Looking for a good English spell checker Thread poster: Paola Grochi
|
|---|
Paola Grochi 
Uruguay
Local time: 03:20
English to Spanish
+ ...
I'm looking for a decent spell checker, since I'm not happy with Word's. I use a Spanish version of Word and it sometimes invokes the English spell checker and most of the times not. It makes it difficult to work since most of my mistakes are basically typos.
Thanks.
| | | | Henry Hinds
United States
Local time: 00:20
English to Spanish
+ ...
In memoriam | Probably Word is good enough | Jul 21, 2008 |
Just make sure all the text is marked for the proper language and it should work OK. I spell check both English and Spanish on mine and have no problems.
Of course no spell checker will catch all errors as you should already know.
| | | |
Yes, as Henry says the Word spellcheck always follows the language designation of the text.
If you have a file with all English, press ctrl + a to select all, then click Tools/Language etc. I set Word to show a language drop-down menu as I use it a lot. It should not switch around after that.
I have been toying with the idea of installing openoffice.org for spell check only. As far as I know it has a spell checker of its own, which may not be better than Word's (it prob... See more Yes, as Henry says the Word spellcheck always follows the language designation of the text.
If you have a file with all English, press ctrl + a to select all, then click Tools/Language etc. I set Word to show a language drop-down menu as I use it a lot. It should not switch around after that.
I have been toying with the idea of installing openoffice.org for spell check only. As far as I know it has a spell checker of its own, which may not be better than Word's (it probably isn't) but even if it's actually worse, using two different spell checkers on the same text would be a big improvement.
Anyone have experience with OOo?
Apart form that, there are multiple free online services, but I have no experience with any. I think some Oxford dictionary CD also includes a spell checker. ▲ Collapse
| | | |
Years ago I used the WordPerfect program, which to my mind was superior in several ways to Word, but clients more or less insisted on Word.
When writing in English English the WordPerfect spell checker used modern UK-spelling as first choice, eg, organization in preference to organisation and so on.
Is there any such spell-checker available today?
[Edited at 2008-07-22 09:29]
| | |
|
|
|
Susan Welsh
United States
Local time: 02:20
Russian to English
+ ...
| Open Office spell checker | Jul 23, 2008 |
FarkasAndras wrote:
I have been toying with the idea of installing openoffice.org for spell check only. As far as I know it has a spell checker of its own, which may not be better than Word's (it probably isn't) but even if it's actually worse, using two different spell checkers on the same text would be a big improvement.
Anyone have experience with OOo?
I have Open Office, and there was no spell checker that I could find. It asks you what spell checker you want to use, so I just selected dictionary.com. Maybe there's a better solution, but that's what I did. It seems to do the job.
Susan
| | | | Paola Grochi
Uruguay
Local time: 03:20
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | More problems | Jul 25, 2008 |
In the end, I re-installed the spellchecker on Word. Now it got even worst!
I have to revise hundreds of short texts, and I have to change language everytime I open it for checking. It goes from Spanish to English, UK, American, whenever it wants, the problem is that I need the texts in American English. It's basically making me crazy!!!
| | | | Tony M
France
Local time: 08:20
Member
French to English
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | Document problem? | Jul 26, 2008 |
It sounds to me simply as if your source documents are undisciplined in terms of their language settings, and it is those settings that are messing Word around.
If so, surely the simplest solution is each time you open a document, to select all [Ctrl A] and then use Tools > Language menu to set the language to the one you want. It's a bit of a fag doing this each time, and no doubt you could create a little macro to do the job for you with just one keystroke. But I don't know if any... See more It sounds to me simply as if your source documents are undisciplined in terms of their language settings, and it is those settings that are messing Word around.
If so, surely the simplest solution is each time you open a document, to select all [Ctrl A] and then use Tools > Language menu to set the language to the one you want. It's a bit of a fag doing this each time, and no doubt you could create a little macro to do the job for you with just one keystroke. But I don't know if any software exists to allow you to process a batch of multiple files in this way without actually opening them individually. ▲ Collapse
| | | |
If you can't solve the problem, setting a button for language setting makes it a bit quicker. Right click on an empty area in the toolbar, choose customize, commands tab, tools, scroll down and drag&drop the language box to your toolbar.
| | |
|
|
|
Paola Grochi
Uruguay
Local time: 03:20
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Found a fix up - Macro | Jul 26, 2008 |
So the problem was only with Word documents, and browsing through proz forums I found someone recommending this page with technical tips for translators, and found a macro and I finallay solved the problem.
