Have your foreign language skills gotten rusty since high school? The increase in international business communications, foreign travel, and Internet browsing may challenge those skills. Transparent Language’s EasyTranslator 2 offers help. It lets you translate web pages, email, memos, short reports, and other documents using software programs you already have on your computer, such as Notepad or your favorite word processor. Plug‐ins support MS Word 97 and WordPerfect 8.0 word processors; Microsoft Exchange, MS Outlook 97, and Eudora Pro 4.0 email programs; as well as several Web browsers, including Netscape Navigator, MS Internet Explorer, NCSA Mosaic, and Spyglas Mosaic. Installing a plug‐in will install EasyTranslator as a menu item or toolbar button within the application it is to work with.
While EasyTranslator comes on a CD‐ROM, the program installs all the necessary files and plug‐ins to the hard disk; so operation of the program does not require the CD in the drive. The installation program lets you choose the language pairs, dictionary sets, and plug‐ins you wish to install. You can choose to translate from English to French, German, Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese or from French, Spanish, or German into English. The first edition of EasyTranslator (reviewed in Vol. 1 No. 7, 1997) also included Grammar Basics to explain grammatical concepts and terminology and to teach how nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc. function in the different languages. EasyTranslator 2 has dropped this module even though the Help Contents still cover it.
EasyTranslator 2 can be viewed three ways: as a Toolbar, as an Agent on the Windows 95 taskbar, or as a Notepad. This may seem confusing because the program appears differently with each view. However, this gives users more flexibility in the program’s use with the various plug‐ins. It is also very easy to change from one view to another.
In Toolbar View, EasyTranslator appears as a floating bar from which you can access the Clipboard translator, the Web page translator, dictionary sequences, browser selection, and more. The Toolbar can be conveniently moved to any location on the screen, permitting easy access to the program while using one of the plug‐ins, such as a word processor or email program.
In Agent View, EasyTranslator appears as a small icon in the System Tray on the Windows taskbar as though it were minimized. Clicking on the icon provides access to all the program’s features. This view is useful when you want EasyTranslator out of the way but still quickly accessible or operating in the background.
In Notepad View, EasyTranslator appears as two connected windows. In the top window, you can type or copy any text you would like to translate, then see the translation in the bottom window. You can also drag and drop entire text files into the Notepad View for translation or copy from either window to another application. EasyTranslator’s competitors offer only a Notepad‐like interface.
After copying text to the Clipboard, you invoke EasyTranslator and select the appropriate language pairs. The program immediately begins translating the text on the Clipboard and replaces it with the translation. In Toolbar or Agent View, this occurs in the background; in Notepad View, you can see both the original and the translation for comparison. You can then paste the translated text from the Clipboard into the same document, another document, or a window in another program. The process is as quick as converting a document from one format to another.
Another option lets you translate pages that you view in your Web browser. In this case, EasyTranslator retains the format, pictures, and links of the original Web page and displays the translation in the Web browser. Its competitors require copying the text to the Clipboard for translation; but they don’t preserve the formatting. We encountered some problems with Web pages that use frames; but pages with graphics, columns, and other layout options presented no problems.
EasyTranslator comes with two dictionary sequences (Core and Internet) which are the set of dictionaries that EasyTranslator uses to translate text. Core contains common words with general translations. Internet contains all the words in Core plus special terms dealing with the Internet and the World Wide Web.
EasyTranslator attempts to break down complex sentence structures, identify parts of speech, and synthesize the information into the components and structure of the target language. We found that subjects and verbs did not always agree, particularly when there were intervening words. For example, in French, the direct object often comes between the subject and the verb causing EasyTranslator to make the verb agree with the direct object.
Computers can’t always produce perfect translations. Sometimes the translations are awkward or even humorous. Like a language student, the program will search the dictionary and may pick the first word or have to “guess” at which one to choose, particularly when words have multiple meanings. For example, when using the word “like” as a comparator, EasyTranslator sometimes rendered it as a verb in French (aimer instead of comme). Likewise, the verb “paste” (as in “cut and paste”) gets translated as a noun as did the word “back” in the phrase “referring back.”
When the program does not recognize a word, it leaves it in the original language, much as a person might mix words in various languages when the proper word does not come to mind immediately. EasyTranslator does not highlight those words, change font, or otherwise draw attention to the fact that they were not translated. For example, the program did not recognize the term “email” when converting from English to French. (It does recognize and translate the word properly when spelled “e‐mail.”) The term remained intact in the translation, possibly leading to confusion, as the French term émail means “glazed pottery.”
It would be nice to have a feature to add words to the dictionary or to be able to teach EasyTranslator as it operates. Transparent Language does sell products that let you create your own dictionaries that can then be used with EasyTranslator. One such product is Transcend, a translation program that preserves the formatting of documents and lets you build your own dictionaries.
Because computers don’t always produce perfect translations, you may want to include both the original text and the translation in the document to help the reader understand or decipher any awkward sentences. The translation will usually provide the gist of the text; but it’s always good to have the original as a reference. Translations from English produced better results than the inverse. (We focused primarily on French and Italian and assume comparable results in other languages.)
The EasyTranslator CD also includes WordPoint to assist in fine tuning EasyTranslator’s translations. When WordPoint is running, moving the cursor over any word and pausing briefly or clicking on it will display a quick list of its possible meanings and part of speech in a different language. These translations can appear in balloons or in the main WordPoint window, or in both. This lets you “touch up” translations easily by looking up specific words that may not have been translated correctly. If the various meanings do not seem appropriate, or if you find a better word to use, you may have to edit your text. You can also use WordPoint to translate individual words in other Windows applications.
EasyTranslator does not produce perfect translations by any means and cannot be relied upon for important or sensitive work, like business transactions or diplomatic communications. Nor is it designed for professional translators or for users who need to translate technical documents. It is aimed at active Web and e‐mail users as well as those who deal with international business or education who need assistance with individual communications for their personal understanding.
Language students might find EasyTranslator helpful for their assignments; but they would need to check its accuracy. EasyTranslator is most helpful for people who have some foreign language skills or who need some assistance to communicate. It performed better than our expectations, as the best machine translation tools provide between 50 and 80 percent accuracy, depending on the nature of the source material. EasyTranslator will encounter some problems with idioms and certain grammatical structures, as can be expected; but it does better than its competitors. It performs best with simple, non‐specialized text and will convey the gist of the passages if not a perfect translation. EasyTranslator can minimize the drudgery of translating, leaving the writer to focus on correcting unrecognized words, errors in translation, or grammatical structure. The writer can focus on improving the delivery rather than on the mechanics of converting the text.
