Translation Plus lets you create and translate documents in six different languages. It's easy to use, quick, and has a decent range of basic features. However, the quality of its translations are mediocre. If you have simple translation needs, or just a need for one-off services, you'd probably be better off checking out some of the Web's free services, or employing the services of a professional language translation company.

Pros: Easy to use; fast translations; retains document formatting
Cons: Produces grammatical errors; no spelling checker


Translation Plus 10.0 is an extremely easy-to-use software application that enables you to translate documents in six European languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese. It's a bi-directional package, meaning that it translates both to and from a language pair, such as English to Spanish and Spanish to English.

Operated from within a familiar Windows environment, Translation Plus looks and feels just like a word processor, so you'll be able to import letters, faxes, e-mails and documents and then simultaneously translate them into Word, RTF or HTML formats in a matter of seconds. In the case of ambiguities, the Interactive Mode lets you select the most appropriate meaning, phrase by phrase. You can also update dictionaries by adding new words, which is particularly useful when dealing with jargon.

The software allows you to create text directly within the software using the basic word processor tools, or import a file containing text in one of the following formats: DOC, RTF, HTM, HTML, and TXT. Whichever option you for, you will be able to insert, erase, and save both the source text and the translation draft.

Translation Plus is for all purposes a normal text editor with standard functions. For instance, you can change font size and colour, edit paragraph styles, view documents in a number of different zoom levels, add headers and footers, insert bullets and numbering, as well as visualise or hide the lines of a document. There's also a Find command, which is useful for finding a specific string of text in a document, and the Replace tool replaces one string of text with another. Amazingly, there's no spelling checker, which is a real disappointment.

When it comes to translating documents, you must first select a pair of languages. A new window then appears that contains the draft of the translation, maintaining the original formatting, both of the text and the objects of the source document. The 'Sentence Analyzer,' command then allows you to analyse the result of the parsed sentences. From here you can also change words, or add words to the dictionary in use.

You can also choose the source language and the desired language of the translation, as well as the type of dictionary to be used: General Dictionary (GEN), Business Dictionary (BUS), Legal Dictionary (LEG), Computer Dictionary (COM), and Medical Dictionary (MED). However, the number of dictionaries available for the translation services depends on the selected languages. In the case when one of the two selected languages is English, all the dictionaries are available.

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