Introducing Tabbles

As a translator, I value being able to find information almost as much as I do the information itself. What good is information if you do not know where to find it or how much of it and what kind you have? Although there are many software applications that are good at categorizing information and files, I have not found any that fill Tabbles' niche.

Though you can easily group files and folders with Microsoft Windows, you can only really place them in one spot a time. Tabbles (a portmanteau of tag bubbles) gives you a visual perspective of your files, and allows you to put them in several "baskets" at the same time.

I've come to the conclusion that this means two things for users: we can assign different tags to the same file according to our needs, and each tabble has a different color for quick and easy recognition. We can tag a Mexican legal translation as a document, a translation, law, Mexican, assigned in the year 2010, a translation over 1000 words, and the list goes on. We can also put different file types that encompass different categories yet share common theme into one tabble. This means that you can group a translation website with a legal glossary with a client's e-mail address with an image of an official seal... Whatever makes sense to you!

Puerto Rican Law

I translate a fair number of divorce decrees from Puerto Rico. I find it easy to relate to Puerto Rican law for two reasons: One is that it is based on precedents, just like U.S. law (Figueroa Ferrer vs Morales Morales comes up again and again). The other is that the wording is quite similar to U.S. English. You will see "orden" for "order" as in "income withholding order", "moción" for "motion" and "bajo juramento" for "under oath". Sentences are short, like English and are mostly subject, verb, object, without the more complex structures seen in similar documents from Mexico.

All of these factors combined make for swift and happy translating! ¡Viva Puerto Rico!

Inquiring minds want to know!

I have a penchant for using Inquiry by Metaproducts which I was lucky enough to come across at Giveaway of the Day. I would probably use it even if I were not a translator. It just happens to be fun to use and useful to anyone who cares to browse the web. What the application does is save webpages in folders that you create with it in the program. You can then edit the pages, thus getting rid of the annoying ads and other images that are not pertinent. When you're done doing that, you can search all downloaded webpages.

I like to save KudoZ terminology searches and Wikipedia pages. I like the concept of narrowing down what is available (versus searching the entire Internet) and being able to search what I have. I also think that making notes on the webpages themselves is very handy. You can consider this process as an intermediate one. It is something between the raw search performed when using Google or another search engine and what you have compiled in your own terminology database. I am often too busy to properly catalog information that I want to access later, and if I leave it up to my memory, I may lose track of what I wanted to look up if I come back later when I have more time. In addition, you have the original link of the same webpage in Inquiry in case there is something else you want to search later.