Mac vs PC, cross-platforming for translation
Thread poster: Vladimir Dubisskiy
Vladimir Dubisskiy
Vladimir Dubisskiy
United States
Local time: 17:49
Member (2001)
English to Russian
+ ...
Mar 9, 2003

I am looking for reflections on how Mac can be used for doing jobs generally coming in PC/Windows/Word format.

I am thinking about switching to Mac; became aware that there MS Office for Mac (and they promise full compatibility there) - is that so in practical life, especially with translations?

And does Mac OS (esp. Jaguar) support Slavic langs (I mean with mail, and word-processing)?

Thanks in advacne

(and I am totally rookie with Mac)


 
Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 23:49
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
Slavic languages yes, compatibility no Mar 9, 2003

I do not own a MAC, but I worked a bit with a MAC from my neighbour.

The OS is 9, and it supports Polish, Czech and Hungarian for sure. I´m not sure about Russian. OS X shall support Unicode, so Russian should be among the suported languages. So language support would be no problem.



But the real problem ist the compatibility between MAC and Windows in Office documents. Even if MS states that those documents are compatible, the aren´t fully compatible and you will
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I do not own a MAC, but I worked a bit with a MAC from my neighbour.

The OS is 9, and it supports Polish, Czech and Hungarian for sure. I´m not sure about Russian. OS X shall support Unicode, so Russian should be among the suported languages. So language support would be no problem.



But the real problem ist the compatibility between MAC and Windows in Office documents. Even if MS states that those documents are compatible, the aren´t fully compatible and you will get a lot of problems due to converting. So IMHO you cannot switch fully to MAC if you still want to offer PC based documents.



I have worked with QuarkXPress for both Windows and MAC and those files were compatbile, but only for western languages. The encoding of polish characters was totally different, so I had to search and replace each character (by search and replace function, but this is very limited in Quark).



I must admit too, that a MAC with OS 9 is not the best solution in my eyes. The direct comparation between MAC OS 9 and Windows 2000 shows a lot of limitations in MAC OS, it is not as easy to use and as flexible as Windows. Long time ago, as Windows was in the beginning, MAC OS was very modern and comfortable. But now I have the impression, that Windows has learned a lot and MACs stayed where they were some 10 years ago...



Just my 2 cents



Jerzy
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Sheila Hardie
Sheila Hardie  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 23:49
Member
Catalan to English
+ ...
No problems Mar 9, 2003

I use a Mac (PowerBook G4 with OS 9.1) and have had absolutely no problems sending and/or receiving files to and from PCs. The only thing I have to remember is to save any Word files in rtf format - if I don\'t, PC users have problems opening them. I don\'t know about Jaguar or compatibility for Slavic languages; I am sure someone else will be able to advise you about that.



Hope that helps you a wee bit,



Sheila (who loves her Mac...
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I use a Mac (PowerBook G4 with OS 9.1) and have had absolutely no problems sending and/or receiving files to and from PCs. The only thing I have to remember is to save any Word files in rtf format - if I don\'t, PC users have problems opening them. I don\'t know about Jaguar or compatibility for Slavic languages; I am sure someone else will be able to advise you about that.



Hope that helps you a wee bit,



Sheila (who loves her Mac)

[ This Message was edited by:on2003-03-09 19:27]
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Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 23:49
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
No compatibility, only RTF Mar 9, 2003

Quote:


On 2003-03-09 19:26, SJH wrote:

I use a Mac (PowerBook G4 with OS 9.1) and have had absolutely no problems sending and/or receiving files to and from PCs. The only thing I have to remember is to save any Word files in rtf format - if I don\'t, PC users have problems opening them. I don\'t know about Jaguar or compatibility for Slavic languages; I am sure someone else will be able to advise you about that.


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Quote:


On 2003-03-09 19:26, SJH wrote:

I use a Mac (PowerBook G4 with OS 9.1) and have had absolutely no problems sending and/or receiving files to and from PCs. The only thing I have to remember is to save any Word files in rtf format - if I don\'t, PC users have problems opening them. I don\'t know about Jaguar or compatibility for Slavic languages; I am sure someone else will be able to advise you about that.



Hope that helps you a wee bit,



Sheila (who loves her Mac)



[ This Message was edited byn2003-03-09 19:27]





Yes, this is the whole problem: you must save the files as RTF - but RTF is not fully (not even nearly) compatible with Word 2000/XP and other Office applications. This is only a half-way compatibility, but you loos with almost 100% certainity any links and all embeded graphis will be damaged.

