Translation Programs (PO file editors)

As mentioned in my previous post you can use a single text editor in order to translate a .PO file. However, it’s very helpful and easier for a simple (non programmer) translator to use a PO file editor instead, which gives much more automation, has a better and organized look and shows only things a translator needs to see.

Currently I use PoEdit for my translations, since it is simple and easy to use.

After a quick search, I found many PO editors available such as Virtaal, Gtranslator, Lokalize, OmegaT, GNU Gettext, GTed, betterpoeditor, Gorm and others.

Although all seem to do the same job, they have not the same features, each has its own ways of presenting and means of editing different elements of a message and many of them have extra helping tools like Translation memory, Glossary, Spell-checking etc.

Last week I tested some of them just to see how they would work for my workflow.

I summarized their characteristics on following table:   

 

As you can see the decision on which editor to choose for your work is not an easy one and each has pros and cons to be considered depending on your translation requirements.

I’m very glad I did all this research because I finally realized, that PoEdit may be simple to use, but has too few features for my needs, so I consider changing it with the Gtranslator or Virtaal application, which I can say both impressed me.