Useful Links

Below is a list of links to translator-must-have software, dictionaries, glossaries, and other interesting stuff we use in our work. In addition, there's a list of forums for translators, which may be helpful for those who can't find translation to some terms at all listed sources. All links are given without intend to advertise any particular product or web site. The aim of this list is to share helpful information with translators. The list is to be updated.

Software for translators

Project Management:

http://www.projetex.com/download.html - Projetex is project management software for Translation Agencies. Designed to simplify the task of corporate and freelance workflow management, Projetex provides multiple benefits for translation industry business, be it a large translation agency team, or compact one-man translation business. There's demo version at their site. Freelance translators can take advantage of Translation Office since Projetex is good for companies - http://www.to3000.com
We use it for our project management and it saves us a lot of time. Disadvantage is in price, so it may seem to be more cost-efficient to use Excel and Word for accountancy purposes (of course, if you have not so many clients, projects and outsourcers).

Terminology Management:

http://www.anylexic.com - Terminology Management Software.
Good for downloading of Microsoft glossaries and searching translations in them. However, it may be superfluous if you have glossaries in translation memory or terminology base of the CAT tool used in translation.

http://lcl2.di.uniroma1.it/termextractor/ - TermExtractor is a FREE software package for Terminology Extraction. The software helps a web community to extract and validate relevant domain terms in their interest domain, by submitting an archive of domain-related documents in any format.
This tool is very helpful in compilation of glossaries for specific projects. Sometimes we use it in our team. However, not all features work properly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-assisted_translation - Description and comparison of many CAT tools. Links to websites of each CAT tool. More articles about CAT tools can be found here: http://www.transref.org/
We use many different tools to automate process of translation and editing/QA. The most popular is undoubtedly Trados. Unfortunately, there're too many CAT tools in the market and not all are compatible with each other.

http://www.lingvo.ru - ABBYY Lingvo is one the most popular electronic collection of dictionaries. It can be used online, but offline version is more convenient and complete.
We use it in our everyday work. There're also available a great deal of additional dictionaries which can be downloaded from Internet, namely http://www.lingvoda.ru/dictionaries/, http://lingvodics.com/ and other sites. Even though, Lingvo dictionaries are very large, some terms can't be found here (but available, e.g., in Multitran. However, Multitran has no many terms available in Lingvo). Therefore, translator has to use at least two dictionaries: Lingvo and Multitran in his work. However, some translations require more reference materials, such as specialized dictionaries, web sites and articles concerned, forums of translators, etc.

Quality Assurance:

http://www.apsic.com/en/products_xbench.html - integrated reference tool aimed to provide a clear and structured view of the terminology of any translation project. It is a freeware.
We use it mainly for QA purposes because it has rather powerful Quality Assurance features, to check for consistency, numeric values and more. At the same time, it has no such important feature as spell checker, which is available in LTB QA tool mentioned below.

http://www.lionbridge.com/lionbridge/en-us/services/localization-translation/linguistic-toolbox.htm - automated linguistic Quality Assurance (QA) tool. It offers language professionals a range of quality measures to evaluate their content against. This tool is available only for those who work on projects received through the company, which developed this tool.
We extensively use it in our QA process, especially for Microsoft projects. It's drawback is that it can be used only online and requires login and password.

http://atools.dotsrc.org/ - Ando Tools is a free package of MS Word and Excel add-ons designed for translators, proofreaders and localization engineers. Freeware.
One of the most useful features is segmentation validation in Word with Trados translation. For all that, it can be used only in Word.

Other software:

http://uz-translations.net - there're so much stuff for translators here that you may even forget to turn back to our site. This link may be very helpful for those who search for books, audio books, software, and many more materials for translators, linguists and philologists.

But be sure that TranslatorsFamily.com offers something that can't be found at the above-mentioned resource.

