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Experience with pen tablets?
Thread poster: Danielle Crouch
Danielle Crouch
Danielle Crouch  Identity Verified
Germany
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German to English
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TOPIC STARTER
Good things to consider Nov 30, 2020

Thanks, Dan, for your thorough information!

Dan Lucas wrote:

If you speak in short bursts with long pauses ("Operating profit increased by... 14% in the first half of... The fiscal year ending March 2021...") then the software will not work at its best.


This may have been what was tripping me up during my stab at dictation. I was approaching it a lot like I approach typing, which is thinking basically a word or a few words ahead of what I'm currently writing and going in small chunks. I think I will try it out on Mac again (and maybe with the built-in dictation in Windows too) and see if sticking to whole sentences makes it go more smoothly.

Chris S wrote:

If you work for agencies using TMs and MT, or do manuals with lots of diagrams or scanned pdfs with a million stray tags, Dragon will be next to useless. It’s crap for editing.


This is an important point for me to consider, since I do a fair amount of post-editing for agencies that use TMs/MT, AND I translate a good number of manuals. The editing and post-editing work is where I could see a pen tablet/stylus touchpad coming in more than dictation, since I often find that both the mouse and the keyboard have annoying limitations/quirks when it comes to quickly and accurately selecting text to replace, move, or remove. Whether a stylus would provide a better experience, though, is of course the million-dollar question.


 
Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:00
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Japanese to English
Buttons Nov 30, 2020

Danielle Crouch wrote:
Whether a stylus would provide a better experience, though, is of course the million-dollar question.

Or, more accurately, the £35.99 question.

When using the stylus on my Wacom Intuos or Bamboo (have had both at various times - think I still have the Bamboo, but not sure where) I found using the buttons on the pen to be problematic. They are naturally very much smaller than those on a mouse, and as you are pressing them you need a good purchase on the pen to hold it steady as you do so. To put it another way, you need to stabilise the pen with three fingers and thumb, and press the equivalent to the mouse button with a fourth finger. I never felt comfortable with that, but presumably some people get used to it and don't mind.

As Chris says, DNS is not good for editing. It can actually do quite a lot in, say, Word (and thus Wordfast Classic?), because you can say things like "select from 'early one morning' to 'close at 7 PM'" and then cut and paste the selected text, and so on. Even so, you'll need to use your hands a good deal.

However, rather than constituting an argument for avoiding speech recognition, that suggests to me that you should consider using something like DNS intensively in those areas where it is possible. Bear in mind the cumulative impact, rather than thinking about the impact of individual tasks in isolation. What you lose on the swings you may gain on the roundabouts.

Again, baby steps, and in rising order of economic painfulness. DNS would cost you several hundred pounds, and you'd need a mike as well. First maybe try a Perixx trackpad, then a cheap trackball, then a Rollermouse - well, you get the idea.

Dan


Christopher Schröder
 
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