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1. What the Font?
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Fonts can make our life
just a little bit easier. After all, we spend most of our time staring at
computer screens and a change in font can make all the difference in a long
day's worth of work. While it's definitely not a very good idea to change fonts
in the files that you're delivering to the client (if you want to keep the client,
that is...), it may be easy to change the fonts in the translation environment
tools with which you process the files, without this having the slightest
effect on the actual deliverable files. (Don't do it if you are working directly
in the file, such as with Trados / Wordfast / Metatexis / Multitrans
within MS Word; however, if you have a tool that works through an
intermediary format like pretty much the rest of them, it should be no problem.)
For me this has the same
effect as repainting the walls of a room or putting on new clothes -- only that
it's much easier and cheaper.
If you first want to get
an overview of what kind of fonts are available on your system, you can use the
Font Sample Generator -- a macro that allows you to generate a Word document that lists
samples of all the fonts installed on your system.
And if none of the fonts
strike you as worthwhile, it might be time to install some fresh fonts. There
are plenty of sites that list free fonts (and even more with paid ones), but a
good place to start is 1001 Fonts
(though you will quickly discover that working in a super-decorative font does
not really help your productivity). There are plenty of ways to install fonts.
You can select Start> (Settings>) Control Panel> Fonts
and then select File> Install New Fonts, or you can simply open Windows
Explorer (WinKey+E) and copy and paste the .ttf font files into the C:\WINDOWS\Fonts directory.
If you see a font
somewhere and would love to work with it but you have no idea what it is or how
to get it, you can have it analyzed at What The Font? You may not find
a perfect match, but it may find a "fuzzy match" and suggest similar
alternatives.
And if you feel particularly
creative and would like to create you own font without paying an arm and a leg
for a professional font design tool, go right ahead. Sites like vLetter or the much cheaper and easier Fontifier allow you to create your font
based on your handwriting. The open-source tool FontForge allows you to alter an
existing font to make it suit your particular needs, and the great site FontStruct allows you create your
own font, download fonts that others have created, and network with other font
lovers. What I particularly liked about FontStruct was that it allows you
to select from among 22 different writing systems, including Arabic, Hebrew,
Thai, and Japanese Katagana (no surprise that Chinese characters are not among
the options!).
Now, you need to be
aware that many of the sites mentioned above are also trying to sell fonts alongside
their free fonts. However, if you're really keen on getting a font, it may be
worth paying a license fee. Plus it's worthwhile to see that some of the truly
powerful commercial fonts are the product of not just an afternoon of goofing
around with a font design tool but well-constructed and designed pieces of art.
And lastly, if you have
gotten into a real frenzy over the new fonts and you notice that your computer
has slowed down in the process (which it will if you have lots and lots of
fonts), you might want to look at the appropriately named free Font Frenzy. This product manages your fonts by allowing you to temporarily
deactivate certain fonts and reactivate them at the snap of a finger.
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| 2. Wanna Know Whether You
Are the Administrator? | |
We all know how
frustrating it is to be told by Windows that you "need to be an administrator
to do this and that." Now, are you or are you not?
Here is how you can find
out in a heartbeat: Select Start> Run (or press WinKey+R) and
enter control
userpasswords2 (in Vista: select
Start and enter control userpasswords2 into
the Search box). If you find two tabs in the User Accounts dialog
box, you are the administrator; if not, or if you are prompted for a password, then
you drew the short stick (read: you are not an administrator).
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3. Conferences Reloaded
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The year is not even
over and many of us are still recuperating from the conference schedule of last
fall, and already there are new conferences on the horizon. By the way, the successful
Translator as Strategic Partner conference put on by Michael Benis a few
weeks ago achieved the distinction of being the largest translation conference held
in Europe to date. Congratulations!
The first of the two upcoming
conferences that look exciting to me this coming year is Interpreting the Future in
Berlin on September 11-13, 2009 (feels kind of strange to write that futuristic
looking "2009"!). The subtitle of the conference is "Challenges
for Interpreters and Translators Arising from Globalisation" and the program
reiterates that theme:
Interpreters and translators will be meeting with
representatives of national and international organisations and public
authorities, as well as experts in the fields of business, industry and
education, to discuss current and future challenges facing the profession.
It's organized by one of
the German translators' associations, the BDÜ, and it's the first conference
that they've put on in a long time. This certainly seems to be a timely topic
and it will be interesting to see how it turns out.
The other interesting
conference is Translation World 2009. The title is "Translating Global Priorities" and it
will be held in Toronto on May 11 and 12, 2009.
This is how the
conference describes itself:
Translation World is a learning, sharing, and
interactive conference gathering the leading stakeholders in the world of
translation. Industry, education and research, and government all gather to
exchange and explore the most relevant issues in the world of translation and of
translation in the world. Issues in interpreting will also be included. As
such, it is of interest to people and organisations from both the supply and
demand sides.