Thanks a lot everybody!!
Here's the link:
http://www.sandbergtranslations.com/translator_faq.html
Sorry I can't remember who posted it ear... See more So the problem was only with Word documents, and browsing through proz forums I found someone recommending this page with technical tips for translators, and found a macro and I finallay solved the problem.
Thanks a lot everybody!!
Here's the link:
http://www.sandbergtranslations.com/translator_faq.html
Sorry I can't remember who posted it earlier, so it's not my credit but hers. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | More of a general tip for a problem of this kind | Jul 28, 2008 |
These is hidden markup within every Word document that counts for most of the size of the bloated file we know as .doc. This markup language is what controls all visual aspects (as well as the metadata) of a document. All this markup gets very convoluted very fast in the course of editing, saving, transforming and in general, working with them.
CTRL + A doesn't actually select all of the document, it only selects the currently accessible text field. Plenty of potential problems hide... See more These is hidden markup within every Word document that counts for most of the size of the bloated file we know as .doc. This markup language is what controls all visual aspects (as well as the metadata) of a document. All this markup gets very convoluted very fast in the course of editing, saving, transforming and in general, working with them.
CTRL + A doesn't actually select all of the document, it only selects the currently accessible text field. Plenty of potential problems hide outside this area. It works, but a clean slate might sometimes be preferable: if the only thing important in a document is just the plain text, many headaches can be saved by copy-pasting all the text from Word to, say, Notepad and back to a fresh Word document with correct preferences.
There are also several different ways to deal with these issues in a batch process. I suggest looking at a free program called Autohotkey (reasonable computer literacy assumed), and see if their community has cooked up something that might suit your needs.
I'm very new in translation, but previous career IT experience with clients suffering headaches from overexposure to Word tells me that the less that program gets to screw with your text the better. Since I don't yet properly understand the relationship with Word macros and TMs integrated into Word, please forgive me for potentially putting my foot in my mouth in suggesting to strip the text from all of its metadata.
First post, btw. Hope it was a helpful one. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Paola Grochi
Uruguay
Local time: 03:20
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you Jon. In fact the texts are very short, just one paragraph, but will take your advice.
| | | | Tony M
France
Local time: 08:20
Member
French to English
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | Welcome Jon! | Jul 28, 2008 |
Jon Thompson Coon wrote:
First post, btw. Hope it was a helpful one.
Very much so Jon! And welcome to ProZ!
I'd always suspected as much, and your informed opinion has greatly reassured me! I had a 200k Word DOC the other day — a brief, not-even-one-whole-page letter — and when I converted it to RTF it came out to 19 Meg !!!!
I'm from the days of good old WordPerfect, with all those irritating but accessible codes in it! Good job they chopped of the 'IMperfect' when Microsoft named their product...
I've had a similar problem (discussed in another thread) where the presenc eof one Arabic (or subsequently Hebrew) character in my text left a language marker somewhere in it that messed up all manner of things at that point in the text, to my great confusion! Particularly since I got the faulty character by mis-keying an AltNum special character code, so for some time didn't even realize what I'd done.
| | | | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » Looking for a good English spell checker | Anycount & Translation Office 3000 | Translation Office 3000
Translation Office 3000 is an advanced accounting tool for freelance translators and small agencies. TO3000 easily and seamlessly integrates with the business life of professional freelance translators.
More info » |
| | Trados Studio 2022 Freelance | The leading translation software used by over 270,000 translators.
Designed with your feedback in mind, Trados Studio 2022 delivers an unrivalled, powerful desktop
and cloud solution, empowering you to work in the most efficient and cost-effective way.
More info » |
|
| | | | X Sign in to your ProZ.com account... | | | | | |
Login to reply/comment 
Translation news
