Professional translation software, scanner pen from Square One boost efficiency

The ever-increasing participation of South African SME companies in the global economy creates many situations where businesses have to deal with documentation in foreign languages.

"Manual translations can be expensive, time-consuming and frustrating when quick responses are required to confirm a sales lead, a transaction or an agreement," says Hester Pescivolo, product manager of the document solutions division at JSE-listed ICT solutions company Square One Solutions Group.

"To meet a need for a cost-effective solution to this problem we have recently introduced two new products to the market - a powerful translation software and a digital pen that scans text directly into a computer using a standard USB connection."

The software, known as ScanSoft Systran Translator Professional, quickly and accurately translates Microsoft Office files into English from French, German, Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian and from English into those languages. Letters, e-mails, manuals, presentations, Web page content and even PDF documents can be translated with a few mouse clicks.

The digital pen, called the C-Pen Scanner, recognises 167 languages and accurately scans printed text, digits, barcodes and the like directly into word processing and spreadsheet programs. Used with translation software, it helps to quickly translate foreign printed documents and texts.

Connected to a laptop, the C-Pen becomes portable and can be used to scan notes or text at meetings and from libraries, archives, research papers, magazines and newspapers. It will read text and digits in most fonts in sizes ranging from 5pt to 22pt at a speed of 15cm a second.

Scansoft Systran Translator is a unified translation solution for multiple formats and its Translation Project Manager (STPM) feature can be used as a "translation workbench" that enables translations to be managed from initial document analysis through dictionary updates and the use of reviewing tools for quality assurance.

Translation plug-ins for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook can be accessed directly from the Office desktop and the contents of documents, presentations, spreadsheets and Web pages translated instantly and saved as a localised document in the home language selected. Languages can be switched easily and quickly through the user-friendly toolbar.

"Users can copy an unlimited number of pages from any Windows application into the active Clipboard Taskbar and the text is instantly translated. Text can be copied out of one application, translated and then pasted into another application," said Pescivolo. "DOC, RTF, TXT, HTML, XHTML, PDF, and TMX-formatted files can be imported into the STPM, which can also be used to access Web pages, translate them, and compare the original source material and the translated material side-by-side."

Translation speed can be up to 3 million words an hour, depending upon the PC processor being used, and document formatting is always preserved, eliminating the need for retyping. System requirements for the Systran Translator Professional software include Intel Pentium III 500MHz or higher processor, Microsoft Windows 2000/XP, Microsoft Office Suite XP/2003, Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher, 128MB of RAM, 160MB plus 60MB per language pair available on hard disk and 500MB of available space on hard disk to install. The C-Pen requirements are a Pentium 200MHz with 64MB RAM and 290MB free hard disk space, Windows 98/Me/2000/XP and a USB port.