Before switching, of course, all of my main programs and files were housed on my PC, where I worked most of the time. So I knew that finding a way to get all of those onto an entirely different computer AND operating system would probably not be quick and easy.

Not only that, but a small but highly significant proportion of my main programs were Windows-only programs, such as MemoQ and my bilingual digital dictionaries (although one of the CAT tools I use, Swordfish II, is cross platform).

My solution to this was Parallels 6, which enables you to run your Windows OS within your Mac OS as a ‘virtual machine’ without having to reboot into Windows. My Windows programs would run right alongside my Mac applications – simple.

I used Parallels Desktop 6 ‘Switch to Mac edition’, which comes with a high-speed USB transfer cable which you connect from your old PC to your new Mac, quite literally transferring the Windows OS, files and programs across.

Sound too good to be true? It did take a long time, and I had a couple of hiccups along the way (not associated with Parallels itself), but overall the process was surprisingly simple if you follow instructions carefully.

Philippa’s tips:

• Remember to back-up your files before doing anything!

• Allow plenty of time for the switch. Preferably over a weekend, rather than during the week when you’re likely to have deadlines looming.  The process is not overly complex but that doesn’t mean you can do it in your lunch hour.

• Turn off any overzealous anti-virus programs if you find there is something preventing the transfer from starting. It took a lot of fiddling around before I realised that TrendMicro had created a firewall that blocked the transfer.

• File synchronising software: Careful! I should have known to temporarily disable SugarSync altogether because, doing its job, it started to create two copies of everything on both computers. I felt safer temporarily upgrading my account while the transfer was taking place and sorting it out later. Better that than interrupting and risking data loss.

• Ensure your Mac has plenty of RAM. Mine has 8 GB. Ensure you grant the Windows ‘virtual machine’ more than 1 GB of this, otherwise it will run extreeeemely slowly.

• Fine-tune your virtual machine settings within Parallels according to your needs – e.g. choose which operating system will run faster, and configure back-up behaviour if you use Time Machine (which can get very confused if it thinks it needs to back-up two ‘different’ machines!).

• To make life easier as you’re switching, use as many cross platform tools as you can. For example, LastPass + Xmarks premium to help you keep track of all your website passwords on your old and your new computer, while Evernote, Firefox and Thunderbird helped make the day-to-day transition seamless for me. Once the machine was up and running by Monday, I just got on with work.

• You can certainly run your Office suite in your virtual machine, but it’s probably simpler in the long run just to buy Microsoft Office for Mac, as you may not want to have your Windows virtual machine open all the time. I have found the Office for Mac 2011 edition easy to use and fully compatible with Windows versions of Office. The only programs I still run in Windows are now MemoQ and my dictionaries. The rest are in Mac.

• Use ‘coherence’ mode in Parallels (usually only possible if your machine has enough RAM). Parallels has video tutorials to explain the difference between the different ‘modes’ available for running your two operating systems side by side, but I’ve found ‘coherence’ the most streamlined way of working. I’m barely aware that I’m running two different operating systems.

Does anyone have any more tips they can add?икониПравославни иконииконописikoniсвети георги

Image courtesy of All Systems Go Computer Consulting

Last month I realised that my 3-year old desktop computer needed a serious upgrade; although it had 4 GB of RAM multitasking was becoming gradually slower and the processor was not quite up to scratch. Not only that, my PC was enormous, taking up about one third of my desk. It was also very loud. Working alongside something that sounded like an aircraft taking off was distracting.

I had the option to upgrade some of the PC’s parts, but once I started to tot up the costs, I realised (with a little help and persuasion from fellow translators on Twitter!) that it was time to buy a wholly new desktop. Many of the PC’s parts were already over 5 years’ old, as it has been built and rebuilt over the years.

I did quite a bit of research about which new computer would suit me best. But you may be surprised to hear that switching to a Mac desktop and OS wasn’t initially in my sights.

