Saturday, August 10, 2013

Translation help

Looking for help coming up with the right words when you are translating into other languages?  I speak Spanish moderately well, but I am lacking so many technical terms!  My go-to source for translations of computer terms has become Office.com and other Microsoft web sites.  Most of the content is available in a variety of languages, and you can switch between them easily.  For example, if I search on a given topic, I will get a URL like the following:

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/support/touch-mouse-and-search/using-touch-gestures-tap-swipe-and-beyond

This is a page that includes information about using touch gestures (tap, swipe, etc.) on touchscreens.  Being sure of the right way to translate this could be difficult.  Instead, I trust that Microsoft has done their homework!  In order to change language, just look for your default language in the URL (/en-us/ in my case).  Now, just change that to the language you want to check:

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/es-mx/support/touch-mouse-and-search/using-touch-gestures-tap-swipe-and-beyond

Bam!  Now you are seeing the page with all of those pesky specialized words translated for you!  You can use this for software-related terms or phrases.  Obviously, it's not very helpful if you don't know anything about the target language, but if you are just looking for a set of terms, this might be the way to do it!

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