39
Text and HTML Editors
106
The Translator’s Tool Box - © International Writers’ Group, LLC
There are, however, much more powerful (and fairly inexpensive) programs
out there. Most of these have been developed by developers for developers,
so we as translators usually only see the very surface of what these programs
can do, but this is usually enough to be duly impressed. The most commonly
known ones for Windows are probably UltraEdit (see www.ultraedit.com),
EmEditor (see www.emeditor.com) or the free Notepad++ (see notepad-plus-
plus.org). I use UltraEdit for all Western languages and EmEdit for East-Asian
languages. But regardless of what I use, all of these programs do wonderful
things and are typically very sufficient for what we need as translators.
Here are some examples of what these programs do:
Have you ever tried to open a 20- or 30-MB text file in Word? Depending on
the speed of your computer, this can take up to a few minutes as Word tries to
load the whole thing all at once. In contrast, these little text editor programs
can open any size text file in just a few seconds. For instance, many of you
have worked with the so-called Microsoft glossaries. Searching through these
glossaries with Excel or Word renders them practically unusable because they
are so large and response time is much too slow.
The original "Microsoft glossaries" are not really glossaries; instead, they’re large
translation memories with the translation data of the user interface for many of
Microsoft’s software products. From 1994 through the summer of 2006 they
were available for free on one of Microsoft’s FTP sites. In 2006 these files were
replaced with a multilingual glossary, which in 2009 was replaced by the
Microsoft Language Portal at www.microsoft.com/language. The portal offers an online search
interface to Microsoft glossaries and translation memories of user interface translations of
Microsoft products, access to the Microsoft style guides for many languages, and the ability to
download extensive glossaries in the termbase exchange (TBX) format (see page 294). Most
translation environment tools now offer support for TBX so that you can import the files right
into your termbase. And for users of tools that do not yet offer TBX support, you can use the
free and powerful ApSIC Xbench (see page 317) to convert the TBX files into something more
palatable.
While the translation memory files can be accessed on a per-string basis on the Microsoft
Language Portal, they can also be downloaded as complete TMs on Microsoft’s developer
portal MSDN. The least expensive MSDN subscription presently (November 2015) costs
$1199 for the first year and then $799 annually from then on out. You can find them if you
search for "msdn" at www.microsoftstore.com.
To search these files from Microsoft, you can also use the above-mentioned ApSIC Xbench.