One can not work with \"real\" Word files in this way, sorry.



Jerzy ▲ Collapse


 
Vladimir Dubisskiy
Vladimir Dubisskiy
United States
Local time: 17:49
Member (2001)
English to Russian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
thank you guys, Mar 9, 2003

Thanks,

Jerzy and Sheila, - you are awesome - I am gaining first-hand experience which is the most valuable thing!



 
Stéphan Goldsmith
Stéphan Goldsmith
Local time: 18:49
English to French
+ ...
No compatibility issues to report Mar 9, 2003

Hi,



I am using Mac OS X (10.1.5) and have no problems at all working for customers in .DOC files.



Bear in mind though before \"switching\" that the majority of current CAT tools are not available for Mac. But here again, a tool like Wordfast maybe enough for the kind of projects you handle.



Receiving the news alert from Gazeta.ru has never been a problem in Entourage (the name of Outlook in Office Mac version)



S
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Hi,



I am using Mac OS X (10.1.5) and have no problems at all working for customers in .DOC files.



Bear in mind though before \"switching\" that the majority of current CAT tools are not available for Mac. But here again, a tool like Wordfast maybe enough for the kind of projects you handle.



Receiving the news alert from Gazeta.ru has never been a problem in Entourage (the name of Outlook in Office Mac version)



Stephan
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Sarah Downing
Sarah Downing  Identity Verified
Local time: 18:49
German to English
+ ...
No problems either, but ... Mar 9, 2003

For a while I had an IMAC and no PC and found that to be O.K. From my experience, Macs are somewhat more reliable and sturdier than PCs - i.e. they crash less. I didn\'t have to save documents in rtf format, but it is important to remember to tick the file appendix check box when saving files, so that they automatically have an appendix that is PC-compatible.



I didn\'t find Mac to be particularly incompatible for Office documents, but more with other kinds of programs. I use
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For a while I had an IMAC and no PC and found that to be O.K. From my experience, Macs are somewhat more reliable and sturdier than PCs - i.e. they crash less. I didn\'t have to save documents in rtf format, but it is important to remember to tick the file appendix check box when saving files, so that they automatically have an appendix that is PC-compatible.



I didn\'t find Mac to be particularly incompatible for Office documents, but more with other kinds of programs. I use a lot of CD dictionaries, as they make translation a whole lot quicker. However, many simply aren\'t made to run on a Mac platform and that is a bit of a shame, in my opinion.



According to my Mac-pro friend whom I\'ve just asked, Mac OS 10, the latest OS, is considerably more compatible with PCs that its predecessor, Mac OS 9.



That\'s my 2 cents worth,

Hope it helped.



Sarah
[addsig]
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frentur
frentur
Türkiye
Local time: 01:49
English to Turkish
+ ...
Mac&Word compatible CAT tool Mar 9, 2003

Although I am not a Mac user, I know from the mailing list that CAT tool Wordfast is Mac and Ms-Word friendly and works with any alphabet including cyrillic, CJK, greek, hebrew, arabic, etc (unicode) fonts and languages. Have a look in Proz\'s CAT Tool Center in the left margin in this web page.

A fully functional free trial version is downloadable from www.wordfast.net



good luck
[addsig]


 
OlafK
OlafK
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:49
English to German
+ ...
No problems with Mac OS 9 Mar 11, 2003

If you save an MS Office file in the right format you won\'t have any problems. I worked on Macs for years but only two years after buying my latest Mac I was forced to buy a Windows PC for a big long term project which required a special software that runs neither on Mac OS nor on my PC emulator. I am a passionate Mac user and find them much easier to use especially when I have problems but I am not sure a Mac is a good investment for a translator.

