LanguageTool is a free, open-source proof-reading software for English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and more than 20 other languages. It finds many errors that a simple spelling checker cannot detect, as well as grammar problems, and is used in some CAT tools such as OmegaT.
You can read the three-minute introduction for writing error detection rules if your language is not supported. Of course, you can also improve existing languages’ rules and add new ones. With the LanguageTool Rule Editor (an online tool), you can create your rules if you don’t want to edit the XML file directly. Below is also a short introductory video about the creation of rules.
LanguageTool is available as Standalone Software for your desktop and as Add-on for Firefox, Chrome, Google Docs, LibreOffice/OpenOffice.
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Something about Proof-reading
Proofreading is not just a little annoying step that barely deserves your attention. Quality assurance (QA) is a vital part of your translation process. In a way, it is even more critical than translating. Just imagine you are quickly translating something. Maybe you think you are so good that you don’t need to have another look. You send the job back to the requester, and he/she publishes it. A little later, you get the text back because someone was complaining. So you read the text and can’t believe you did that. Some spelling and grammatical mistakes are quickly found. But not only that, you can’t read the text smoothly because the sentences don’t provide a good text flow.
All of the above can happen. And not only that. You might get some technical terminology wrong if it is a technical text. Or you convert some numbers incorrectly. Or maybe the text is for a country in a different time zone. So it would be best if you converted the times and dates. It is important for your target audience, so don’t neglect this.
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