Quickly launch dictionary sites with Firefox add-on

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).

Share this post :

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

Using Office 2007 files in Office 2003

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

Share this post :

Some Neat Word Tips

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

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

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