NoScript for Opera, pretty please

Sometimes, proprietary is good. I have been using Firefox now as my primary browser since September of last year, and I was quite happy with it. It crashes more often than Opera and doesn’t come with everything I need (a few addons will rectify this) but overall it is a good tool for my work in video game localization. We localizers need to research a lot, be it in our target...

Firefox addons for video game localizers

I recently switched browsers, from my beloved Opera to Firefox. The reason was a mixture of security concerns and time saving: Opera has no efficient way to toggle the use of JavaScript. Browsing with JavaScript enabled is a bad idea for translators and especially localizers of video games. Very often we will click on an obscure Google search result, which can contain all sorts of...

Displaying Character Count in Excel per Cell

On many displays, the amount of characters that can be shown is very limited. Especially mobile gaming devices (Nintendo DS, PSP or simply a mobile phone) create different challenges for translators and editors. The sentence “Kill ten boars with your bare hands then come back to me and I give you a shiny sword” is no problem for an MMO  displayed on a computer monitor....

Localizing numbers with Word’s Find and Replace

Captain’s Log, star date 4135.5. Commander Worf has developed a rather unpleasant rash on his forehead and the replicators are acting up again. Translating the above sentence is simple enough. Let’s assume for a moment that it belongs to in-game text for a new Star Trek game with many, many “star dates.” In German and other languages, a comma is used instead of a...

Do I really need Trados? It’s so expensive!

This is my standard response to anyone who asks me about Computer-Assisted Translation tools: No, you do not need a CAT tool. Yes, it will make everything faster. Way faster. No, it does not translate for you. Yes, I believe Trados (SDL Trados) is the best out there. No, you don’t need to spend so much money right now. Why don’t you try one of the free CAT tools out there,...

Ignore [all this stuff] in Trados

I cannot for the life of me remember where I found this guide to ignore [everything in between here]. Very helpful when using Trados while translating games, to make sure those pesky variables do not get caught up in the fuzzy CAT logic. Open the document (obviously) and make sure the Trados macros are activated. Press Alt+F8 to bring up the Macros dialog and select...