 
Marc P (X)
Marc P (X)  Identity Verified
Local time: 23:49
German to English
+ ...
Various links Mar 11, 2003

For information on using Macs for translation, try the LantraMUG group at



http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LantraMUG



As others have mentioned, there are very few CAT tools available for the Mac. Wordfast is probably most popular. In fact, I believe the Mac version of Wordfast is still free. (Someone please correct me if I\'m wrong. Given the price of Wordfast (170 euro?),
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For information on using Macs for translation, try the LantraMUG group at



http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LantraMUG



As others have mentioned, there are very few CAT tools available for the Mac. Wordfast is probably most popular. In fact, I believe the Mac version of Wordfast is still free. (Someone please correct me if I\'m wrong. Given the price of Wordfast (170 euro?), this is probably not an issue compared to the cost of hardware.) You will find comments from several Mac+Wordfast users at the Wordfast user group,



http://groups.yahoo.com/group/wordfast



OmegaT also runs on the Mac. It also supports Cyrillic. The disadvantage is that it doesn\'t support MS Word. This is not a problem on Windows/Linux, as OpenOffice.org can be used for conversion, but OpenOffice.org is not available for the native Mac interface; you can run it on Mac if you install the X Window system, but this is not a solution for most Mac users. So, OmegaT on the Mac is for plain text or HTML at the present time. RTF may be supported sometime in the future. Details of OmegaT at



http://www.marcprior.de/OmegaT/OmegaT.html



Another CAT tool for Mac is under development; details at



http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FutureMacMem



HTH

Marc













On 2003-03-09 18:06, vvd wrote:

I am looking for reflections on how Mac can be used for doing jobs generally coming in PC/Windows/Word format.

I am thinking about switching to Mac; became aware that there MS Office for Mac (and they promise full compatibility there) - is that so in practical life, especially with translations?

And does Mac OS (esp. Jaguar) support Slavic langs (I mean with mail, and word-processing)?

Thanks in advacne

(and I am totally rookie with Mac)

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Vladimir Dubisskiy
Vladimir Dubisskiy
United States
Local time: 17:49
Member (2001)
English to Russian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you, you are awesome! Mar 13, 2003

Amazing support, guys - thank you a bunch!

 
M&Mme Netchaev
M&Mme Netchaev
France
Local time: 23:49
English to Russian
+ ...
Mac vs PC May 15, 2005

I used to work on Mac PowerBook with PC emulator fully installed (note, emulation provider was reselled twice and now the product is discontinued).

You will have no problem switching between both environments for routine tasks and file types.

However - as soon as your job becomes more specific - AutoCAD, DTP software, localization - you will be at risk. And think about fonts compatibility for such exotic languages as Russian!

If you can have both - Mc AND P
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I used to work on Mac PowerBook with PC emulator fully installed (note, emulation provider was reselled twice and now the product is discontinued).

You will have no problem switching between both environments for routine tasks and file types.

However - as soon as your job becomes more specific - AutoCAD, DTP software, localization - you will be at risk. And think about fonts compatibility for such exotic languages as Russian!

If you can have both - Mc AND PC - go and amuse yourself with your new toy, if not analyze carefully the type of work you provide.

For me the pro's are - intellectual curiosity,
the contra's - the restricted market share for computers and for software products.

Never fanatical supporter of Windows, I know that almost any technical problem I encounter will be resolved through forums, friendly advices and download really quick - nor the same for Mac environment.

Last advise - look through MAC forums here and on the web - it will help you to understand the kind of problems other translators can have with MAC.

Sorry if i sound too prosaic - for me the change in working environment is something to take seriously

marina

marina
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Elena Governo
Elena Governo
Local time: 23:49
English to Italian
+ ...
cd dictionaries not running on mac Sep 13, 2005

I did switch to Mac (I have Mac OSX 10.3.9) and I have had absolutely no problems (so far) with language support (in my case scandinavian and asian languages) or compatibility of files. But I do agree with Sarah Downing: the cd dictionaries I used on my old (crappy) pc do not run on Mac... and this is a real pity.




Sarah Downing wrote:

For a while I had an IMAC and no PC and found that to be O.K. From my experience, Macs are somewhat more reliable and sturdier than PCs - i.e. they crash less. I didn\'t have to save documents in rtf format, but it is important to remember to tick the file appendix check box when saving files, so that they automatically have an appendix that is PC-compatible.



I didn\'t find Mac to be particularly incompatible for Office documents, but more with other kinds of programs. I use a lot of CD dictionaries, as they make translation a whole lot quicker. However, many simply aren\'t made to run on a Mac platform and that is a bit of a shame, in my opinion.



According to my Mac-pro friend whom I\'ve just asked, Mac OS 10, the latest OS, is considerably more compatible with PCs that its predecessor, Mac OS 9.



That\'s my 2 cents worth,

Hope it helped.



Sarah


 


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Mac vs PC, cross-platforming for translation






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