My main priorities were:

1)   8 GB of RAM, for faster multitasking

2)   Small form factor, ideally an all-in-one, to avoid continuing a situation where my desk is dominated by my computer

3)   Peace and quiet!

4)   Reliability

I soon realised that if you want a powerful computer, you may have to compromise on size and noise. I looked at all-in-ones but after reading reams of reviews it seemed that they weren’t necessarily the best option for business users, usually being less powerful. Most also seemed to be pre-loaded with Windows 7 ‘Home Premium’ rather than Windows 7 Professional, which suggested to me that they weren’t really designed for the sort of intensive use business users tend to inflict on their computers. There’s obviously an additional risk with all-in-ones too, since it’s likely to be more difficult to remove and replace the computer’s parts. However, what the reviews did tell me was that if you ‘re set on an all-in-one, the Apple iMac still stands out miles from the competition.

After deliberating over a couple more alternatives and not finding anything else that could combine performance + size + quietness so well, the iMac was the only computer through to the final round. I went for a 21.5” iMac (I use 2 screens) with an Intel Core i5 processor, a 1 TB Serial ATA Drive and 8 GB (2x 4 GB) of RAM. I customised the computer on the Apple website; it was pricey, but the final cost was not wildly different to that of a PC with the same specs, based on my online searches.

I have no plans to become an Apple cheerleader; I have no burning preference for Apple hardware and software and (perhaps unlike some other Mac users) in my opinion there’s nothing inherently wrong with PCs or Microsoft Windows. I don’t have an iPhone and these days my business laptop is a great little Lenovo ThinkPad.

But I have to admit that my new iMac has most definitely been a change for the better. I now have a high-performing computer that is virtually silent and has allowed me to reclaim a large section of my desk. This is a revelation in itself, aside from the benefits the computer itself offers. I have a small office and surface space is at a premium – this is now much less of a problem. This is important to me. With Parallels, I also have a way to continue using my Windows programs (such as my preferred CAT tool) – more on this in my next blog post, which will give some tips for making the transition as smooth as possible if it’s something you’re considering.икони на светциКартиниИдея за подаръкикони

Over the past 6 months or so I’ve experimented with the Swordfish II Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) program; this post is a brief walkthrough of its main features.

Flexibility: The main attraction of Swordfish for me was that it’s cross-platform, so I can use it on a Windows PC and on a Mac (or on the Linux operating system). This degree of flexibility is hard to come by on the CAT tools market, and in my opinion is Swordfish’s main selling point. The only slight snag is that, although you can use the same licence across more than one computer, you have to disable and enable it each time (unlike with open source cross-platform programs such as OmegaT, for example). This is fine in principle, but you need to be good at remembering to disable the licence on your desktop PC before venturing out to work within Swordfish on your laptop!

File formats: Swordfish can handle an impressive range of different file formats very competently, including Trados .ttx files. It works by converting these file formats to ‘XLIFF’ format (an open standard) before opening the file within the Swordfish editing environment. The documents are converted back to their original format once you’ve completed the translation and are ready to proofread the final version. This also means I can convert a PowerPoint file, for example, to XLIFF in Swordfish, start working on it in Swordfish and come back to it later within another program that supports the XLIFF format (e.g. MemoQ). This adds an additional layer of flexibility and interoperability.

Layout: The interface is clean and extremely easy to find your way around, even if you don’t have time to read the (short) user manual back-to-back before starting to use it. Like in other programs, the Translation Memory database and terminology database results are displayed in a right-hand column as you type. A click on a term (or keyboard shortcut) will simply add it to your translation. You also have the option to have several TM and terminology databases open at the same time.

