New Technology and the J-E Translator (2)
Richard Sadowsky, longtime SWET member, Apple user, and freelance translator, is often on the road in and out of Japan. He works with his arsenal of tools to keep productivity high, and shares his insights with SWET through an interview developed into the “Top Ten Tech Tools for Translators.” Five were described in the first part of this interview, with the remaining five here.
Q: The first five tools you covered earlier generally involved hardware of some sort: electronic dictionaries, noise-canceling headphones, a backup hard drive, a low-tech copyholder, and a portable text-input device. You placed them in categories of: Get Organized, Get Comfortable, and Translate!
RS: Actually I’d like to re-classify those categories, if I may, into: Prepare, Translate!, and Improve.
Q: Can you explain?
RS: Sure. If I tried to get everything in my life Organized before feeling Comfortable enough to sit down and Translate!, I doubt I’d get any work done at all. So, to reframe: Simply prepare, then work. Later, do what you can to improve the process.
Q: What’s with the exclamation point?
RS: Um, importance signifier? The importance of the central goal—getting the job done. . . .
Q: So, what are the next five for the Top Ten list?
RS: Okay. Five more translator tools: an ergonomic keyboard, a large flat-panel LCD monitor, OCR software in combination with a virtual fax system/scanner, keitai email, and a good macro program.
Among the improvements I’ve made in my office setup this year are the addition of an ergonomic keyboard and a 19” flat-panel LCD monitor to my notebook computer. Both are plug-and-play devices that have had an immediate impact on productivity and comfort! I chose a Goldtouch for Mac. 
It’s great. It’s a split keyboard that tents up and can be adjusted for “splay” and “pronation” in any increments you desire. Everyone knows the benefits, so I won’t go into them (avoidance of carpal tunnel syndrome, etc.). 
It sits on a laptop desk on my lap, which leans between an office armchair and the desk. Next to the keyboard is a Logitech Trackman Wheel. I sit with my feet up or one knee under and the other extended and can touch type while sitting back from the desk. If I had to find a drawback to the keyboard it would have to be that 
the Apple Control key is out of the way, so I had to reset a bunch of macros that my fingers had learned to different key combinations, and remap the Caps Lock and Apple Control keys. With Tiger (Mac OS X) that can be done easily in the Keyboard Preference Pane. And as with any new keyboard, it takes some time to get your fingers/brain used to the raised bump on the ‘F’ and ‘J’ keys to locate the home keys unconsciously. All in all, I feel that the Goldtouch was a good choice for me.
Q: How about the monitor? Why did you get that model or want a flat panel in the first place?
Most of the Japanese documents I receive to translate are in Word format, but in some cases they arrive as Excel files, or PDF files that are pictures, not copyable text. Especially in those cases, legibility is an issue. To print and enlarge is one solution, and something that I had to resort to often over the last year. Being able to enlarge text on a big screen, especially when a legible font size makes the paragraph width very wide, is a godsend.
Since my main computer is a 12” notebook (at the moment a G4 iBook, but perhaps something newer this year), I felt it was time to finally increase my screen real estate. Prices have come down so much so that there is no reason NOT to buy a flat panel monitor anymore! For a desktop machine, it’s also possible to buy a second and use dual monitors. One quickly becomes used to whatever screen size one has, and soon wants more. What for? To keep multiple programs open and viewable at the same time, of course.
Q: So, why just a 19” monitor? Why not a 20.1” wide or 24” wide-screen monitor? I hear the Dell 24” wide monitor is very nice.
RS: Yes, larger monitors are available, but I was looking for a good price point as a primary consideration. For 32,000 yen I got a 
BenQ FP93V because its brightness, sharp text display, and design stood out from the rest when I saw it at the Yodobashi Camera store in Osaka. The clear text display was my main consideration, along with price. I also chose it for its design, as my office decor is white and this one would fit in very nicely. 
It won the 2006 iF Design Award (Germany) for product design in the computer category for its Mac Mini-compatible design. A wide-screen version of this model has just come out: BenQ FP93VW.
Q: How do you like the LCD monitor?
RS: I love it. The first thing I did was reduce its brightness to 42 from 100 to lessen eye strain. To get the monitor to work at full resolution with a G4 iBook as a dual monitor (not just in lower resolution “mirror mode”), you have to use the “Screen Spanning Doctor” open firmware hack. The developer (Klaus, in Germany) helped me to get it working. At first it wouldn’t install on a Japanese system, but switching to English temporarily for the install worked! Now I can enlarge those PDFs to a legible size and still have room to work in a word processing document. Plus do lots more. If I want to use the notebook without the monitor, I just unplug it and the menu bar and folders return to the notebook screen without problem.
