Still here

[Wataru Tenga]

Now that Microsoft is discontinuing its Technet program, I have decided
to take another look at switching (back) to Linux for translation.

The two essential software programs are an Office-compatible suite and a
CAT program. I am surprised to see the wide availability of the latter,
as introduced here:

http://www.marcprior.de/linux/tm.html

I am currently using memoQ on Windows, which does not yet have Linux
support. I prefer this side-by-side style to the in-text style of OmegaT
and others, which makes Wordfast Pro look attractive (I've used it in
the past on Windows). Anyone with experience on Linux?

The Office suites keep getting better, but I do worry about
compatibility issues, since I do a lot of Powerpoint slides and need
them to look good.

I hope there are still some of you out there after all these years.

Wataru Tenga, Tokyo

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On Jul 2, 2013, at 2:29 PM, Wataru Tenga <wte...@gmail.com> wrote:

> The two essential software programs are an Office-compatible suite and a
> CAT program. I am surprised to see the wide availability of the latter,
> as introduced here:
>
> http://www.marcprior.de/linux/tm.html

I'm surprised that Marc has forgotten to mention the Okapi suite, or did I miss it ?

> The Office suites keep getting better, but I do worry about
> compatibility issues, since I do a lot of Powerpoint slides and need
> them to look good.

You'll definitely need to run Office in Crossover to make sure that the files are OK.

> I hope there are still some of you out there after all these years.

We were just waiting for you to come back ;-)

Jean-Christophe Helary
----------------------------------------
fun: http://mac4translators.blogspot.com
work: http://www.doublet.jp (ja/en > fr)
tweets: http://twitter.com/brandelune

[Kevin Kirton]

Hi Wataru and all,

I'm still here, but no longer in full time translation.
Using Felix the CAT for translation was the only thing that kept
Windows necessary for me before, so now I'm fully Linux for my other
work.
All the various office suites are fine by themselves in Linux, but
there are still lots of compatibility issues, particularly in dealing
with presentations. Has anyone had to translate a different format,
like Prezi?
Does anyone know a good cloud-based CAT program besides Google's
Translator Toolkit (which is not that bad)?

Kevin Kirton
Cooma, Australia

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On Jul 3, 2013, at 8:11 AM, Kevin Kirton <kpki...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Does anyone know a good cloud-based CAT program besides Google's
> Translator Toolkit (which is not that bad)?

If you mean that your data is available on a server from wherever you want to work, OmegaT does that now. Just put your translation project on a SVN/GIT server online and translate either as a team or just yourself but from various devices.

[Jon]

Yep, still here, into my 70s now---the symptoms of senility have ceased
to be fodder for jokes.

I've stayed with Linux from Sept. '91, a few months after Linus
Torvald's made his initial announcement. But I came close to abandoning
it a couple of years ago when Gnome switched to Gnome 3, and Ubuntu to
Unity, and thereby totally destroyed my preferred working environment,
and again a few months ago when a lack of answers to questions about
printing from the Linux Mint community soured me on Linux Mint and the
Maté desktop. After trying KDE *again*, and Cinnamon, and Maté again, I
am now running Debian testing (currently 'jessie') directly, skipping
all intermediaries, and the XFCE desktop environment which is fast, at
least, and with three days of work, allowed me to regain about 98% of my
preferred working environment. The other factor is that every time I run
Windows, I feel bad. I'll just leave it at that.

I have my copies of W7 and MS Office set up to run in a virtual machine
(using Virtualbox), but almost never run it, although I did run a couple
of programs in conjunction with self-pubbing two books on Amazon last
year, both through Creative Space for print and Kindle Direct Publishing
for ebooks. (I've since soured on Amazon, too, after I saw how they
could instantly turn off a project with no advanced warning. I'm going
elsewhere for my next novel, for sure.)

Currently, I'm working on a translation of a large Buddhist text, and
have been trying to learn enough Python3 (the 3 is important) to create
little programs to assist me in parsing the Chinese text into "words" so
that I can use the glossary function of OmegaT. I had been using the old
Unix standby utilities (Sed, Awk, Grep, etc.) but decided it was time to
move to something new, something that natively treats strings as string
of *characters* rather than bytes. Python3 fits the bill, but if my slow
progress is anything to go by, my brain is too addled to learn it.

