Stupid Translator Tricks

MS Word

Duplicate formatting

This tip takes advantage of the F4 hotkey to repeat your last action. Say you have a word that is in red, bold, Arial font. You would like to give another word the same formatting. Simply select the word, and hit Control-D. After the font dialog appears, hit Enter to dismiss it. Now select the word(s) you would like to transfer the formatting to, and hit F4.

The same applies to paragraph formatting. Say you have a paragraph that has special indentation, line spacing, etc. Place the cursor inside that paragraph, and select Format >> Paragraph (Alt-O, P). Dismiss the dialog with the Enter key, then place your cursor in another paragraph, and hit F4.

Quit auto-switching the IME to Japanese

I use Japanese MS XP and English Word 2003. For some reason, Word got it into its head that I must prefer to type Japanese most of the time. Every time I started Word, the IME was in Japense input mode. Every time I called up a dialog (like Paragraph or Find), the IME was in Japanese mode. Set the IME to English, then call up the dialog again -- Japanese! Very frustrating.

The fix for this is as follows. Go to Tools >> Options >> Edit. Now, select IME Settings >> General, and set "Input mode on startup" to "Half-width Alphanumeric." Click OK, and then on the Edit tab, disable "IME Control Active" (not sure if this is necessary). Word will tell you to restart in order for changes to take effect; do it.

Now when you start Word, the input mode will be English. Whew!

MS Excel

Import Internet glossaries

Ever wish you had an easy way to import those Website glossaries into easy-to-use files? Well, it's simple if you have MS Excel 2002 or higher installed. From an Internet Explorer browser window, right click on the glossary, and select "Export to Microsoft Excel" (or the localized equivalent). Within seconds, you should have that glossary in an Excel worksheet, either to save or for further processing (like exporting into your favorite translation memory tool).