[question] Advice needed before buying a mac

Hi!

Finally I have some spare money to buy a mac. But before doing it I want to make sure that I'd buy a computer that I'd be able to use at full, but not just an expensive toy.

So I have a couple of questions:

I'm a professional interpreter, and I work a lot in text processing programs (of course, currently I use Microsoft Word on my Windows-machine). And here comes the first question:

If I buy iWork, will I be able to export iWork-files to doc-files successfully? (I need it because most of people I work with use Windows-computers.) Saying "successfully" I mean, would they look in Windows-Word just like in iWork, or would iWork mess up text formatting, tables etc.

And the second question:

Could you please recommend me a professional electronic dictionary?

(Not one of those crappy unitilities for translating contents of web-pages and texts, but a real PROFESSIONAL DICTIONARY with a big database of words and phrases, e.g. something like ABBYY Lingvo (I use it now on my Windows-machine, but unfortunately there is only a Windows-version of it))

I'm mostly interested in English-Russian and vice versa & German-Russian and vice versa dictionaries.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions on my concern...

#311623

Hey mishka80,

Yes, you will be able to export and import .doc files in Pages that will open seamlessly on windows machines. OS X has a built in dictionary, but if you are looking for something really powerful, check out Ultralingua

#311625

Hey jpgodlew,

thnx for answering so quickly!

Now I know that iWork will be ok.

But about my second question - I think you haven't got my point: as far as I know OS X's built-in dictionary is actually a thesaurus, i.e. it just explains English words in terms of the English language. But I need a real "cross-language" dictionary - I need it for my work - for reference when translating texts from English/German to Russian and vice versa.

I've just taken a look at Ultralingua - it doesn't suit me, because it doesn't have a solution for translating between Russian and English/German

Is there any other software?

#311630

So by crappy little ones you mean things like the dashboard translator???

Hmm... ok... cant help you i'm afraid, just posting this just to be sure you knew of the dashboard one. I dont know how good it is, never really used it.

#311675

CDi2, I think you've misunderstood me (is my English that bad?). Saying about "crappy utilities", I didn't meant either Tiger's built-in dictionary or the corresponding Dashboard widget. I meant such apps that are usually called electronic translators or translation systems (for example, you copy some text in English from a web-page or from a text editor, paste it into such app's window and push "Translate" button - and then you get some odd, illogical array of words in Russian, that creators of such apps call a translation - and I call such "translations" $HIT (pardon my French ). That's why I call such apps crappy, because they do NOT fulfull their main function - translating texts from one language to another. And that's why (thank God!) we, human translators and interpreters, are still needed, as we help people from different countries to communicate)

So my question was, if there an app for Mac OS X that would do the following:

I open this app, type in a word or a word-group ("Computer" for example), then hit - the app searches its database for a translation of this word and shows me the answer ("Rechner" if I chose to translate from English to German). In other words, I need an app that I could use instead of my hardcopy English-Russian/Russian-English & German-Russian/Russian-German dictionaries.

Hopefully now you guys understand what I actually search for...

(About Tiger's built-in dictionary: I thought, it is actually not a dictionary, but a thesaurus, i.e. it doesn't translate between two different languages, but just interprets words in the terms of the same language (English) (e.g. "tiger - (noun) a very large solitary cat with a yellow-brown coat striped with black, native to the forests of Asia [Panthera tigris.]" Correct me, if I'm wrong about its functionality)

#311685