Spell-check for Translators in the Target Language.

Asked by Anthony Litchfield

     Currently, while I'm translating English to Italian (and this may be happening for other languages), I find myself with the almost completely useless feature of an English Spell-Checker in my translation fields (This occurs while translating both Audacious and Astrid, and probably more). This tells me whether my Italian just happens to contain correctly spelled English words, useful only in some technological or medical or other fields where the Italian word is also the English word. However, an Italian Spell-Checker would contain all those words, plus the ones that I might be misspelling in Italian (I am not a flawless typer with a flawlessly spelled vocabulary yet).

     How does one change the default Spelling-Checker language, for a given project?

     If there is currently no way, then I say we make a way.

     Possibly allowing the translator to choose the Spelling-Checker language or make the target language the default Spelling-Checker language would more than double the speed of translation (cutting the need for external Spell-Check) or halve the submitted translation errors (for those that haven't been externally Spell-Checking).

     Where an open source spelling checker hasn't yet been created for a target language, perhaps those could be added to the projects to create; however, even rough and incomplete dictionaries for a language would enhance translation much more than an English Spelling-Checker.

     When spelling of words is less pressing, the translator will focus on the harder tasks of word choice, not letter choice.

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Launchpad itself Edit question
Assignee:
Данило Шеган Edit question
Solved by:
Данило Шеган
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Whiteboard:
al-maisan; Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:18:52 +0100 assigned to danilo
Revision history for this message
Best Данило Шеган (danilo) said :
#1

Anthony, thanks for the input. It seems this is a feature of your web browser which gives you spell checker for the base language of the web page: Launchpad doesn't provide any in-built spell-checking as of yet.

Btw, what is the web browser you are using that gives you this?

If you know how we can specify the language so that your browser picks up the proper spell check for input fields for translations, and that doesn't conflict anything else, we'd be happy to do it. Note that you'd still need to have appropriate spell check locally installed anyway.

Revision history for this message
Anthony Litchfield (tonylitchfield) said :
#2

Thank you very much.

Yes, in fact it is my web browser, Mozilla Firefox.

I am using:

Firefox
version 3.0.15

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.15) Gecko/2009102814 Ubuntu/8.04 (hardy) Firefox/3.0.15

Going to Edit --> Preferences
then to the Advanced tab
"Check my spelling as I type" is under "Browsing"
activate it by putting a check mark in the check box.

The default language for me was English, but by right-clicking on any text-field and choosing "Languages" a drop-down listing is given to choose a different language of those with a dictionary file already on your computer. At the bottom is an option to "Add Dictionaries..." taking you to
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:3
where you can install other dictionary and language packs.

More information about the "Check my spelling as I type" is found at:
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Options+window+-+Advanced+panel?style_mode=inproduct

Under Browsing.

Thank you yet again for helping me put an Italian Spell-Checker with just the click of a mouse, and maybe this will help others too.

Revision history for this message
Anthony Litchfield (tonylitchfield) said :
#3

Thanks Данило Шеган, that solved my question.