Terminology search integration: One of the features I like most about Swordfish, and which I haven’t seen offered to the same extent by any other CAT tool, is its integration of search tools such as Linguee, IATE and Termium Plus, which you can search while translating (provided you’re connected to the internet) without having to open a separate browser. This feature is fully customisable for the language combinations you work with, and is so useful that I tend to have Swordfish open just for this even if I’m using another CAT tool for a particular job. Like some other programs, Google Translate is also integrated, should you want to search its corpora during your first draft.

Downsides: Swordfish can be slow in moving between segments compared with other programs of its capabilities. The QA function is up there with the best programs of its kind but again tends to run slower than I’d like. The ‘concordance’ function can take far too long to load if your Translation Memory databases are sizeable. Also, the ‘create database’ function doesn’t differentiate between a Translation Memory database and a terminology database, so you need to ensure you give meaningful names to your databases (e.g. _TM/Term) in order to find them again.

Verdict: The PC version of Swordfish could certainly run a lot faster than it does, but the program does offer a very great deal for its relatively small price tag, and I think it has the edge on cross-platform interoperability. Its integration of the main online terminology search tools makes it feel like a ‘translator’s translation tool’. The support offered is also extremely responsive, in my experience.

Swordfish is can be downloaded as a 30-day free trial. See www.maxprograms.com for more screenshots and details.ови услуги

Yesterday the New Statesman ran an article which explores some of the possible reasons. I’m tempted to conclude that politicians in the UK  have simply not yet taken the internet seriously enough as medium (remember Cameron’s ‘too many tweets make a twit’ comment?). However, the major parties do seem to all have Twitter profiles, and the Conservatives even have their ‘WebCameron’, so it’s not as if they have completely ignored the medium’s potential.  

However, I think one of the problems is they still don’t quite fully understand it or know how to exploit its full potential. The internet is certainly a powerful vehicle which can quickly speed out of control, but instead of attempting to take the wheel, the parties seem to tend to just let it do its own thing. So we see the supporters, such as Grace Fletcher-Hackwood, starting their own Twitter campaigns and the politicians just piggybacking on that once the campaign gains in popularity.

Perhaps the politicians just don’t believe that using the internet to garner support will make a difference. But, from the voting public’s point of view, aside from door-to-door visits, reaching out via the internet (e.g. using something like Twitter) must surely be the most direct and democratic way of communicating, right? It offers politicians a direct line of communication with the public. If they’re worried that communicating with voters via social media may come across as cheesy or cynical, is this really more of a concern than the fact that TV and the press can never offer a truly neutral medium for a political message? There is always an editorial agenda of some kind, and while this is of course also true of much the internet (particularly blogs), it at least offers a more interactive, diverse medium. What politics needs, surely, is a two-way conversation with the electorate, not just one-way electioneering.

I imagine the real reason politicians have not made more use of Twitter, for example, is that they believe it is used only by the country’s chattering classes, liberals and progressives, who have probably already made up their minds about who to vote for. But this assumption really underestimates the far-reaching power of social media. Using the search hash-tag for my local town, I’ve certainly seen a number of undecided voters who have not yet engaged with any party and are looking for information.

I would argue that the internet really can help to change the course of an election, or at least help inform people about their options. Sites such as Votematch and 38Degrees help to provide the public with the facts and make an informed decision, an antidote to the irresponsible journalism and scaremongering often peddled by the press from both ends of political spectrum.

On a lighter note, it seems I’m not the only one trying to draw comparisons with the 2008 US elections  – The Sun has published a picture of David Cameron on its front page edited to look like one of Obama’s famous election images.  Alarmingly, they seem to be piggybacking on support for a US President in what is a completely and utterly different election, in completely and utterly different circumstances. At least, if Obama happens to see it (possibly via Twitter), it’d probably make him chuckle, given his previous meeting with Cameron. Oh dear, I think I’ve just been decidedly un-neutral икони

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) deals with optimising websites for people who use search engines such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. If you’re wondering what this has to do with translation, read on…

What is SEO?

