WORD for TRANSLATORS

Everybody knows “how to use Word”, and yet perhaps 70% of its potential remain unknown to most. Of course, that 70% is a wild guess, but look at the documents you receive. How many of those have double paragraph marks when they shouldn't? How many use styles properly? When was the last time you received a manual with index?

As a translator, using Word quite regularly, a good knowledge of Word can save you a lot of time and suffering. I do not pretend to be a Word expert, and this is not "yet another general manual" for Word. I merely tried to compile tools, functions and tricks that are of particular interest to our job. Translation.

Some of you will obviously know all about it already, and there is a lot more that can be written, including stuff I don’t know about too. This write up is done based on Word 2002, English version. However, most of it applies as well to other versions.

As a rule, when I write a tutorial, I assume that most things are unknown to the reader, except Windows' basics like clicking, opening programs... Please bear with me if I give too many details on "how to". That may be a wee bit annoying, but that's nothing compared to the nuisance of trying to learn something and constantly being told to do things you don't know.

Knowing Word will not only speed your work, but also help you whenever you are in trouble.

In this tutorial, the menu paths will be explained as follows: Menu/submenu/menu item-dialog tab/option name.(i.e.: Format/font-Character Spacing/Spacing)

This tutorial will cover the following topics, to start with. There is a lot more that could be said about it, and if you see something important that I forgot to mention, or -god forbid- a mistake, please let me know.

• Shortcuts
  A list of the most important shortcuts,
  
• Customize
  How to customize your working environment, plus instructions to customize shortcuts
  
• Find and Replace
  Basics and some examples. Day saving award ;)
  
• Tables
  Brief explanation on how it works.
  
• Macros
  How to record a macro.
  
• Translating in Word
  Get these things together to translate. Some examples of what can be done.
  
• Links
  Links to other Word related web sites. If you have a tutorial on Word somewhere in the web, a reciprocal link can be arranged.

  That's all for now. You can go straight to one article or another, or simply bear with me and click on Next.

  NB: Microsoft Word is referred to as "Word" and is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.