In this article I would like to introduce a few free software tools that I consider to be true efficiency boosters. I will only cover products that I have been using long enough to appreciate the benefits they bring. Since this section focuses on freeware products, I will not cover any CAT tools (Computer Aided Translation). A short article on clever use of CAT tools can be found elsewhere on this website. Also, please note that I use a Windows XP system. Alas, here we go.

If you ever found yourself repeating a mundane task on a computer every day and wished for a faster and more efficient way to e.g. insert special characters, click through your hosting provider’s site to change your email settings, insert boilerplate text, open one or more applications with a keyboard shortcut, run a Google search on the string currently selected in your word processor or send your system into hibernation, then there’s a Swiss-knife tool out there for you called AutoHotkey (www.autohotkey.com). Using this small program you can assign an almost unlimited range of tasks to keyboard combinations of your choosing. The shortcuts and actions to be performed are specified in one or more script files written in a very simple scripting language. Due to this fact, AHK requires an initial learning effort, which is, however, more than outweighed by the benefits of a significantly enhanced working environment. Adding to that, there are many ready-made scripts on the Internet written by AHK fans that you can use and adapt to your needs.

Another feature that freelance translators frequently need for their work is an expanded clipboard that caches copied instances of text across applications. I have tried quite a few freeware and shareware variants of such tools and finally settled for the only useful and stable clipboard manager I could find. It was written by Scott Brogden and goes by the name Ditto (http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/). The program works like a charm without crashing and leaves a very small footprint.

If you ever used the Windows file search feature and waited for ages just to see a “0 files found” result, then consider using a desktop search engine instead. Such a program is very helpful if you work on a text and come across a term or phrase that you are dead sure you have previously translated and there is no corresponding translation to be found in your current TM or glossary. If you set your search engine to index your global work folder, the search result will be instantly available for you to use and move ahead. The only product in this range I have tried and stayed with ever since is Copernic Desktop Search (www.copernic.com). It is small, fast and user-friendly.

For your backup needs, I recommend Create Synchronicity by Clément Pit-Claudel (http://synchronicity.sourceforge.net/). It is a simple, safe and lightweight solution with a neat and intuitive interface. This particular backup program even stores opened files that are still accessed by their default application. I have hooked it to a key combination and use it every day to store all work-related files on a USB stick before I leave my office.

When working with large numbers of files, e.g. for website translation projects, it is quite often necessary to batch-rename files and to copy multiple file names to your clipboard. The purpose of the first operation is to e.g. add “_de” before the file extension of all HTML files in a folder, and pasting many file names can be useful when communicating with your clients. I found two neat tools to automate both tasks. The first one, called Rename Master (www.joejoesoft.com), is a standalone binary I use to rename files, and the second one is Copy2Clip (http://davide-ficano.sourceforge.net/). This handy little tool copies the names of selected files to the clipboard via an added item in the explorer context menu.

Finally I would like to highlight two Firefox extensions that I consider to be real time savers. The first one is Tab Mix Plus (http://tmp.garyr.net/). Its main benefit is that it enables you to store sessions of opened web pages for different and recurring research scenarios. The second one is Copy Link Name (http://www.captaincaveman.nl/). It adds an item to your context menu to copy the anchor text of links. I find this enhancement particularly helpful since left-clicking links to select text is likely to bring up the linked page from which you need to return to try again and copy the link text.

Well, that’s it for now. I hope that some of the tools presented here are new to you and that you find them just as useful as I do.

© David Seycek, English to German translator