SEO is centred around the ‘natural’ (or ‘organic’) search listings shown in a search engine results page. This is distinct from ’sponsored’ results (coloured red below) also seen on a search results page.

Sponsored results can be paid for by companies that want their website to appear when someone performs a search for a particular word or phrase. However, natural search results are determined by proprietary algorithms, and companies cannot pay to appear in the listings for these search results.

SEO can help websites to improve their positions in the natural results for certain search phrases (or ‘keywords’), which can significantly increase the number of visitors coming to a website.

So why is this important to translators?

As members of the translation industry know better than most, translating from one language to another is not simply about copying a text word for word into another language. As content on the internet grows, the need for quality translation services naturally grows with it.

As with any other discipline, writing for the web requires certain skills that may not be immediately obvious. Firstly, usability is an issue – usability guru Jakob Nielsen sums it up perfectly under the heading How users read on the web:

They don’t

Although this study was undertaken 12 years ago now, the fundamental principles hold true; you can’t write content for the internet in the same way as you do for paper. On the web, reading habits are vastly different, and this must affect the way we write or translate.

Secondly, findability is a consideration; if nobody can find your translated content on the internet, why was it translated? This is where even a basic knowledge of SEO can come in handy. Beyond the technical aspects of a website, SEO also deals with linguistic aspects of a website’s content.

One of the first processes SEOs undertake when optimising a website is keyword research, which analyses the language people use when searching for a particular product or service. By focusing the language used on a website to what people are actually searching for, the website’s content becomes more likely to appear in the natural search results and attract visitors.

As a starter for ten, a couple of free online tools that translators may find useful when translating online texts can be found with Google Insights and Google Trends.

Google Insights for Search

Both of these tools offer international data on searcher behaviour over the last 5 years. Data can be narrowed down to country and city level, and may be useful when researching terminology usage. For example the image above shows that more people are using the phrase “mpv” than “people carrier”, although the gap between the two phrases has narrowed since 2004.

Further reading

There is a huge number of free resources available on the net if you’re interested in learning more about SEO. Unfortunately the quality of information found on a the majority of blogs and forums is at best poor at often misleading if not wrong.

However, the links below are some of the best places to start:

• Official Google SEO Starter Guide – a useful reference to the basics, available in 40 languages.
• Google Webmaster Central blog – a must-read blog for anyone running a website.
• Search Engine Land – leading search engine news website.
• Matt Cutts’ Blog – Google’s head of Webspam blogs about a number of issues that affect webmasters.
• SEOBook – leading SEO blog; highly recommend buying the book for a detailed guide for anyone learning about SEO.

What have been your experiences of SEO? How much do you know about the inner workings of Google? For more discussion on SEO, check out Rob’s blog at robbiehammond.com. Feel free to leave any SEO-related questions in the comments below and Rob will answer them.

In case you hadn’t guessed from the name, Rob is my other half

Image courtesy of Compufix Online

Céline over at Naked Translations wrote a post yesterday about back-up systems for freelancers, and invited others to share how they guard their businesses against data loss. Céline, if you’re reading, this post is my answer!

I actually have what some might call a fairly paranoid approach to how I back-up my work, and have a few solutions. It took me a long time (too long) to fully realise just how important it is to make sure important documents can be recovered in the event of computer failure/other business disaster. I’ve never experienced the anguish of losing a humongous translation hours before a deadline, but last week I did experience major data loss. I think we can all identify with how it feels at that moment you realise something important has just gone ‘poof!’ and disappeared into thin air.

My first solution, similar to Céline’s Dropbox solution, is to use online syncing. I use Sugarsync. Essentially, as I’m typing, each document is then automatically backed-up on their servers, meaning I can access all my updated files from any computer that is connected to the internet (whether it’s a PC or a Mac). I can do this remotely via my profile on the Sugarsync website or via the downloadable Sugarsync file manager. Sugarsync also offers a number of advanced features, including an intriguingly named ‘magic briefcase’ and a secure ftp location for sending large files. For anyone worried about data security and backing-up in ‘the cloud’, files are encrypted with 128-bit AES – can you say that about email?

