Welcome to the latest update of the Useful Links & Resources for Translators & Interpreters page. This major update has been underway for a few months and I apologise that the “Back to top” has not been working during that time (fixed now).

Besides adding lots of new links to help you with your translations and running your business, I’ve divided the page into four main sections and added nine new categories.

The first section contains the general monolingual resources (now divided into three different categories to make links easier to find) and general multilingual resources.

New additions include British, Scottish, Canadian and American English dictionaries. With around 100 links in total in this section, there’s lots to explore.

The links in the second section also refer to glossaries and dictionaries in the main and they are divided into 18 specific categories.

Improving how we write is the focus of the third section with links to corpora, collocations, style guides, digital journals and libraries, encyclopaedias and more.

New in the Thesauri category is AntonymFor.com, which provides a list of opposites for the word you type in.

I was reminded on Twitter recently about the OneLook site. There is now an associated thesaurus and reverse dictionary on a separate page, which is now listed in the Thesauri category.

I’ve also added two writing apps for when you want to focus on writing with no distractions: WriteMonkey and FocusWriter. They’re in the Writing category. Do take a look at some of the other links listed here that can improve your writing, punctuation and grammar.

The fourth section contains other links that might be of interest to professional translators and interpreters. They range from lifestyle resources and sites that play music or sounds to help you concentrate to productivity, time and money management tools. This final section is also the one with the most new categories and links. They are:

1. CAT Tools & Translation Environments: With 16 listed so far, you should find a tool that suits your budget here. You’ll also find a few more details on CAT Tools on the Links & Tips for Translators & Interpreters and CAT Tools pages.
2. GDPR: The major topic of conversation in many translation circles in the first half of this year and something that will continue to be relevant. I’d be grateful for any suggestions for the ‘Useful Links & Resources’ page, but especially for ones for this heading to help colleagues navigate the minefield that is GDPR.
3. Machine Translation: You’ll also find more info about machine translation with links to some posts on this blog here.
4. News: A recent addition in this category is Nuzzel, a news feed based on what your connections are reading on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. I haven’t bothered to link Nuzzel to Facebook, but I really enjoy a quick rundown of the news sent to me everyday in an email, and, of course, you can connect whenever you like, especially as you can download the app onto your phone. My thanks to Alexander Drechsel for recommending Nuzzel.
5. Sport & Exercise: As this is a new category, there are not many links yet. However, Breeze Rides, HSBC UK organised bike rides for women, might be of interest to some female colleagues. I’ve also added a link to parkrun , the site that organises 5km runs every Saturday at 9.00 a.m. in the UK and also elsewhere in the world. As I’m currently suffering from plantar fasciitis (extremely annoying and the result of using the treadmill while working), I’m just volunteering at parkruns at the moment. Another interesting link for colleagues wishing to explore alternative working methods is Get Britain Standing.
6. Translation-related Tools & Links: I’ve moved some links that used to be listed under Other Links of Interest to this new category and also added a few more. See below for some thoughts on CodeZapper and TransTools.
7. Travelling & Holidays: I’ve added TrustedHousesitters and HouseMyDog, two options to find someone to look after your pets while you travel either on holiday or as a digital nomad. Another favourite link here is Fly Me Anywhere. Just type which airport you want to leave from and when and the app will find you cheap flights.

After attempting to translate a document in memoQ that I’d converted from a PDF, I realised I definitely needed to clean it first to get rid of unwanted and unnecessary tags. A quick Google search took me to a Proz.com forum page where Jerzy Czopik suggested the following: in Word, press Ctrl+A Ctrl+D, select one single font type and press OK; then Ctrl+A Ctrl+D again, choose spacing = normal, apply scale = 100% and deselect Kerning.

Unfortunately, this didn’t work, so I looked at Jerzy’s second suggestion, which was using CodeZapper. As Codezapper required a donation of €20 before emailing to ask for the download and I was in a hurry and didn’t know how long it would take to get a reply, I looked for another tool that could be downloaded immediately and found TransTools. As its name suggests, it offers more than just a clean-up of tags in Word.

It took some time to clean the document (I was able to hang some clothes up to dry and read a couple of articles online while it was doing its thing), but boy was it worth it. Instead of the over 9000 words memoQ had recognised in the version with tags, the word count dropped to just under 6000. And, more importantly, given that this was a similar document to many others I’d translated, far more segments were partially translated than before the cleaning (over 100 more). Once I had cleaned the document, I was pleased to see that all the many columns in tables were still in the correct place and just needed a bit of tweaking to look better.

Also new in the fourth section are:

Translation Commons, a site for knowledge-sharing and community initiatives with free tools and resources. (Translation-related Tools & Links category)

BuzzSumo, a site that analyses how content is performing for topics and competitors. It might prove useful for SEO. A paid plan is necessary for more detailed searches. (Other Links of Interest category)

Ecosia, a search engine that you can add to Chrome as an extension. Profits from your searches are used to plant trees anywhere in the world where they are needed most. Sounds like a wonderful idea. (Search Engines category)

Acuity, a free basic appointment scheduler I use for arranging times for the translation chats. Chatting on Skype is an initiative I’m promoting to make us feel more connected, especially if, like me, you cannot attend conferences or any/many other translation events for family or other reasons.

If you’d like to chat to me, please book an appointment here. I’d also like to encourage people to set up their own appointments and get chatting to their colleagues. As I said on Facebook, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. And if you’re interested in a group chat, please join this Facebook group. I’m going to arrange the first group chat soon.

Finally, I’d be grateful if you could take part in this poll. Since this page is bound to grow as I find more links to add, I’ve been wondering whether I should split it into two or more pages. Please let me know your thoughts.

Previous ‘Useful Links & Resources for Translators & Interpreters’ update posts can be read here and here. 

Explore this blog by starting with the categories page