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Writing for Translation, Part 2
Most of the source languages that are supported by FreeTranslation.com have special characters, such as É, Ç, and Ü. The proper use of these characters is critical to accurate written communication in these languages. In some cases, a missing diacritical mark will simply prevent a word from being recognized by the automatic translation software. But in many other cases, the accent is the only way to distinguish between completely different words or at least different forms of the same word.
For instance, in Spanish, HABLO means “I am talking”, while HABLÓ means “he spoke”. The French word ARRIVÉ is the past participle of the verb ARRIVER (“to arrive”), while ARRIVE is the first person and third person present tense. In German, the word TOCHTER (“daughter”) is singular and the word TÖCHTER is plural (“daughters”). In some cases, the accent is the only difference between two completely different words, such as the Italian word É (“is”) and E (“and”). A little mark can make a very big difference in the clarity of the source text and, therefore, in the quality of the translation.
If you have a language-specific keyboard for one of the source languages that use special characters, then it should be very easy for you to type them. But if you have a standard US or British keyboard, you will have to use one of the following methods.
For the entry of text directly into FreeTranslation.com, you can use the convenient drop-down menus that you will find directly beneath the “Free Text Translator” field and the “Translate Again” field. To type an accented E, for instance, click on the down arrow beside the E and then select the accented character that you need.
Alternatively, you can use key combinations to input special characters. For instance, on a Windows system, you can press the Alt-key and the number pad keys 0233 to enter the character é. For a list of the key combinations for both Windows and Macintosh systems, click here. These codes are a bit awkward, but you don't have to change your system settings to use them.
Finally, you can modify the settings on your computer so that you can use more convenient key combinations for typing accented characters. On Windows systems, you can find out here how to set up the US-International Keyboard Layout. With this configuration, you type a punctuation mark and then a vowel to get an accented character. For instance, typing an apostrophe (’) and then an E, yields É. Mac users can find more information about entering accented characters, here.
If you have developed unusual techniques for improving the translations you get from FreeTranslation.com, we would love to hear about them!
I would like to add another useful technique for adding accents which not many seem to use.
Almost all keyboards have an "Alt Gr" button to the right of the space bar. This can be used with all of the vowels to add an accent grave (like á, é, í, ó, ú). So:
Alt Gr + e = é
Alt Gr + a = á
Alt Gr + i = í
Alt Gr + o = ó
Alt Gr + u = ú
I find this technique far quicker than using the Alt key and a code, for these very common accents.