I am interested in this conference
particularly because it is to some degree a continuation of the promising Translation
Summit -- one of the few events that actually did bring together some folks
who usually don't meet at conferences (from academia, government, private
industry and the language sector).
If you would like to
present at any of these conferences, you'd better get your act together. Submissions
must be received before January 6 (Interpreting the Future) and January
9 (Translation World).
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| 4. Snag This! |
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In my last newsletter I
mentioned SnagIt as the "one graphics tool that I use day-in and
day-out to capture, annotate, modify, and send screenshots (images of dialog
boxes or my screen)." Craig Meulen mentioned that there is also an open-source
alternative (as there is to virtually any kind of tool). It's called Greenshot and may be worthy of
mention because Naomi de Moraes pointed out that the latest version of SnagIt
is not as powerful as earlier versions (or, put differently, too powerful, but in
the wrong direction).
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| 5. Future Glimpse of Trados |
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Here you can find the most
comprehensive preview review of the upcoming version of Trados. The
posting is in German, so here are some of the more interesting changes in the
upcoming version of Trados (as shown at the tekom conference)
mentioned by the review:
·
A two-column view à la Déjà Vu,
MemoQ, or SDLX in the translation editor, TagEditor's
successor (i.e., source segments on the left and target segments on the right).
·
An AutoComplete feature as in Excel
or the address fields of browsers, but based on content within the translation
memory instead. I know that several other vendors have also been working on this
feature for a while but have not introduced it because it slows down processing
too much. It will be interesting to see how Trados deals with this.
·
A stronger orientation toward
WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) mode in the translation editor with the
possibility to forego the display of tags for certain formats.
- A
live preview feature where you can see the changes that are being
performed in the translation editor in a representation of the actual Word
document right to the side of it (a bit like MemoQ, I assume).
- The
TTX format will be a thing of the past and will be replaced with XLIFF. This is huge and should give XLIFF --
the exchange format for translation files -- the long-deserved boost to
make it mainstream. For translators this will be great since XLIFF makes
it even easier to use your tool rather than the one the client uses
without going through conversion convolutions first. Since most other
tools either support XLIFF or have long promised it, this should make the
wide support for XLIFF a final reality.
- The
translation memory format has also changed and will, according to the
review, be maintained in a version of MS SQL Server. I hope that this
isn't true since it would require a gigantic installation and a possible
drain on computer resources -- but we will see what the new year brings.
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| 6.
A Star Re-Appeareth |
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No, it's not the star
that many of us hear about in the Christmas season; it's the new version of Star
Transit NXT that has finally been released. I haven't had a chance to test the new version -- though I've
seen a couple of presentations and really liked it -- but there is also a newly
released Service Pack (24) for the previous version of Transit XV that
allows you to receive, process, and send Transit NXT (if you
install an additional NXT-XV conversion add-on). You can download it at ftp://ftp.star-group.net/updates.
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| 7. Google's March
Madness |
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Just about a year ago I
mentioned that Google had included Sun's StarOffice -- the paid and
slightly better version of OpenOffice -- as part of the distribution of Google Pack.
(Google Pack is a prepackaged download bundle with all kinds of free
programs and some teaser versions of programs.) This came to a rather abrupt
end last month when Google dropped the program. The competition with its own online
word processing/spreadsheet/presentation application Google Docs must
have been problematic in the eyes of some Google beholders.
Just a week or so ago,
right after Google Chrome (Google's browser that had a comet-like
start but then sort of fizzled) had been taken off the beta shelf and made into
a "production-worthy" 1.0 product, Firefox almost suffered the
same fate as StarOffice. Even though it's still available, it's not
included in the English version of the package by default anymore -- that
position has now been taken by Chrome. This means that there are only
two security-related products among the default choices that are not owned by
Google, positioning everything else well in Google territory!
No one would argue that Google has every right
in the world to do this -- after all, it's their Google Pack -- but I am
intrigued by the process. It's interesting to see Microsoft quietly slip into
the back row of those we love to hate, while the company whose motto was "Don't
be evil" takes their place. But, then, we're probably just jealous.
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8. A Love Story (continued)
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This one is for a group
of people who may just need some of the confidence for the coming year that this character
displays.
If you have a Javascript-enabled browser, hold
your cursor over the character for a definition.
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| The Last Word on the Tool Kit |
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If you would like to promote this newsletter by placing a link on your website, I will in turn mention your website in a future edition of the Tool Kit. Just paste the code you find here into the HTML code of your webpage, and the little icon that is displayed on that page with a link to my website will be displayed.© 2008 International Writers' Group
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