Swordfish

Despite the multitude of both online and standalone competent specialized apps, when it comes to translating enormous quantities of text, professional translators prefer to work with advanced CAT (short for Computer Aided Translation) tools.

Swordfish is a feature-packed piece of software designed to help professional translators improve their workflow thanks to its wide array of advanced tools.

Considering you already have Java installed on your computer, the software solution undergoes a typical installation process.

The fact that Swordfish is a specialized and serious piece of kit becomes evident once you first launch the application. It comes with a well thought-out main window, with an all-encompassing toolbar and an extensive menu bar as prime elements.

While the features are fairly intuitively laid-out on the app's interface, working with Swordfish is not something that novice users might find easy from the get-go.

Despite this, Swordfish really shines when it comes to one thing: the overall number of features. The app packs support for the most common formats used in the translating industry such as XLIFF, Unclear RTF, TTX, TTX Exchange and TXML.

The utility allows you to focus on what is important by making it possible for you to hide or show various segments by marking them as follows: 'is translatable', 'has translation', 'has comments' and 'is approved', just to name a few.

You can also export your XLIFF files to HTML and take advantage of really comfortable environments provided by web browsers to read texts. The tool includes a swift database server and it enables you to use third-party database engines as well.

Since staring at a computer screen for hours and hours, as professional translators often do, is not something pleasant, Swordfish improves the situation a bit with the help of its configurable work environment. This said, you can change fonts, colors, keyboard shortcuts, language codes, segmentation and conversion rules and conversion rules.

Swordfish proved itself to be a reliable and comprehensive app that is surely an addition for professional translators, as it helps them improve their workflow. Feature-wise, there is not much you can reproach it, but without doubt, a more functional and maybe modern interface would have made the app even better.