I wonder how Dostojevski’s original translators would have felt working in an environment like Scrivener? Seriously, although there’s a wealth of word-processing software out there most software that you work in as a translator is diabolical. This week, however, I’ve found a new solution.

I’ve written previously about how much Scrivener has helped me as a journalist and writer. Well, now I’d like to add that it is a superb tool if you’re a translator too.

I’ve spent the last week working my way through eleven documents for Stockholm University. Instead of firing up Pages or Tinderbox as I’ve tended to do in the past for translation projects, this time I thought I would give Scrivener a try. I started off by importing all eleven source documents into a folder I called “svenska”. I then created eleven blank documents in the draft folder of Scrivener and gave each the correct English title.

I then set about translating my first document in Scrivener from Swedish to English. The majority of work I do in Scrivener is in text view. But the great thing about this little nifty writing programme is that you can split the page view into two, working on, say, the translation in the top window whilst referring to the original source text in the bottom window (as illustrated). To make things easier you can magnify the fonts in either window if you, like me, need to see things more clearly.

After a day of working like this I realised I was going to complete the project in Scrivener and then export it to Word to deliver to the client. Why? Because the whole writing environment felt so intuitive. I love being able to see drafts simultaneously, referring to one text whilst composing another. Even backing-up is a doddle: I just drag the Scrivener file onto a usb stick (or mail my server) and all the documents are saved in a flash.

Scrivener isn’t suited to every translation project, mind. It doesn’t let you use auto-cad software which some translation companies insist on. However, most of my clients just want Word documents or texts translated directly into a website content manager.