TransTools+ v.1.3.0: Added Spacing, Punctuation and Symbol Correction Tool, a powerful tool for creating great-looking documents

If you have not been able to try it yet, TransTools+ is a new suite of tools designed to help professional translators, editors, copyeditors and DTP specialists improve their quality and productivity. Compared to TransTools, which provides a large number of tools that focus on small tasks, TransTools+ aims to cover a much wider range of tasks with a smaller number of tools which are more powerful and easier to use. For a list of TransTools+ features and examples of its use cases, download TransTools+ brochure.

Now, one year after the initial release of TransTools+, I am happy to announce a new version with a very useful QA and formatting tool: Spacing, Punctuation and Symbol Correction Tool.

Introducing Spacing, Punctuation and Symbol Correction Tool

True to its name, the tool will help you create great-looking documents by fixing various spacing, punctuation and typography issues:

1. Remove excessive spaces: replace several spaces with one space, remove spaces before and after certain punctuation symbols, remove spaces at the beginning and end of paragraphs and lines.
2. Insert missing spaces before and after certain punctuation symbols, e.g. before an opening parenthesis or after a comma.
3. Use non-breaking spaces before units of measurement, before and after specific words, and in the middle of phrases, in order to keep text on the same line for better readability.
4. Use typographically correct symbols: ellipsis instead of three dots, correct degree sign instead of superscript zero, multiplication sign instead of “x”, etc.
5. (Coming soon) Use correct quotation marks in accordance with the document language (e.g. curly quotation marks instead of straight ones), enforce the use of non-breaking spaces before certain end-of-sentence punctuation and “guillemets” in French, and other new correction rules.

Here is an example from a real-life document:

And here are the corrections proposed by Spacing, Punctuation and Symbol Correction Tool:

As you can see, the tool found 3 instances of excessive spaces, 1 instance in which an incorrect symbol (superscripted letter “o”) is used as a degree sign, and found 3 instances where a non-breaking space should be inserted in order for the text to be more readable (and if you try to read the text above, you will see that it does not read right unless you insert these non-breaking spaces).

After correction by Spacing, Punctuation and Symbol Correction Tool, the text will look like this:

For those of you who actively use TransTools, you may find a number of similarities between this new tool and such TransTools features as Find & Remove Excessive Spaces, Non-Breaking Space Checker and (soon) Quotation Magic. Indeed, Spacing, Punctuation and Symbol Correction Tool is designed to integrate the functionality of these tools into one tool, making it much easier and quicker to perform these essential operations.

Here are just a few examples when this tool will be useful:

• Process translated documents before they are submitted to the customer in order to remove excessive spaces, insert non-breaking spaces for good readability of the text, and use typographically correct symbols that look right and avoid ambiguity. All these small changes will create the right impression with the reader of the document and set you apart from others.
• Remove excessive spaces and use correct Unicode symbols in order to improve matches from your translation memories: even if you translated the same text before, so much as small changes in spacing will cause your translation memory to find fuzzy matches instead of complete (100%) matches.

Spacing, Punctuation and Symbol Correction Tool is very easy to use:

1. Open the tool panel by clicking Spacing, Punctuation and Symbol Correction Tool button on TransTools+ ribbon:

   

2. Choose the profile that contains the required settings. You can use the Default profile which contains the recommended settings, or create a new profile with the required correction settings. For instance, you can deactivate all settings except removal of excessive spaces, so that only excessive spaces are corrected:

   

3. Choose the document language in order to improve the document correction results. In most cases you can leave the default setting (“Any”), which means that the document will be checked for potential issues using all correction rules, including the rules that are specific to certain languages, e.g. French or Russian.
4. Click Check document button to check the current (active) document for potential issues. At the end of the process you will see the list of potential issues found. In this list, you will see the original text with its surrounding context and the suggested changes:
   
5. Go through the list and untick the issues that do not need to be corrected. For big documents, you can even group the issues by type in order to check the results faster:
   
6. Click Correct checked items button to correct all the issues that are ticked in the list. You can optionally apply special highlight colors to corrections to perform a quick double-check of the corrected document afterwards.

I invite you to take a close look at the new Spacing, Punctuation and Symbol Correction Tool. For more information, go here. Download the recent version and evaluate this tool without any limitations for 30 days.

What’s coming in future releases?

TransTools+ is a young product with lots of features planned for the coming months. The next versions will include enhancements to Spacing, Punctuation and Symbol Correction Tool, and will feature new tools for DTP specialists. As usual, other powerful features are in the works so watch future issues of TransTools newsletter closely. Click here to subscribe to the newsletter.

Evaluating and buying TransTools+

TransTools+ does not require TransTools suite to be installed and can be installed side by side with it.

You can use any tool that is part of TransTools+ without limitations for 30 days. To continue using it after that, you will need to buy a license at a very affordable price.

If you already hold a license for TransTools Professional Edition, you can obtain a special coupon code which you can apply in order to receive a 30% discount for a full TransTools+ license. If you did not receive this coupon code previously and it does not arrive in your mailbox within the next few days, let me know here and I will re-send it to your alternative email address.

TransTools+ is not distributed under the annual subscription model which has become so common these days. Your license will be valid for the current major version of TransTools+, and new major versions will be released approximately every 2 years. All updates within the current major version will be free of charge, and you will also get technical support. You may activate TransTools+ licenses on up to 3 computers simultaneously provided that these computers belong to the same individual or employee.

Download TransTools+ today and enjoy this software which will make you even more productive!