THE TRANSMUG REPORT WORDFAST ON WORD. THE RETURN?
BY YVES AVÉROUS
Possibly the only important news for Mac-using translators coming from the last Macworld Expo in February was the announcement of a release time for the next Office for Mac: holiday season 2010. It’s big news for Wordfast fans who cannot use Wordfast Classic on the latest version of the suite due to its reliance on Word’s macro. This was removed from the 2008 edition, and users must run Word 2004 or forfeit Wordfast Classic altogether.
At a recent Wordfast workshop, one of our colleagues was at a loss while trying to run Wordfast Classic with Word 2008 and was left hanging as the PC-centric trainer couldn’t provide her with a solution. All this will soon just be a bad memory. Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), the code behind the macros that allow Wordfast to inhabit Word, will be available again in all Office applications. And the Microsoft people even say that this version of VBA will bring the most cross-platform compatibility they ever were able to offer!
The goodies do not stop there: Entourage will be dropped for a Mac version of Outlook, making the Windows and Mac versions of Office closer siblings than ever before, with common secure right management, and easy import of those pesky .pst files that hold all the Outlook for PC user information — one of the first gripes of PC-to-Mac switchers.
The irony of this rapprochement is how the integration of the infamous Ribbon inaugurated with Office 2007 for the PC, now coming to Office for Mac 2011, is strangely reminiscent of the expanded toolbar of the last heralded version of Word for Mac, Word 5.1 — from the pre-Internet days! And for the Mac, the Ribbon is rid of the ugly orange hues found on the Windows version and makes use of Mac core animation for smooth sliding and other effects!
Come meet the TransMUG team with your questions and experience at our quarterly lunch-meetings at Out the Door at 11:30am, right before and a few stories down from the NCTA meeting, in the Westfield Center’s Food Court.
In the meantime, please visit TransMUG.com, for more resources and our latest articles, dealing with the troubles of Mac translation software development and the revival of Quicken. YA
