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Tools to compare text?
Thread poster: Anita Karlson
Anita Karlson
Anita Karlson  Identity Verified
Local time: 21:28
Member (2005)
English to Norwegian
+ ...
Oct 23, 2002

Hi,



Does anyone know of good tools to compare text for those of us without Trados?
 
Ralf Lemster
Ralf Lemster  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 21:28
English to German
+ ...
Which format? Oct 23, 2002

You didn\'t specify which text formats you need to compare - the most obvious is probably the revision marking function in MS Word.
 
Ken Cox
Ken Cox  Identity Verified
Local time: 21:28
German to English
+ ...
general comments Oct 23, 2002

Judging from the only response I received to a similar question and a bit of web searching, there\'s very little available that\'s suitable for translators. There are several freeware/share file comparison tools avialable, but they\'re designed primarily for programmers. One that I found and have used, and am happy with (given its limitations), is CSDiff (freeware, see www.componentsoftware.com/csdiff) . If you... See more
Judging from the only response I received to a similar question and a bit of web searching, there\'s very little available that\'s suitable for translators. There are several freeware/share file comparison tools avialable, but they\'re designed primarily for programmers. One that I found and have used, and am happy with (given its limitations), is CSDiff (freeware, see www.componentsoftware.com/csdiff) . If you are comparing Word documents, it uses the Word compare function, but it gives you a much nicer user interface (you don\'t have to open the documents first) and gives you a Word temp document that you can save with your own name.



Regarding the Word compare function, it is semi-OK. Its major weaknesses (as far as I know) are:

- It gets more or less confused if the documents being compared contain graphics and the graphics do not have identical locations in the two documents (as is usually the case).

- It totally fails with tables. If you must compare text in tables, first convert the tables to text -- which can involve a significant amount of cleanup work if they are complicated.

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