As some of you will know, I try to stay on top of technology at all times. I believe it gives me an important advantage over fellow translators who exist in a technological environment similar to the 1990s, using legacy translation memory software and older versions of MS Word etc. Also, spending a lot of time in front of the computer gives me the chance to read up on new technological developments almost every day.
It is with the intention of always being one step ahead of the game that I have been running Windows 8 as a developer preview, consumer preview, release preview, and not the final RTM version for half a year. It is excellent, but it does pose some questions: With all applications in full screen, will it allow translators to multitask? I think it will, if software developers like SDL are quick to take it up. The new, system-wide search function could be awesome for terminology lookup. Already PONS have produced a dictionary, and a monolingual dictionary has been published, too. For lookup, it works great, and it might be able to function well in snap view, i.e. taking up a small part of the screen to the left or right of whatever CAT tool you are using.
But will the major players, like memoQ or SDL Trados Studio, be available as modern apps for Windows 8? Will they take it up soon enough? Or are we doomed to work in the desktop for the next 10 years, while everyone else will benefit from all the touch screen goodness?
Only time will tell.
Have you given Windows 8 a spin, and can you see yourself becoming a touch-first translator?
Let us know in the comments! This is a guest post by George Bill
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder