Some sort of database for translations?

September 7, 2008 4:34 PM

Is there any sort of freeware program (online, installed on computer, php, mysql, anything) for me to save phrases in English, and then their translation in a certain language? In some kind of tidy, tabled format? I tried a wiki but I quickly tired of formatting each entry in order to produce a tidy table. Ideally, I'd like to be able to just plug in the phrases and go.
posted by Xere to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Anything you want to do in a table is a good candidate for the spreadsheet in Google Docs.

As an alternative, I really like Genius (Mac OS X only) and Anki (cross-platform). Both are flashcard programs, and both have a table view, although they're really intended for quizzing yourself. Anki is less intuitive, but they're both great programs.
posted by kristi at 5:23 PM on September 7, 2008

You might want to see if anything works for you in Google Documents. If all you are looking for is a two-column table, you can use the spreadsheet, or create a table in a document. And, since it is online, you can use it from any computer.
posted by Roger Dodger at 5:24 PM on September 7, 2008

Seconding Anki, it's a fantastic, free program.
posted by fire&wings at 5:35 PM on September 7, 2008

What do you want to do with them in the end? That matters a lot.
posted by cmiller at 6:31 PM on September 7, 2008

Response by poster: cmiller: A quick-reference database for phrases used in software translation. I translate software programs and whatnot from English, and many terms tend to come up over and over again. (Frequently asked questions, About us, Release notes, File, Open...)
posted by Xere at 6:58 PM on September 7, 2008

POedit works like that.
posted by Memo at 9:49 PM on September 7, 2008

In our office, we use Felix (used to be called TransAssist) -- in any case, it's just one of many types of translation memory software, which is what you describe -- a database of English terms/expressions/sentences and corresponding translations. But instead of being quick reference, these tools generally identify text in a document you're working on and suggest translations based on the database you've created, so you don't really have to refer to anything.

Felix isn't freeware, and I don't know how good the freeware products are, but there's a ton of them about 3/4 the way down on the 2nd link. Best of luck!
posted by Bixby23 at 10:17 PM on September 7, 2008

I am not sure how you do your translations or why you need this, but assuming it is to help you translate better, check out WordFast - you can build a translation database which you can use in the future. The software has a free trial version and then a pay version, which is very affordable.
posted by mateuslee at 4:36 AM on September 8, 2008

if you want a tree-organizer for text clips, try surfulater. It has a lot of features to move text into it from website or clipboard and comment or cross-list the entries as well. (New version coming out soon will have tags as well).
posted by jak68 at 3:51 PM on September 8, 2008