A new business and translation software cycle

| 07-09-2009| Translation & Cross-Cultural Relations

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In August, I finally got round to acquiring a new computer after seven years of using a faithful 15″ HP laptop – which cost me €2,000, spent a winter in Moscow with me and even survived a train crash. It seems it’s also a good moment to update all of my business and translation software.

Clearly seven years in computing power and software design is an eternity and I have already found myself much more productive with my new 24″ iMac – which has cost me 1349€ and will spend the winter here in Murcia.

The feature I most like in terms of productivity so far is ‘Spaces‘ and I’m enjoying Evernote and NetNewsWire to organise all my reading and thoughts.

It also seems a new business and technology cycle is also upon us as my hardware renewal coincides this quarter with the release of new operating systems by both Apple and Microsoft that will affect my translation business and the services I can offer to my clients.

The objective is to be able to deal with the latest file formats and work processes used in businesses and law firms. As well as the document processing and translation memory upgrades, I’m curious to know if the small and medium sized companies I work with will be interested in using the advanced security and networking features of the new operating systems.

Instead of cumbersome e-mail file transfers for large documents, perhaps via a web service like YouSendIt, will it be possible to use remote folder sharing to access large files? Could the client just drop their documents into a secure, shared folder on their computer and have me connect to their computer and grab the file?

99% of the files I receive to translate are either Office (Word, Excel or Powerpoint) or PDF files. This reflects the state of software usage in companies here in Murcia, however much we read about Google Docs taking over Silicon Valley, so a move to Mac might seem strange but I am confident Parallels Desktop for Mac will live up to its name and promised capabilities.

The old set up was:

• Windows XP
• Office 2003
• Trados 2007

This set of tools was enough to build the translation part of a new language services company we created up to several thousand euros in translation revenue a year without too many problems and our clients were always happy.

I think the new set up will be:

• Snow Leopard
• Parallels Desktop for Mac
• Windows 7
• Office 2007
• MemoQ

I have managed to set all this up with trial versions for now which last anywhere from 14-90 days, and the installation process was seamless.

Everything looks like it works very nicely so far and I am looking forward to testing it all further, especially the MemoQ software which I have decided to trial after reading posts and tweets from Kevin Lossner (post) and Nick Rosenthal (post).

I will test each bit as far as I can until the trial period runs out and then purchase each piece of software. I think the total investment will be around €1,000.

From a translation productivity point of view, it sounds like MemoQ has some interesting features which Trados doesn’t have which could be very useful for me, my clients and their translation projects.