For readers that don’t know the Useful Links & Resources for Translators & Interpreters page, it basically consists of four main sections that are each divided into several subsections. These are packed with links to help you translate your texts, run your business and even enjoy your leisure time. This post gives you a quick overview of what’s new since the last update in October.

The first main section lists general dictionaries and glossaries. The new subsection here is General Into & Out of Spanish, which I’ve added to make it easier to find resources that are primarily for looking up how to translate words from and into Spanish. As I work from ES to EN, there’s a heavy bias towards this language pair in the first couple of sections. New here is: Diccionario español – mallorquín. The other resources were previous listed under General Multilingual.

The second main section provides links to resources on specific topics, for example Humanities and Social Sciences and Education. Both of these are new subsections.

Humanities and Social Sciences

1. Glosario de Psicología
2. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
3. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
4. Términos Estadísticos

I’ve put statistics under human and social sciences for the time being as this is where I personally encounter statistics in my work (translation and editing of academic papers). The two encyclopedias are also in the Encyclopedia subsection (which is in the third main section).

Education

1. Glosario de Educación Física
2. Glosario de Pedagogía

The Health subsection has become Health & Medical with the following two additions:

1. Common Medical Abbreviations and Acronymns List MedicineNet.com
2. MedTerms Medical Dictionary MedicineNet.com

Other new resources in this second main section under Food & Agriculture are: The Cook’s Thesaurus, a cooking encyclopedia; the Dictionary of dressings and sauces; and Foods and Wines from Spain

The third main section focuses on links to tools and resources that can help us improve our writing (mostly into English). New additions in this section include: OpenEdition Journals for humanities and social sciences under Digital Journals and its equivalent for books, OpenEdition Books, over half of which are open access under Digital Libraries along with PDF Drive, a search engine of free PDF ebooks and files (over 74,000,000 available); and under Writing the new links are Antidote, a writing assistance tool for French and English; StyleWriter, an editing and proofreading software for plain English; and WordRake, which edits for clarity in Microsoft Word and Outlook.

Under Style Guides I’ve added two ATA links for colleagues wishing to submit articles to The Chronicle or The Savvy NewComer. Another new addition is the World Bank Editorial Style Guide and the World Bank Translation Style Guide is an updated version.

The following three links are new under Other Word Tools:

1. Edifix online bibliographic reference solution for meeting style requirements (from $39.95 per month)
2. TextExpander inserts snippets of text from repository of emails, boilerplate, etc., with quick search or abbreviation (from $3.33 per month)
3. Title Case Converter

The fourth and final section contains other links that might be of interest to colleagues. New in the first subsection are: ClipX, a free clipboard history manager; and LibreOffice, a free open-source office suite if you don’t want to use Microsoft Office.

The only new subsection here is Speech Recognition & Text-to-Speech Software with the following three tools:

1. Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition & text-to-speech software
2. Natural Reader free text-to-speech reader
3. TextAloud text-to-speech software for Windows

I’m not sure why DNS wasn’t already in the list given that I’ve been using this software for a while. I first tried DNS because I had bought a small treadmill in a effort to get more exercise so I could walk while working. Given that typing while you’re walking is quite difficult (but definitely not impossible!), I decided to give DNS a go and I haven’t looked back. Although I’m not using the treadmill at the moment because I have plantar fasciitis (a painful and rather annoying consequence of walking on the treadmill despite being fitted for proper trainers for my type of gait and which could take up to a year to heal), I still dictate my work most of the time. DNS saves time and, therefore, makes me more productive because the dictation is faster than my typing speed (which has never been either particularly fast or accurate despite having a year of lessons way back when at school).

I’ve added lots more links under Money Management & Invoicing, especially on pensions, mainly as a result of Sarah Bowyer’s highly informative guest post on a topic that we really shouldn’t overlook and bears thinking about sooner rather than later. The new useful links in this section are as follows:

1. Check Your State Pension provided by GOV.UK
2. Infoautónomos quarterly and annual tax obligation management (cost from €29.99/month) suggested by Genevieve Shaw in her guest post for Translator’s Studio
3. MoneySavingExpert.com
4. National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) UK Government’s pension provider open to self-employed
5. Pensions European Commission’s information page on pensions (This was previously on the page elsewhere)
6. Pension Tracing Service provided by GOV.UK
7. Pensions Advisory Service for the self-employed
8. Refinery29 Money Diaries
9. Revolut digital banking alternative providing a mobile-based current account
10. TransferWise cheaper international transfers; hold and manage money in over 40 currencies; own bank details for five currencies

I’ve decided to subscribe to Focus@Will for another two years because I’ve found their music channels the most helpful to keep me focused when time is of the essence (rush job, for example). But if you’re looking for free background noise, you could try Noisli. Its ambient sounds include rain, seaside, train, coffee shop and white noise. Click on the pictures to create your own sound, which you can then name and save for another time. It also has a timer and and a distraction-free text editor.

While we’re on the subject of Productivity, Project & Time Management, new in this subsection is Slack for team messaging and collaboration (free option). TextExpander for inserting snippets of text from emails, boilerplate and other content, found under Translation-related Tools & Links, will also save you time.

New under Travelling & Holidays is DogBuddy to help you find a dog sitter for boarding, day care or walks in the UK. A donation is made to the RSPCA when you first book. And Visa List, a handy site for checking visa and document requirements for 238+ countries.

Love it or hate it, we certainly can’t escape the News at the moment. If you’re fed up with the lies we’re constantly being told in a post-truth world, then go to the Pro-Truth Pledge site and pledge to fact check before sharing misinformation and to honour the truth. I’ve added three more fact-checking sites in this subsection to help you do just that: Hoax Slayer, Full Fact (UK’s independent fact-checking charity) and PolitiFact (site that fact checks US politics).

Lastly, there’s one new addition under Photos: PikWizard. Like many of the other sites listed in this subsection, PikWizard offer free photos with no attribution required. However, unlike the others, it’s got lots of photos of people. I’ve certainly been impressed by the quality of what I’ve seen so far and will be using some of these photos for my posts from now on.

Special thanks to Jenny Zonneveld for suggesting TextExpander and TextAloud and to Nelia Fahloun for mentioning Antidote in our regular Zoom group chats. Nothing beats sharing with colleagues and receiving some first-hand advice.

Image by Yolanda Arguello from Pixabay

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