Document Translation Tools

Translators have reason to rejoice. Many different and useful document translation tools are popping up all over the place and are perfect for freelance translators.

Many of these tools cost money, but some of them are available as freeware, meaning that you can download them and use them without having to pay any money.

One of the tools that I just started using a couple of weeks ago is Taco HTML Edit. The reason I needed it was because I needed to translate some webpages for a client I had. Well, there are a ton of different HTML editors out there and it can be difficult to choose one. However, the reason(s) I chose Taco was because first of all, it was free. Second of all, it is very intuitive and doesn't come with a bunch of other buttons and features that can overwhelm you.

I've played with Dreamweaver before and while it is a pretty cool piece of software, it's a little complicated to learn if you just need something to open up webpages and be able to view your changes without having to connect to the Internet. Plus, it works on my MacBook.

Another good document translation tool that can be very helpful if you're translating webpages is Web Devil. What Web Devil does is allow you to download web pages or a website from the Internet straight to your computer.

The reason I needed this piece of software was because I was translating a website for a client and they wanted me to use their English site as a template. However, they didn't provide me with the English HTML files. So what I did was use Web Devil and copied the whole site from the Internet onto my hard drive and from there I could do my work.

It worked pretty well, but it only works for about 15 days before you have to buy and register it. I'm probably not going to buy it since I don't run into that situation very often but it is a piece of software to remember in case I ever have to get a website and download it to my computer.

All in all, the above two programs are decent document translation tools that can help freelance translators in certain cases, mostly when working with HTML files and webpages.

If you know of any other freeware software or document translation tools that you find useful in your translation work, please let me know.