The EuroTermBank Word Addin Release (by Jost Zetzsche)

The EuroTermBank Word Addin Release (by Jost Zetzsche)

I get frustrated with Word's spell-checker sometimes. Why in the world would the longish term in the heading not be recognized as a correct word? (Just kidding.)

Anyway, there is a very interesting plug-in that was released earlier this week that allows a search through the EuroTermBank from within MS Word. Now, the EuroTermBank has been publicly available for the past two and a half years and it's a termbase with an "initial focus (...) on terminology collections from the 'new Europe,' including Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Polish terms and their equivalents in English, German, French, Russian and other languages (overall, almost 30 languages)."

I ran a number of tests with my (non-focus) language combination (EN> DE) and got surprisingly helpful results.

Of course, there are a host of on-line terminology resources of varying quality, but all things being equal, I tend to use those that allow access right from within my immediate work environment. That's why I like a tool (like IntelliWebSearch) that directly links me to the dictionaries and glossaries I want to go to, and that's also the strength of this plug-in.

The EuroTermBank Terminology Add-In for Microsoft Word, however, takes it a step further; it not only links to the desired sites, but it also brings the information right into the MS Word interface.

(The only real drawback I see is that MS Word is no longer the preferred environment of many translators, now where even the last two big tool vendors who swore by that environment -- Wordfast and Trados -- have gotten away from it. In fact, the only thing that I still use Word for on a regular basis is to write this newsletter. . . . )

But for those who still like Word as their main interface and who work in European language combinations, the add-in should be highly welcome. There are two different versions of it, one for Word 2003 and one for 2007. I mention this because there are some real functionality differences, and the 2007 version add-in is clearly superior.

But let's start with Word 2003. Once you have the add-in downloaded and installed, it simply adds "ETB Terminology" to all the other resource books (Thesaurus, Encarta, etc.) that you can access in the Research pane. This opens when you click on a term while holding the ALT key. You will find lists of translations of that term in all the languages that are found; there is no way, for instance, to set your desired language combination.

This is different in the Word 2007 version. There you have a large EuroTermBank button on the Review ribbon (which is essentially the only interesting ribbon for standard language-related activities) that you can click on when you have highlighted a word or any section within a text (you can achieve the same by pressing Ctrl +Shift +I or the right-click command Terminology). When you do that, a separate EuroTermBank pane appears on the right with all possible translations into all the languages, but you can quickly filter that down by selecting source and target language and subject area (these settings will be stored between Word sessions) to see a well-defined list of relevant terms. Also, you can send a whole sentence or paragraph using the same method, and the pane will show the terms for which it finds a translation by formatting them like hyperlinks. Clicking on them will lead you to the respective list of translated terms.

It's super easy to use, plus it's free and does not seem to interfere with anything else -- so you'd be silly not to use it.

Source: Jost Zetzsche's 146th Tool Kit - Standard Edition

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The EuroTermBank Word Addin Release (by Jost Zetzsche)