Dictionaries, term search, glossaries:

http://www.multitran.ru/ - powerful large online dictionary with more than 4 mln. words only in English-Russian dictionary.
The most widely used dictionary in our team. We use both online and offline versions. However, sometimes the bigger online version has problems on the server and slow speed. One should remember that the dictionary is updated by users, so it may contain errors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/ - the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.
Multilingual encyclopedia. Useful for search of terms and articles in many languages. One should remember that articles can be updated by users and may contain errors.

Google.com - search engine. There're some helpful tips for translators how to use Google in their work: http://www.google.ru/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861 , http://www.lingvofanclub.info/howto.htm (Russian).
Nowadays, translation for any term can be found. Yet one has to be a professional translator to choose the best variant of hundreds of translations.

http://www.prolingoffice.com - online and offline Russian-Ukrainian and vice versa dictionary and machine translator.
Rather efficient machine translator and helpful dictionary, nevertheless its translation requires thorough human editing

http://www.microsoft.com/language/en/us/search.mspx - Microsoft Language Portal - Online Terminology and Glossary Search Online collection of Microsoft glossaries that is vital for any Microsoft translation project and helpful for most of software localization project.
We always use it within our team. However, it lacks connection to TMs of CAT tools. So we had to spend a lot of time finding and converting most of the glossaries in a Translation Memory for Trados and other CAT tools that simplifies search of terms: http://files.uz-translations.uz/7145736

http://www.industrystock.ru/, http://www.industrystock.com, http://www.industrystock.de - industry portal with intelligent search engines for products and services as well as manufacturers, dealers, suppliers and service providers in Business to Business.
Useful to search translation of terms related to different areas of industry and business. However, each language has its own search results, that make it difficult to find translation in the needed language.

http://www.proz.com/wts, http://slovotolk.com/, http://www.dictionarylink.com/ - search in many dictionaries, search engines, glossaries from one page.
There're so many dictionaries to search in Internet that it's difficult to choose the best one. No need to choose only one, try many with multisearch. However, all of these multisearches contain insufficient number of places to search. More advanced multisearch with more links to search is presented at our website here.

http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/ - a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of current British English, both spoken and written.
Good online search of context for many words. However, the texts are only in English.

http://en.uk.open-tran.eu/ - open search in translated texts taken from TMs for CAT tools of many translators.
Good online search for context and translation of words, phrases and even sentences. However, it lacks possibility to add this search to one's TM of Trados or other CAT tool to use it easily during translation.

http://www.lilabar.com/ - database of parallel texts (translation memory) and provides powerful search possibilities for it. The database contains bi-directional translations of English and Russian sentences (phrases).
Good but narrow online search for context and translation of words, phrases and even sentences. http://www.acronymfinder.com/ - world's largest and most comprehensive dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms. Very useful online search for meaning of abbreviations. It's a pity it is monolingual.

Forums for translators

(good place to ask for help of colleagues in case of difficult terminology)

http://multitran.ru/c/m.exe?a=DisplayForum&HL=2&L1=1&L2=2 (only Russian)
http://forum.lingvo.ru/actualforum.aspx (only Russian)
http://www.trworkshop.net/forum/ (only Russian)
http://www.proz.com/forum (multilingual)
http://www.translatorscafe.com/cafe/MegaBBS/category-view.asp?catlock=1 (English)
http://www.translatorpub.com/sections/forum/ (English)

To join our team as translator or/and proofreader contact us with your CV and cover letter:
E-mail - tatianasemerikova@gmail.com

List of contents

Join our team as translator, editor, proofreader, desktop publisher!

Wise quotes

Funny translations

Useful Links

Software for translators

Project Management:

Terminology Management:

Quality Assurance:

Other software:

Dictionaries, term search, glossaries:

English Thesaurus and Encyclopedia:

Online dictionaries and search engines for IT translators:

Online dictionaries and search engines for Medical translators:

Online dictionaries and glossaries for Oil and Gas translators:

Glossaries of Energy terms:

Online Electronics Dictionaries:

Gambling glossaries:

Military glossaries and searh engines:

Marketing Glossaries:

Dentistry Dictionaries:

Forums for translators

(good place to ask for help of colleagues in case of difficult terminology)