So far I've only experimented with OmegaT. It'll be a couple more weeks
before I'll commit to using it. So, I too, am interested in
alternatives. (I'm going to check out those links, Thanks Jean-Christophe.)

One critical question for me is how a CAT program handles a change in
the source text. The scenario: I'm well into a big project translating
from literary Chinese, and I discover that my parsing of the source text
into words needs improvement or correction. I then produce a new source
text with those changes. If I replace the old source with this revised
source, I assume it will screw up the translation I've done so far. A
program that could handle this with a minimum of pain would allow me to
proceed with the main translation while I continue to fiddle with the
parsing.

***

I agree with Jean-Christophe, if 100% file compatibility is necessary,
you can't depend on Open/Libre Office, although the latest versions
meet my less rigorous requirements in this area, which is limited to
Writer documents, not presentations or spreadsheets.

Also, given the turmoil in the Linux Desktop Environment at present, you
may find yourself going back to Windows soon. I assume you will find
that Gnome 3 and Unity do not provide a practical working environment.
If you can live with Maté, KDE or XFCE, there may be hope...

I see that, thanks to user uproar, Fedora in their very latest distro
provides a Maté DE, and in the next version, Fedora 19, Gnome classic
may, just barely, be able to provide a working environment on a par with
what the last version of Gnome 2 provided. See

http://sgallagh.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/one-week-with-gnome-3-classic-prologue/

Jon

[Wataru Tenga]

Jon,

It's great to hear from you again and to learn you are still keeping up
the good fight. That alone was worth posting my inquiry to the group.

I know what you mean about Unity and Gnome3. I too was put off by them
when I last tried a Linux distro. I have always liked KDE, though.

I guess my biggest problem is still going to be compatibility with
Office files. Running Microsoft Office on Linux does not strike me as a
solution to anything, but Libre has serious problems with the embedded
objects I often have to deal with in translation projects. The only
option would be to refuse such projects, but I can't afford to do that
just yet.

Wataru, whom you can thank for the link to CAT programs ;-)

[Keith Wilkinson]

Hi Wataru,

I wonder what the latest news is, and
(OT) what your current email software
recommendations are...?
 
Keith

[Wataru Tenga]

Keith,

Oh, yes, this group still exists. Can we have a show of hands as to how
many of you are using a Linux distro as your main platform for
translating? Don't be BASHful.

I use Hidemaru Mail as my email client. On Windows.

Wataru Tenga, Tokyo

[jon.babcock]

Keith, Wataru, et al,

I'm still translating (from Chinese) and unabashedly running Linux,
Debian testing with Xfce, two 1600x1200 monitors and 12 (count 'em)
virtual desktops.

But. In one desktop I run VirtualBox with a W7 guest in order to run a
single app, InDesign CC. Originally, a 30-day free trial, I opted to pay
for a year. By using my familiar Linux environment for everything except
ID, I have been a relatively happy camper. The virtual machine approach
is somewhat fragile, usually breaks on VB upgrades, is fussy about
getting sound and sometimes printing to work consistently. Nevertheless,
the ease of moving to and from Linux apps in Xfce windows on top of or
adjacent to ID, and the efficiency of using the same monitors, keyboard,
and mouse seamlessly for both operating systems produces a slight win
compared to having a dedicated physical windows machine.

The main motive to use ID instead of continuing with either OpenSource
XeTeX or Scribus was my memory of the difficulty of producing a self-pub
book three years ago using the former, and the lack of clear
documentation, tutorials, and learning videos in the case of the latter.
I still entertain the hope of returning to Scribus and XeTeX (or another
version of TeX) after the current book, _Kumārajīva's Large Sutra on
Perfect Wisdom_, my translation from the Chinese, is finished. It's a
multi-volume production. I'm in the process of receiving comments and
criticism of the first volume now, and hope to have it published by year
end.

Frankly, I feel like the quality of both Firefox/Ice Weasel and
Thunderbird/Ice Dove has deteriorated over the past few years. (E.g.,
Ice Dove seems to have removed the switch to easily turn on/off html on
a per message basis.) I currently use Ice Dove for mail and vacillate
between Chrome and Chromium for my main browser.

Cheers,

Jon

[Wataru Tenga]

Jon, thanks for checking in. Believe it or not, I was just thinking of
you earlier today, even before Keith woke up the list. Good to know you
are well and sticking with Linux.

Wataru