Whether you work as a translator, love traveling, or just want to get a better job, you will stumble upon the need to translate something. Just like languages, translation plays a vital role in our communication, regardless of the importance or the priority of such communication. And just like for many other things in our life, the technological advancement that we have today managed to develop the tools that help us with that as well. Digital translation tools are truly valuable today as the volumes of translation work and their demand grow. Yet, how do you choose the proper ones? Let’s see what the professionals say and find out.
Our Big and Little Helpers
Just like the translation itself, the software designed for the work with languages cannot be overestimated. While the small translation apps that fit easily into the memories of our phones and tablets are just invaluable for traveling, the “heavier” tools are often used by the professional translators for a serious matter, going as far as even saving people’s lives. When choosing translation software, it’s important to know what you need and expect from it. So, we’ve asked a couple of language specialists working with Pickwriters and got the result. Here are some of the best picks based on the professionals’ recommendations for this year.
- SDL Trados This computer-assisted translation software is considered to be a classic among professionals and agencies alike. Going at a relatively affordable price, SDL Trados Studio offers nearly everything a professional translator might. While it might not seem cheap, SDL Trados’ developers generously offer a 30-day trial version of this translation software kit for free.
- memoQ A software tool designed for working with translation memories, is another great addition to any translator’s software library. Aside from effectively adhering to its major function of memorizing and reusing the previous translations you worked on, memoQ also offers quite a precise and fast spellchecker that considers the context of your original and translated texts.
- Fluency Now A rather small yet, very capable translation tool kit, Fluency Now offers a classic side-by-side translation editor and translation memory tool to automate and accelerate your working processes for the best result possible. Being relatively cheap and working on all popular operating systems (macOS, Windows, and Linux), this little helper is invaluable for freelance translators and small agencies alike.
- SmartCAT A cloud-based tool kit that is very important for any translator who works in a team. Functioning predominantly as a collaborative tool, SmartCAT allows the writers, translators, localizers, and editors to work together to create the highest quality translations in no time and store all the work in a safe and spacious digital cloud.
- Magic Search A free yet, powerful tool that can serve lots of functions for different translators. Magic Search is a search engine that works with multiple languages simultaneously and seeks the contexts in different languages simultaneously. This tool is invaluable for the translators who must work with long texts and the SEO localization specialists.
- Smartling Quite a powerful localization platform that allows you to work on your translations and localization tasks faster and at greater ease. Like Magic Search, it searches for various contexts in various languages, yet, it also includes excerpts from the real articles and online resources for greater precision.
- Linguee An extremely powerful dictionary that includes over 1 billion translations in different languages and contexts. Working with the most used languages, Linguee offers the online browser version and the online and offline app versions so that your work could be as flexible as possible.
- Microsoft Translator Despite being a rather conventional and popular rather than a professional tool, Microsoft Translator can still help language specialists rather well. Being free of charge and working on nearly every OS, this little helper can give the professionals a hand at being mobile and flexible in their work.
- OmegaT Quite a small and convenient translation tool, OmegaT is great for freelancer translators and beginners as it’s free and efficient enough for serious translations.
- Word Counter As the name suggests, this tool counts the number of words in your text. It’s free and web-based, so it can be used by any translator at any time, given that you have an internet connection. This tool is quite useful when you have to have a specific or precise word count in your translated text. While some text editors do not count words exactly right, the Word Counter handles this task perfectly.
Working as a translator can be challenging, indeed. Whether you do classic work of document translations or provide fast transcription services, you’ll still need some little digital helper to make your job and life easier. And remember that every tool has its purpose, so using a couple of them is reasonable.
A Helping Digital Hand
Translation tools shape our society and the way we travel and spend our spare time and our work. In this regard, size doesn’t matter and even a small, seemingly minor translation tool can do a great deal of work while helping you out with a serious task. While working as a language specialist can sometimes be challenging, any help makes all the processes easier, allowing you to direct your attention to more important, creative, and complex processes.
