Sunday 6 May 2018

Must-have "tidy" tools for translators and interpreters

On 5 May 2018, ITI Cymru Wales hosted an afternoon workshop entitled “Tidy tools for translators and interpreters”. The programme included short presentations about tools designed to improve translators’ and interpreters’ efficiency and productivity as well as the quality of translations, including: Dragon, APSIC Xbench, Protemos, ProjectTermExtract for SDL Trados Studio, PerfectIt, IntelliWebSearch, and ZipDX.

More efficiency: "tidy" tools for translators and interpreters

The event took place on a day blessed with glorious sunshine in the gorgeous city of Cardiff, which I last set foot in for the ITI conference 2017. Cycling down to Bristol Temple Meads train station, heading over to Cardiff on the train and cutting through Cardiff centre on my walk to the event venue (the Centre of Lifelong Learning on Senghennydd Road) therefore brought up lots of good memories for me!

I had chosen to attend because I was keen to catch a glimpse into tools I had heard about before, but had never had a chance (or actually time) to try or see on the screen, such as the much talked-about Dragon. The first thing I learnt, though, was that the word “tidy” in the event name has nothing to do with “neat” or “not messy” (as I had indeed erroneously assumed!), but is a Welsh word meaning “good” or “satisfactory”.


I have gained rudimentary knowledge of tools I had heard about in the past, but had never seen in action. All in all, it was a really worthwhile event and for me a very enjoyable day out, too. Thank you to the organisers of ITI Cymru Wales for putting it on!

I have written up the event for the ITI Cymru Wales newsletter. To request a copy of my write-up, please contact me.