Many translators work from an office at home, with customers strewn around the globe. It is, therefore, little wonder, that a modern translator’s office is often fairly technologically advanced. Although there are still translators who work with pencil and paper, and rely on nothing more than their favourite old dictionaries and the local library, most modern professional translators will have access to some form of new-media references.
An increasing number of the traditional dictionaries is now available on CD-ROM, and with modern hard disks allowing people to store gigabytes of information, there is usually no problem in storing a couple of electronic dictionaries on your hard drive. This has the advantage of freeing up your CD-ROM drive for more important items, such as the latest Stereophonics album. In addition, since the advent of Microsoft’s Encarta CD-ROM-based encyclopaedia, which was launched at the same time as Windows 95, we have seen a wealth of reference material, which would previously have taken up tens of volumes, compacted onto a slim piece of plastic.
Probably one of the major resources to many translators is the Internet. Since the early ’90s, when the new browser technology and interactive search machines made locating information so much easier, translators have been at the cutting (some might say, bleeding) edge when it comes to use of the Internet. Many technical translators rely as heavily nowadays on on-line glossaries, such as that at Eurodicautom (the EU terminology tool), as they do on their paper equivalents. Whilst there may be nothing like thumbing through a worn, well-used and well-trusted dictionary, not much can beat on-line resources for speed and accesibility. Much has changed since the early days (I registered for Eurodicautom when still at university, in 1994, and access was via a telnet server to Luxembourg, using a complex set of commands to query the database). The tool has now gained a user-friendly interface, allowing the translator to specify a large amount of search criteria easily. A comprehensive list of glossaries on the Internet is maintained by Frank Dietz. His page lists over 1000 glossaries and terminology lists, covering all imaginable areas of life and work.
In addition to on-line glossaries, translators should also know how to operate a search engine correctly. Sites such as www.google.com are extremely powerful research tools, and advanced search criteria can help you extract the wheat from the chaff. Information on using various search engines is usually found on corresponding search engine search page.