Q: Just for comparison’s sake, what was your second choice, or other features that you were considering?
RS: Actually I read a lot of user reviews and ratings of specific monitor models in Japanese on sites like kakaku.com (the “kuchi-komi” section related to each product). It’s always important to read reviews because similar models, even from the same manufacturer can get entirely different ratings in terms of quality and usability. But I never could have made a decision without seeing it on display in a store. Some features that one should consider are at least a 3-year automatic warranty and angle adjustability, and in Japan, compliance with the recycling law. Again, I’m happy with the BenQ on all of these accounts.
Q: How is the third tool you chose, OCR software in combination with a virtual fax system/scanner, helpful in getting the job done?
RS: Again, since I’m Mac-centric, the only truly viable option for Japanese character recognition was eTypist. For the Mac it’s v8.0. For Windows v11.0 is available. As I live in Japan, the free virtual fax system I use is D-FAX. With this system, an incoming fax is received as a TIFF file. Multi-page TIFFs I open in GraphicConverter. Sometimes I receive incoming faxes on an eMac that is usually asleep and if I wake it up when the fax line rings, it receives a fax and sends it by email to an account I specify. eTypist can scan PDFs and TIFFs and turn pictures of text into actual, copy-and-pastable text, which is what you need for looking things up in online dictionaries or the Web. 
I also bought a scanner very cheaply at Yahoo! Japan Auctions (CanoScan LiDe 40) that works just fine for actual paper. I was looking for any Canon scanner that had a native OS X driver. It takes some time to learn to use the software, but once you do, it saves a huge amount of time, because you no longer need to decipher and look up difficult kanji. Actually, I bought the (cheaper) upgrade version, but the software never asked for a serial number from a previous version.
Q: Fourth, keitai email. How do you use that for better productivity on-the-job?
RS: Well, actually I have a client who is constantly on the move, and asks me to notify him of a translation I have sent to his computer via a cc to his cell phone. He then can pick it up at a WiFi spot at his next convenience. I sometimes use it in a similar way, asking a client to send email to my cell phone, so that I know immediately when a job arrives. In the summer, when I’m traveling in the States and Hawaii, I’ll have to work out how to keep in contact with my clients to make it a working holiday. This is getting into communications tools, but sometimes it pays to buy a cheap prepaid cell phone when traveling to another country, and use a callback system like United World Telecom. I’ll let you know in the autumn what I manage to do in the summer.
Q: Lastly, you recommend a good macro program? What, precisely, is that?
RS: A macro program is software that you can use to “learn” a sequence of repetitive steps that you always perform on your computer. I use Quickeys for the Mac, a program I’ve been using since its earliest incarnation. There’s also iKey, which the company calls “script software,” or Keyboard Maestro and the like. For Windows, there AutoHotKey and others.
Q: Can you give an example of how you use the software?
RS: I suppose the thing I do most often is copy and paste from the genkō in my word processor to either a dictionary or to Google for lookup. The steps are: copy, switch (open) program, paste, return. . . . For copying into Firefox, Cmd-K highlights the Google search box, so that step goes in. If you do certain sequences of steps with regularity, it is well worth the time spent learning to build and tweak a macro using a system-wide macro program so that you simply invoke the sequence with a single key combination. There’s a lot more you can do with a macro program, but even just for quick lookups, I couldn’t live without it.
Q: Do you have any other productivity tips or something still on your wishlist?
Well, any productivity tool can interfere with getting things done if you spend too much time playing around with it. More important than tools is really cultivating and maintaining a state of mind that you will just sit down and work, get something out of the way to make room for more. Overcome procrastination however possible. As far as a wishlist, aside from the Nintendo DS Lite, I’m thinking of a handwritten kanji input system for my computer. 
I’m not sure what it involves just yet—a low-cost tablet-and-stylus with Japanese software that does the handwriting recognition. That would be a useful improvement. And then, perhaps something that allows me to work while lying on my back, like the Laptop Laidback, or leaning back, like the Levenger Lap Desk.
Q: Can we look forward to an on-going column here, with the next installment to come in the fall after your trip to Seattle, Hawaii, and other places?
RS: Sure! It will be great to share what I learn this summer implementing a “working holiday” lifestyle. I’ll have to leave behind some of the office technologies I’ve just mentioned to go mobile, but the change of scenery will more than make up for it!
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