LibreOffice Tools for Translators

Whilst I jest that I learned to read a dozen languages in self-defense, there is more than a grain of truth to that. Virtually all of the translation I do, is for my own use.

For those that infrequently translate material, the extensions available for LibreOffice are more than adequate.

The major issue is machine translation is what has been referred to as the "invisible, insane problem. Translating the expression "Out of sight, out of mind", into the target language, the  back-translation becomes "Invisible, Insane".

Translation Table

At a basic level, this tool splits your page in half, with the source content on the left hand side, and the target content on the right hand side.  You have to do the translation yourself.  This is emphatically not Computer Aided Translation, but rather, a way to have the source and target material right next to each other, and still use LibreOffice.  Rephrased, for infrequent translation, or "short" material, it is "good enough".

In the screenshot below, I'm using Genesis chapter 1, from the Clementine Vulgate, as the example source text. I haven't started the translation, hence the white space on the right hand side.

Translation Table in Action

Linguist

This was originally written to ease the difficulty in creating dictionaries. More specifically, finding words that are not in the dictionary.  To that end, it can generate four different lists:

• Unrecognized Words;
• All words listed alphabetically;
• All words listed by frequency;
• Statistics;

Statistics, provides some of the same statistical data as is provided at ">File >Properties >Statistics".

Using the Clementine Vulgate to generate an example Linguist Statistics report:

Number of words: 760,594
Number of full stops: 238
Number of long words (7 or more characters): 194,322
Number of words per full stop: 3195.7731092436975
Percentage long words: 25.54871587206841
Lix (readability): 3,221.321825115766
Number of different words: 85,775.0
Lexical variety: 0.113

Using the same text, ">File >Properties >Statistics" generates the following:

Pages: 1,241
Tables: 0
Images: 0
OLE Objects: 0
Paragraphs: 35,492
Words: 760,555
Characters: 4,482,356
Characters excluding spaces: 3,686,205
Lines: 13,864

Those differences should suffice to demonstrate the focus of Linguist on content, rather than presentation.

Anaphraseus

This tool is not intuitive to use. It requires spending time, and effort, learning how to effectively utilize it. Once one has done so, it is invaluable.

The big question is whether to put the time into learning how to use this tool, or in learning how to use Omega-T.

Short answer:

• For professional translation, Omega-T is the clear winner;
• If you are frequently translating material, Omega-T has the edge;
• For non-professional translation, it is a toss-up;
• For infrequent translation, it is a tossup, with Anaphraseus having a slight edge;

I might well be showing my bias toward Omega-T here.There are professional translators, who swear by this extension. Point is, I'm comparing an extension to a specifically written program, both of which achieve the same end result.


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This post was originally written in 2014.