesn't contain most of the functions I have come to depend on. However, when you first download the Free edition, you get a trial of 30 days for the full version. The full version costs $35 at the moment - an awesome deal, since I would have paid a good $150 for something like this.
MessageSave - http://www.techhit.com/messagesave/
E-mail backup. Simple, straightforward. Lets you backup individual messages either as text or as .eml files. Very useful for keeping a record of things agreed upon with clients to use later when a litigation arises, without cluttering up your e-mail client. Lets you define the folder structure and the naming convention. Lets you define criteria - you can, for example, back up all e-mail in an Outlook folder, all e-mail from a specific correspondant, all e-mail in a specific date span, and so forth. I back up client e-mail on an external hard drive - it keeps my inbox clean and gives me the assurance that I never lose an important e-mail. You can then search these using Exalead above. This one costs $50 on its own.
EZDetach - http://www.techhit.com/ezdetach/
Save attachments in e-mail messages. Works the same way as MessageSave above. Costs $40.
You can get MessageSave and EZDetach in a bundle for $80. Both are available for a 30-day trial.
Add a CAT tool to all this and you have an awesome translation office, with great synergy, at a very affordable price. As for accounting, I recommend TO3000 also, but it is best if you also add accounting software, since TO3000 doesn't let you keep accounts per se.
If you try any of these and have comments, get back here and tell us about it - I would love to see how it turns out.
All the best! ▲ Collapse
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