I love Sugarsync, but it’s certainly not my only solution. I also use a more traditional back-up and storage tool called ZenVault that stores my important files at a remote location. The data loss I experienced last week illustrated exactly why I use back-up as well as syncing: as soon as I managed to lose the crucial files on one computer, that change was automatically synced across all my computers, so there was no chance of recovery. However, instead I was able to go into my ZenVault terminal and recover the documents from previous back-ups. So, I have a way of taking a static snapshot of all my documents and past documents, as well as a way of making the latest versions of my documents available across all my computers.

Another key back-up for me is having alternative computers to work on in case my main PC fails. I also use the über-traditional method of backing up to an external hard-drive on my desk, which is the preferred option for most freelancers. At this year’s ITI conference, there was a lot of chatter about using ‘the cloud’ to store data, but people seemed to assume that storing it in offline was automatically more secure. What would you do if your home was burgled or burned down and your one and only back-up solution was inside? Is that really any more of a secure solution than using an encrypted online back-up service to store important files at a remote location?

The possibilities really are endless for the paranoid, and my view is that these contingencies are not likely to happen at the same time. However, it’s really does pay to be too careful when you’re freelance (i.e. without IT support on hand).  Essentially, the only (almost) fail-safe solution is to have more than one contingency planning solution.

To learn more about online back-up and syncing, have a read of this article.  Warning – the review is rather long, but if you can scan it and pick up the salient points it’s a good starting place for contingency planning. The key message is not to rely on just one solution.

The response to our presentation has been really positive, with many people wanting to learn more or see the slides again, so we decided to take our little 2 person roadshow online for the big wide world to see. We are now pleased to unveil a stripped down, re-recorded version of our presentation available at Slideshare.net. You can view the show within this post (below) or by following this link to Slideshare if you have problems hearing or viewing the embed.

Looking at the website of OneHour Translation, I’m sceptical (to say the least) about their ability to turn around larger documents (projects they say they can take on include websites and presentations) within just 1 hour. To me, the best use of this type of service is for something like Twitrans, not important or lengthy documents. What do others think about this type of service?

In Obama’s victory speech he said that the unsung heroes are his campaign managers and his strategist. Just look at how they tapped into communication tools that no candidate has ever bothered with before, such as Facebook right from the early days of the campaign, to creating his very own online community at MyBarackObama, to the point where Obama’s internet following was a self-driven vehicle.

For example, Obama (or one of Obama’s assistants) was tweeting on Twitter, with no less than 119,730 followers. Everytime he was speaking at a rally, a little link would be posted to allow his followers to watch it in realtime. By engaging with new forms of media, Obama has succeeded in reaching out to a new generation of voters, showing that he is a man of the world, for the world. He realises the amazing potential of social media and is able to use it as a means of getting his message across and cultivate a grassroots following through it.

For those of us who were unable to vote, how amazing it was to live through an historic event like this and, thanks to the internet and social media, to be able to feel like you’re really part of it. No matter who you supported in the campaign, after Obama’s victory, we must all agree that the internet’s ability to unite people and allow them to share experiences and interact should not be underestimated. Just look at some of reactions of people around the world, which we are now able to see for ourselves.

This article in the pioneering Huffington Post discusses how in this election the internet has done more than supplement traditional media:

While discussing with a friend an election night viewing party he’s throwing, he announced there would be “televisions all over the place.” “That’s great,” I said, “but just make sure the WiFi is working.” Because this year, the laptop — along with the array of Internet-connected mobile devices — has replaced the television as the must-have election night device.

P.S. While we’re on the subject, the blogosphere is currently alive with Obama-inspired posts, even suggesting that as freelancers we can learn from the campaign in terms of how we present ourselves, such as this one over at Contract Worker.