The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
Issue link: https://thelinguist.uberflip.com/i/807252
16 The Linguist Vol/56 No/2 2017 www.ciol.org.uk FEATURES How to start using your tablet for interpreting work. By Alexander Drechsel T ablets (and smartphones) are very useful tools for interpreters. They are easy to use, lightweight and silent, making them great booth companions. Tablets have become powerful devices, and interpreters can use them for many things, from document preparation to working with glossaries in the booth, note-taking for consecutive work and managing the business tasks that come with freelance life. You may have heard that there's an app for everything, but don't know which one is best for you. If you're interested in making the switch from a traditional laptop (or no computer at all) to a mobile device, here are a few tips – and three free apps for both iPad and Android devices – that will put you on the path to successful tablet interpreting. Grab your device and read on. GO PAPERLESS Many professionals strive to 'go paperless', but few actually achieve it. While I doubt that it is possible to become fully paperless, there are things you can do to reduce the amount of paper in your life while taking advantage of electronic workflows. Receipts, invoices and other random pieces of paper can be a hassle, especially when travelling for assignments, as they tend to get lost or damaged. Scanbot is a helpful app that enables you to make digital copies using the camera that's built into your device. It is free to download and the whole process couldn't be simpler: place the item you want to digitise on a flat surface (ideally a darker one to increase contrast), open Scanbot and take a picture. Unlike the normal camera app, Scanbot provides tips for obtaining a really neat result, prompting you to move closer to the original or to modify the perspective. It even recognises the borders of the document and crops the image to the right dimensions – and it does that well. If necessary, you can manually adjust the colour (including black- and-white and grey options), or adjust the frame, crop and rotation. Scanbot integrates with all major cloud services, including iCloud, Dropbox and Evernote, and uploads automatically if you want it to. As a staff interpreter, I use Scanbot to prepare my expense claims. By scanning receipts and invoices as I go along, I am often ready to file my claim by the time I get home. For additional features, such as text recognition, searching in your scanned documents or smart naming templates, you can upgrade to Scanbot Pro (iOS only). The scanning feature also finds its way into business applications such as FreshBooks, which will help you keep track of receipts and bill clients for expenses. Some of these apps can extract information from scans and enter it into a database, making your life even easier. MOBILE ANNOTATION Adobe's Acrobat Reader has been a staple for reading PDF documents on computers for many years, and it is also available as an app for mobile devices. Acrobat Reader not only displays documents, it also helps you organise your PDF files into a structure that makes sense. Office or image documents have to be converted to PDF first, but the effort is worth it because PDF is the ideal format for meeting preparation (which we'll get to in a moment). Similar to the Scanbot app, Acrobat Reader lets you snap paper documents to digitise them. Another way to get documents into the app is to use the 'Open in Acrobat' button on email attachments or documents stored on your device. You can create folders to organise your materials by client, project or date – however you see fit. And if you're a Dropbox user, you can connect Acrobat Reader to your account and easily access your files in the cloud. Once you have sorted all your documents into a system that works for you, you're ready to get to the preparation part. And it's surprisingly similar to working with paper documents: where you would traditionally use a variety of pens, Acrobat gives you digital annotation tools to highlight and underline THE TABLET INTERPRETER I have grown so accustomed to paperless meeting preparation that I now prefer it